Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As the Polar Tang prepared to submerge to leave Wano, the captain of the Straw Hats stood proudly at the helm of his own ship and waved down at the Heart Pirates. 

"Thanks for saving Zoro!" Luffy said cheerily. "Don't take him home, he's ours."

"I have no intention to," he said. 

"Just making sure!" 

He sounded like he was joking, but there was absolutely no contradicting him. 

None of the Straw Hats noticed any change in their swordsman after Law left. He spent the day training, as usual. Perhaps a little more than usual. Actually, quite a lot more than usual. Which was saying a lot, since already spent most of his time up in his gym in the lookout tower. 

Nami lost the draw, and had to go fetch him after he missed the first three calls to dinner. Most of them had already finished eating, and Chopper had already gone twice to see what was the matter. He had been rebuffed with a few vague promises to show up.

She huffed a laugh as she hauled herself up into the tower and saw what he was doing. 

"Do you miss him already?"

"I don't."

"You've been staring at his vivre card for the last hour."

"I'm checking that it's the right one," he muttered.

"Does that take an hour?"

He scoffed, and put the fluttering scrap of paper carefully in the sheath of Wado Ichimonji. 

Chopper was visibly relieved when Zoro appeared at the table.

"Sanji said he would definitely stop cooking for you this time," he said worriedly.

Nami laughed. "Sanji would never not feed the hungry, Chopper. He's just contractually obliged not to act nice to Zoro." 

Zoro was too busy arguing with Sanji over what he could or could not say to Chopper to weigh in.

"And vice versa," she added. 

"Was that Boa Hancock who called yesterday?" Sanji said, trying to sound casual. 

"Yep!" Luffy said cheerfully. "The Marines were coming for her so she's busy. But she said she doesn't need any help."

"Oh," Sanji said. 

"We should arrive there in about a month or so," Nami said.

"The Heart Pirates are also docked there," Robin said offhandedly.

The ones within earshot looked toward their swordsman as he pretended not to hear them. 

"Luffy, after we reach the next port, we can give each member of the crew leave, can't we?" Nami said sweetly, pushing a plate of roast chicken his way.

"Huh? Yeah, sure!" he said.

"Greeat," she singsonged. 

Carrot's eyes suddenly lit up. "Oh! The Heart Pirates? Zoro can go see him then!"

"You just noticed?"

"Aw, Usopp, you still think it's a bad idea?"

"Again, he's the Surgeon of Death."

"He still sounds misunderstood."

"How is he misunderstood?!"

"What does a surgeon of death even do? A surgery of death? Surgery that causes death? Surgery on death? Surgery that prevents it?"

"He does surgery that kills people!"

"That's not very surgery-y," Carrot remarked. 

"Well, Doer-of-Surgery-that-Kills-People doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? What's next, the Medical Malpractice Man?"

"Who's that?" Carrot asked with interest. 

Before Usopp could actually spin a sweeping epic tale for the Medical Malpractice Man, Luffy stuck his face in between them. "What're you talking about?"

"Zoro's going to see Law!" Carrot said. "It's going to be so romantic! Absence makes the heart grow fondue."

"You mean fonder?"

"No, I mean turn into fondue."

(Usopp was starting to get the sense that Carrot just wanted to eat people's hearts. Was there an element of truth in Robin's speculations about cannibalism?)

"Ah, so Zoro is leaving to get married," Luffy said. 

Zoro choked on his onigiri. Jinbe had to pound his back to dislodge the rice. 

"We're not getting married," he said, spitting out a piece of seaweed. 

"Luffy, it's way too soon for that," Nami whispered.

"Huh? But it's been two months already."

"Someone explain to him how relationships work again," she said. 

"I know how they work!"

"Yes, the same way you know why rain falls."

"It's a mystery, right?"

Usopp took Luffy aside before Zoro could commit any mutinous acts. They conversed for a while, with Luffy nodding along and Usopp drawing the occasional diagram to illustrate his point. 

"But Zoro doesn't know how to cook Torao!" Luffy exclaimed. 

"That's not what I meant!"

"You said it's like how I feel about meat. It wouldn't take me two months to figure out I like meat," he argued. "And I definitely want to eat meat for the rest of my life!"

"You're right. I should've picked a better example. Alright, how about this? It's like…"

Throughout this, the swordsman's complexion steadily approached a tomato's. 

"It's not Luffy's fault, he just has no conception of it. How would you know what attraction is without ever feeling it? Imagine walking around, and everyone tells you they can see ultraviolet."

"I can see ultraviolet!" Luffy said. 

"No you can't. Even Franky can't and he's got upgrades out the wazoo."

Another explanation ensued. 

"But why does he have to see him? We have pictures if he ever forgets what he looks like."

"That's not what 'seeing someone' means."

"Then why can't we come along? We're all friends, right?"

"That's ...debatable," Usopp said. 

"Luffy, you wouldn't barge in on someone's else's dinner date, would you?" Nami scolded. 

Luffy's slack expression turned dreamy. "Dinner…"

"You know what, bad example. Anyway, you can't go."

Yamato patted the swordsman in the back as he sank further down in his seat, immobilized with the intensity of his fury and embarrassment. 

"All right!" Luffy announced, clapping his hands together. "I've decided that it's okay for Zoro to go marry Traffy without us as long as he brings back cake!" 

"Sorry Zoro. Couldn't explain it to him," Usopp muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he dashed after Luffy. 

"Hey, does that mean the talking bear will be our navigator in-law?" 

"There's no such thing!"

One month later, a small boat rocked back and forth in a current full of monstrous fishes with suppurative yellow eyes. Zoro scrutinized his map, stroking his chin, then looked at the sea kings gnawing on the aft.

"Hmm," he said. "This doesn't look right."

The sky outside brewed with clouds preparing to storm. 

Law's plans for figuring out the secrets of the D clan were progressing slowly, even with Nico Robin's hints, and he was half-heartedly pursuing the hypothesis that Conqueror's Haki had something to do with it. What was the difference between a D. clan member with or without that rare ability? 

To that end, he had tracked down the homelands of conquerors whose names did not bear a D. He chose to start with Kuja Island, due to an agreement he had made with the Pirate Empress. 

She had been toying with the marines sent to capture her for a while now. In exchange for fending off marine scouts in the region, she granted them one interview with her. She also allowed them to study the neighbouring island's shores and what lay within the fringes of its jungles while she was away securing her territories and the safety of her pirates. The only path into this channel was through the formidable sea-king infested waters of an ironically named belt.

His crew, at least mostly Penguin and Shachi, were disappointed that Boa had left, but he preferred it this way. He met her a few times during his tenure as a Warlord. She cut a striking figure, with jet-black hair falling past her waist, blue eyes as smooth and cold as glass, and an aura of absolute self-possession. She was beautiful, but haughty and forbidding, and relented only when he invoked his alliance with Luffy. He didn't look forward to captaining a crew full of stone statues. 

It was an ordinary morning on the docked Polar Tang, or it would have been if not for what he found on the deck of his submarine: Zoro, dripping wet, wringing out his shirt over the railing. 

The green of his hair had darkened with seawater, and liquid ran down the smooth, unbroken skin of his back. The water pooled in glistening beads in the grooves of his musculature. Sensing his presence, the other swordsman turned to face him. His eye was as he remembered it--a ring as grey as the overcast sky. 

"Excuse me for a moment," Law said. He spun on his heel, yanked open the door he came out of, strode rapidly down the hall, and ran into Bepo.

"Good morning, Captain!" Bepo said with a crisp salute.

"Morning. Is that Zoro on the deck?"

"Yes."

"And I assume you're here to report that?"

"Yes."

"I'm not imagining things?"

"I don't think so, Captain."

"Thank you. That's all."

Law went up and out--and yes, Zoro was still there, still dripping water with his clothes balled up in one fist. Phantoms, he decided, did not drip . He considered a host of possible responses, and settled on--

"Why are you here?"

"I came to see you."

"Yes, but why?"

He blinked up at him, looking oddly innocent with the droplets of water gleaming in his hair. "I wanted to."

He reddened. "No, I mean why did you use the least efficient and most dangerous route to get here?"

"Things kept moving around."

"You sailed through the Calm Belt!"

"Oh yeah. Do you have a boat I can borrow?"

"Why do you need a-- you know what, I don't want to know," he said when Zoro opened his mouth. The explanations he gave reminded him too much of Luffy's. "Why do you always risk your life just because you know you won't die?"

He caught his mistake the moment the words left his mouth. Great. Now I'm the one who sounds ridiculous. 

Zoro regarded him patiently, waiting for him to retract his statement. 

"You know what I mean," he said.

Zoro watched him-- apprehensively, he thought. "Want me to leave?"

"Of course I don't," he muttered. 

He brightened. It had a way of relaxing his features, softening them until they radiated a joy as simple and transparent as fresh rainwater.

Damn it. Damn it all. He fought with himself so he wouldn't return the smile. 

If Zoro was unhappy with the cold reception he didn't show it-- but he knew Law's nature by now, and he preferred chilly, cutting words to honeyed ones in any case.

For now, he elected to stay above deck. If he went inside his submarine, his crew were sure to spy on them while pretending not to. 

He kept a square by his bed and on his person so he wouldn't have to go digging through his personal effects if the urge ever arose to check it. He had lost track of how often he examined the card for any signs of burning, how he grew familiar with the edges of that little square, how automatic it became to touch it when he had a spare moment. He could not describe the relief each time he found it whole, unsinged. Luffy had an astronomical bounty, and so did his crew. They would be targets, and he couldn't be sure if they were safe. 

The sun was still obscured behind a layer of cloud, and his clothes had not yet dried. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around his shoulders, his movements quick and furtive. 

"You're going to catch cold."

"I don't get cold," he said automatically, though he cinched the jacket around himself anyway, with a little smile.

On the battlefield he was a demon, but here, he was a cat curled before a roaring hearth, content and blinking up at him with frank trust. Undeserved trust. 

He shoved that thought away. Up until now, he had hesitated to touch him, as if he were a droplet of water that any contact would dissipate or contaminate. Part of him wondered if he had wanted this so much he hallucinated it into being. 

That was irrational. He reached out, and his tattooed fingers traced the familiar planes of his face, felt the warmth and the solidity, the edge of the rough, raised scar cutting through his eye. He was real. 

"I'm glad you're here," he said quietly. 

"So am I."

"Let's go to the navigation room. Follow me closely. If not, my crew will corner you and warn you against harming me, as yours did to me."

"When did that happen?" 

Of course he didn't know. He'd only let them do that if he wasn't aware of it.

And now he allowed himself to study the face he'd seen often enough in dreams that he hardly needed photographs. It hadn't changed-- grown a bit sharper, perhaps, gained a few more lines from fatigue or travels. It was decidedly strange that he appeared just when he'd resigned himself to the bitter fact that he wouldn't be able to see him for weeks. It was strange, too, that he never thought of him as good to look at until something in his mind had clicked one day, and began to feed him a stream of inconvenient observations, until he was not seeing beauty-- not anything so frivolous-- but truth. 

He didn't like to show affection in public. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his love. 

Shame didn't enter into it. He liked his privacy, but that wasn't quite right either. To be perceived was to be made real, and what was real could be lost. If he lost only a fantasy, he could bear that with equanimity. If he lost something real…

Someone flicked his forehead.

"Stop thinking," his companion said, and resumed drinking. 

The irrational spike of concern did not quite subside. "If only it were that easy."

"What are you thinking?"

"That you are beautiful."

He blinked in surprise, and cocked his head. "Huh?"

"Would you like me to explain myself?"

"No, I think I got it now," he said, sounding a bit dazed. There was an expression of pure befuddlement on his face. 

"Surely I'm not the first person who's ever called you attractive."

He narrowed his eye, nonplussed. "Well, you never..." he began. 

"You're right. I don't usually say things that are too obvious. It's like pointing out that the sea is blue. But it's the truth, and I might as well begin saying it."

He had turned such a delicious shade of red that Law had to suppress a laugh. He felt unreasonably proud that he could now easily draw out such candid expressions from a face that normally behaved as though it were hewn from stone. 

"Are you good?" he asked, leaning in to inspect his face. "Did you hit your head or something?"

"Do you think that's the reason I'm saying this?"

"You never say this stuff," he said. 

"Can you blame me? You show up unexpectedly, without a shirt…"

"It got wet," he said.

"... yes, I can see that." He doubted that anyone else had with such solemnity proclaimed him beautiful. Such a descriptor didn't fit him. He was probably used to...cruder ways of putting it. His was a rough exterior, and people made assumptions.

But was he really so put off by his compliments that he'd argue with him about their merit? "Never mind. I'll be sure to praise something else next time."

He was still looking a little concerned, but not as confused. Well, they were both new to this, after all. 

He better do something before his crew was alerted to the presence of an imposter. "Well, what have you done?"

Zoro coughed. "Brought you onigiri. I found this weird coin." Said coin was deposited into his palm. "Thought you could do something with it."

He examined the coin-- a novelty token from an amusement park. "I'll see if I can."

"And here's some Franky Shogun and Sora Warrior of the Sea mini figurines."

He scoffed. "I have no use for children's toys."

"Your eyes are sparkling."

"They most certainly are not," he said. He held the figurines reverently to the light. They were wonderful works of craftsmanship, with articulated joints and shining paint.

Zoro gave him a look. It was equal parts unimpressed and fond. "I'll tell Franky you liked them."

"Is the rest of your crew with you?"

"Nope."

"They let you come here alone?" He really didn't want to sound like a nagging parent, but they knew better. 

"They're close," he said defensively.

"How did you even find me?"

"Followed your vivre card."

"What did you do about the sea kings?"

"Cut them," he said, lifting Sandai Kitetsu.

"Did you bring enough food?"

"Ate the sea kings."

"Honestly," he said crossly, "I'm not sure why you're still alive."

He had an enviable constitution, as sound as an ox, and he pushed it as far as it could go. Entreating him to stop treating his body like an indestructible machine was like trying to dam a river using a shoelace tied between two twigs. He knew this, and had accepted this. Somewhat.

"At least you didn't swim here," he said at last. 

Zoro got a shifty look in his eye that he didn't like at all.

"At least you only swam part of the way here."

"It was resistance training," he said. 

"Of course."

Zoro appraised his irritation, then reached into a small pack and pulled out a Bento box. "Onigiri?"

"I'm not your captain. I can't be bribed with food."

"Suit yourself," he said, removing the two misshapen packages within to unwrap them. 

"Wait, don't eat it all," he said sharply. 

Zoro grinned.

He tasted it. It was like the ones he'd had before on the Thousand Sunny, lightly flavoured and springy of texture. 

Strangely, Zoro didn't move to take another bite. He sat back and watched him eat with unusual relish. 

He lifted the wrapping. "My compliments to the chef."

"I made it," he said with a touch of pride, puffing up a little. "Knew it wasn't as hard as old eyebrows made it out to be."

He paused mid-bite. Suddenly, the praise felt both too faint and too forward. "It's good," he said. 

Zoro nodded. He looked very pleased with himself. Much like a cat luxuriating with a mouthful of canary. The alcohol had had the effect of making him amiable, and loosened him like a screw. 

He noticed his staring, and offered another smile. It was even harder not to smile back-- it lit his features from within with that uncomplicated happiness-- like a rare gem infused with an internal glow, or a sun breaking through cloud. 

He averted his eyes, a little frustrated. How could he remain unaware of the effect he so effortlessly achieved? "I wish you would take an easier path. If I send you back with even a scratch on you, your crew will hold me responsible."

"You didn't have to leave."

He couldn't help but smile at that. He sounded so sullen. "I did. But it's not forever."

"Feels like it." 

He held himself back from wiping a stray grain of rice from his cheek. "I didn't prepare any presents for you."

"Doesn't matter. You're here, aren't you?"

He nearly inhaled a glob of rice, and was secretly grateful for the short coughing fit that gave him an excuse not to respond. "Still, I do have some manners," he said as soon as he got his breath back. "I happened to come across some fine sake recently. Take a bottle with you."

"I thought I smelled something good," he remarked as he leapt up. Law let him go without further instructions. That man had a sixth sense when it came to alcohol. 

As he expected, Zoro reappeared with a bottle so soon that an outsider would've accused him of faking his difficulty with directions. He examined the label with undisguised excitement. It was his favourite-- Law had made sure of it. 

"Only one?" he said, a little wistfully. 

"Yes, what a shame. If you want another, I guess you'll just have to visit me again."

He smirked at him, and raised the sake in a toast.

To celebrate their reunion, they decided to play Reversi. As people do. 

Zoro-- who had picked the white tiles and draped himself over Law's shoulder-- was losing. He didn't seem to mind, because he hadn't noticed yet. 

"If I understand you correctly," Law said slowly as he examined one of his stones, "your own ship is moored on the island next to this one, but when you tried to sail across the extremely narrow channel, you were 'mysteriously transported' into the Calm Belt and wrecked your boat, forcing you to swim ashore and camp on the beach until you found me, thus making a two-day trip into a two-week one."

"Yeah, you pretty much got it." 

As he expected, he regretted giving into his curiosity and asking for clarification. Still, to think that he would spend so much effort just to come see him… he must have only brought enough rice for two days. He saved it to make onigiri. For him.

He was a man of iron and steel, unbending and unyielding. Almost nothing could move him from his place, but he had travelled across a sea full of monsters for him, just to lay his chin in the crook of his neck and circle his arms around his waist. He could hear his heartbeat, and if he asked for it it might be given to them. 

Somehow, he didn't like that others could see them like this. This he wanted to keep for himself.

These were thoughts too embarrassing to have about another human being, so he put those aside.

(To look upon them was a singular experience. The more unobservant may not notice any special connection between them. 

They may as well be two ice cubes dropped into a glass, clinking against each other. But ice melts.)

"You only spent a day navigating here after making landfall?"

"Yeah."

"Who led you here?"

He didn't answer right away, deliberating over his next move. The reticence spoke volumes. 

"Who was it?" he repeated. 

"Perona," he said. 

He caught the guardedness in his tone. There was a history here. 

"Who's Perona?"

"Just some ghost girl."

"Is she a good friend of yours?"

"Ehhh," he said.

Just a friend, then. 

"Is she attractive?"

"Didn't notice."

"You... How could you not?"

"She's really annoying," he said, as if it were obvious. "It's hard to."

He nodded to himself. Zoro tended to have to make a concerted effort to notice these kinds of things. 

Speaking of noticing things, Zoro had just realized that he was losing. "Shit," he muttered, scowling down at the board. He could communicate more in a single glare than most people could in paragraphs of exposition. 

He smiled.

"What're you doing here, anyway?" he said, as he squinted at his pieces, trying to formulate a strategy. 

A resounding clank rang out as a wrench hit the ground. When they looked up, Bepo was poring diligently over maps that were upside down. 

Law could see in the way he glanced at the symbol and lettering on his coat that he suspected something. He trusted that he had the good sense to keep the information to himself. He knew he wanted to know, but he could not tell him. He knew what he would do for dreams, even dreams that were not his own. There was no greater threat to his life than someone else's dream. 

Luffy, the buffoon, wasn't aware he had pronounced a death warrant. 

Law was not like Luffy, declaring his ambitions for all the world to hear. No, he planned to pursue this alone, and one day perhaps they could exchange secrets. He still did not know the name of that mysterious girl who shared his ambition.

Zoro ran one hand through his hair, reminding him wordlessly of the question.

In the eyes of the government, they were gods, and the lives of their citizens merely chess pieces in a tedious game. They decided the law, and the law decided who deserved to exist. Those who lived outside it had forfeited that right. 

They were the gods. To resist is violence, to exist is rebellion. 

(But you must rebel. What else can you do when justice sentences you to die? Nobody could stand to live under a justice so perverse.) 

The World Government had many faces. 

More countries fell to propaganda than warships. They conquered minds and hearts and bodies with their justice. It was something to behold, how they butchered the truth, slaughtered it and trussed it for a feast. How they stripped justice of its meaning and beat it into those twisted shapes. No one could hold such power and remain uncorrupted. 

A single lie poisoned the world against one fair city, which they once loved so well.  

His town was not contagious. They were not monsters. Their illness could have been cured, if anyone cared to help them. And no one did.

"I want the truth," he said, as he cleared the board of pieces. "I think I can find it here."

Zoro was fairly content with life. That little detour he took in the Calm Belt was annoying, but this--this was well worth it. He nestled closer to Law, his cheek flush against his neck.

In the background, a chorus of raucous, untrained voices sang a sea shanty. With their captain otherwise occupied, the Heart Pirates took every opportunity to slack off. Law glanced at the door, narrowing his eyes, but didn't say a word. He didn't seem to want to move, either. A few moments later, he was humming the same tune under his breath. 

Zoro had never touched velvet in his life. It probably felt the way his voice sounded-- pearly-smooth, even when he was irritated. He wondered if he could bottle it. 

When they had first met up again, Law acted put-upon--his perennial state after meeting them. Luckily for Law, Zoro saw past the facades of speech, and looked at what people did instead. Law said he had no gifts, but he just so happened to have a huge store of high-quality sake, which he knew was Zoro's favourite, on hand. Curious.

Something bothered him, though. What was Law doing here? Why didn't he want to tell him? 

Unfortunately for him, all this distracted thinking lost him the game.

"Damn it. Best out of three," he demanded. 

"You want to lose three times in a row? Very thorough."

"Screw you."

He smiled. Zoro almost didn't mind the smugness in it. He didn't get to see it very often. "Suit yourself. I'll let you come up with a better strategy while I discipline my subordinates." With that, Law disentangled himself from Zoro-- very reluctantly, with one hand lingering on his arm before he finally withdrew. 

Left to his own devices, Zoro wandered around the room. He knew enough not to try going into the hall without a guide: this submarine was built like a maze. He'd had trouble finding his way from one side of the deck to the other when he took his morning swim. He took out a Den Den Mushi and dialed the number for his own crew, who were for some reason in hysterics. He last called them only yesterday. (To be fair, he had called them just to tell them he made it out of the Calm Belt and hung up, but still.)

"So you aren't dead, you bastard!"

"Honestly…"

"You're hopeless!"

"How did you get lost IN BETWEEN ISLANDS? HOW?!"

He left the snail on Law's desk as he went to take another drink. When he ducked back into the room, it was still screaming. 

But not about him.

Cannonfire echoed in the narrow metal matchbox of a room. 

"Hey, what's going on?" he shouted.

"Marines-- meet us--"

The Den Den Mushi's expression slackened. The line went dead. 

Chapter Text

The snail sat on the desk, eyestalks drooping. Silent. Voiceless. It left Law the task of convincing Zoro not to charge ahead into the unknown, and he was having as much success as you'd expect. 

"It may be a trap."

"Screw that. They have my crew."

Someone who didn't know him well would've missed the cold rage underlying the determination. The resolve overpowered everything. So certain and final, like death itself. They wouldn't have ever detected the desperation. (In fact, Law didn't either. He only intuited it. He wondered exactly how much someone had to hurt him before it showed.)

"Think carefully. The message was corrupted. It could have been saying something else. Any messages in this region would have been intercepted by the marines."

That broke through to him. "So it's a lie, then?"

"Most likely."

"I can help with that," a self-satisfied voice said. It was attached to a pirate with a long scarf covering his mouth and what seemed like no pupils. 

"Uni is the resident smartass," Ikkaku explained, jerking her thumb toward him.

"You mean tech expert, asshole." He lifted the snail and examined its placid expression. "Hmm, not bad. This is a secure line. Calling on your crew in enemy territory like you did could've gotten us all killed. Good to know you're not a total idiot." 

Law held Zoro back with the hilt of Kikoku. "Let him finish. I'll deal with him later."

Uni didn't look up. He often grew overconfident when in his element. "This isn't anywhere near their base. So, most likely scenario, the line's been tapped and jammed by a machine on a ship, or some kind of sub. The tapping's undetectable if it's done wirelessly, but I can pinpoint the jamming signal if it's still going. Should only take a few minutes." He took out a small satchel of tools that looked like torture implements for ants, and then began to prod at the snail.

"Well? Where the fuck is it coming from?" Zoro said impatiently.

"It's rapidly moving west toward Impel Down."

A silence like a thunderstorm grew and gathered around them.

Ikakku was the first to speak. "This is the most obvious bait in the history of bait."

"Yeaaaah," Clione said, pretending that he hadn't fallen for it. "That was a bit too easy."

"It seems that they're trying to lure us to our own imprisonment," Law said.

Zoro shot him a look. "Us?"

"The marines are aware of your spatial disorientation. It's not likely they intended this trap for you."

"But they have my crew," he said. 

Why did he always have to poke logical holes in his excuses to do nice things for him? "It's possible they're just a nuisance that they took care of on the way to us."

"Don't talk about them like that," he said, his voice low. "I know what you mean-- but don't."

He conceded the point. "What I mean is we can't be sure of the Navy's intentions. The capture of your crew might just be a bonus." 

He stood. 

"Where are you going?"

"The war room. Follow me."

They headed there together. As they continued down the hall, they had one of their wordless conversations, where they conveyed their intentions through stray gestures, purposeful movements. Zoro glared at an overhang he bumped into-- he wanted to hunt down the marines for interrogation. Law held a door open--he wanted to gather more information and formulate a plan first. Zoro pushed past him without looking at him-- he disagreed. 

They kept having this argument. There were fundamental contradictions in their core philosophies. But it didn't put them at odds-- more like different ends of the same wheel. The world needed both for balance. 

Law hoped that the atmosphere of the war room would help him focus on careful strategic thinking. Until he could ensure that logic superseded his emotions, devotion was a weakness. Unless he learned how to balance those warring impulses, he could still be manipulated. That could come back to bite him.

He retrieved a stack of bounty posters from a locked cabinet and spread the pictures of the Straw Hats on the table. The utter bizarreness of the crew struck him as he looked at their photographs. 

No wonder his friendship ran so deep with them-- they were all thought of as less than human. A rubber man, reindeer, a God, a devil's child, cyborg, skeleton, fishman, a victim of a Germa experiment-- accompanied by an Oni and a mink. Their navigator was perhaps the most ordinary of them all--to call her witch was half a compliment. They had changed him, molded him. Like ores from one mine assimilate into one another. If they died part of him would die with them. He and his captain were so similar they might as well be two ores from one mine forged into one blade. But swordsmen have no use for metaphor, do they? 

When Law met him, he only ever smiled around his crew outside of battle. And now he could do it around Law's. He could change, perhaps, be more cautious, less foolhardy. Steel is not impermeable, metal is not immutable. He cleaves you, yes, but he is also changed. Watch for it. 

The Straw Hats were not having a great month. 

It started with the news of Law's arrival at Amazon Lily. As expected, Zoro refused to ask any of them for help navigating to the island, unwilling to admit he couldn't do so on his own. They expected him to cave eventually. They hadn't accounted for the fact that he would cut through the tripwires they set up around the gifts that he had prepared (Usopp had helped paint some of the figurines) and sail off during the night, with only a pack full of supplies and his heart (and a compass, map, vivre card and the stars) to guide him. 

It was kind of romantic, in a way, but mostly stupid. 

He left them in radio silence for a day. His vivre card was unblemished, so he was fine. All he had to do was keep his eye on the other island and sail toward it. They started to hope against hope that maybe, maybe he would make it there. 

Then he called to ask them whether Amazon Lily was supposed to have multiple active volcanoes. 

They could guess where he had gone by throwing darts blindfolded at a map to approximate his skill at navigation, and forced him to update them on his journey. They received a single call every day -- usually reporting the number and size of the sea kings he managed to kill -- until he somehow made it back to where he started. Then as Nami scolded their errant swordsman during their latest call, the signal cut out. When it came back, Law's voice informed them calmly that they would not see them again, and then the line went dead.

Things were not going as expected for the Straw Hats. 

"You already have a sword, Tra! You don't need more!" Luffy shouted at their inert snail, eyes burning like coals.

"Luffy, we told you that it's probably a trick," Nami said. "He's not the type to gloat about it if he really did it."

"Oooh, you're right!" Luffy said, beaming. She shook her head at him.

It had happened suddenly--a Pacifista materialized out of thin air as a large green bubble formed over them before they could react. Now they were being towed across the sea by some unknown force. Jimbe yanked on the wheel at the helm, trying to change course-- but it was impossible. The ship jumped and moved in the water on its own. Now they were suspended in a bubble they couldn't pop, down one crew member, and being dragged to who knows where (no log pose could keep up with these speeds).

The bubble was made of some blue-green, glassy substance. Brook couldn't cut it, Franky's fire couldn't burn it, Nami's lightning supplemented with the helpful little homie buzzed uselessly over it. Kicks and punches had no effect at all. Even a combined attack from Boundman and Yamato's Thunder Bagua, infused with their strongest Conqueror's, didn't leave a scratch. The Sunny only lurched to the side, then corrected her course.

"What the hell is this? A new government weapon?" Sanji said.

"It looks familiar," Franky noted, scratching his chin and rapping one metal fist against it.

Luffy pressed his face up to it, looking down at the sea speeding past them. "Kind of looks like Rooster's Barrier!" 

They both looked at him. 

"That's not a bad comparison," Franky said. "No wonder we can't break it."

"A rooster barrier?" Yamato asked, eyes glittering with interest. "The outside world is really interesting, as I expected!"

"Rooster is a person. He has a devil fruit that lets him make an indestructible barrier."

"Ah-- a rooster mink?"

"No, he's a lesser mink--human." Nami shook her head. "Anyway, that's impossible. If I can believe the bimonthly report I can't convince him not to send, he's nowhere near here. He wouldn't turn against us. They're either controlling him, or…"

The silence fell. 

"Do you think anything bad happened to him?" Chopper said worriedly. 

"Our communications are cut. We can't call him to confirm." She sighed. "Whatever it is, it's--"

"That Pacifista showed up out of nowhere," Robin said, appearing as if by magic behind them. 

Usopp yelped. "R-Robin! Give some warning when you sneak up on us!"

"My apologies. Did any of you sense it using observation?"

Usopp and Sanji shook their heads. Luffy still had his nose pushed up against the smooth edge of the bubble. 

"It seems like it has better stealth capabilities than the ones we faced before," she mused.

"Damn it. We were sitting ducks. If it's so much stronger than before, why didn't that shitty robot take us all out?"

"Momo's fruit was a clone of Kaido's, wasn't it?"

"Stop daydreaming, Luffy," he snapped. "We're in a crisis!"

"I'm not daydreaming! If they cloned Rooster's fruit, wouldn't that mean they don't have to control him?"

They stopped and stared at him again. 

Franky mused, "Now that I think about it… We know Dr. Vegapunk has been working on this for a super long time. Maybe he's gotten more done than we thought."

"Momo's fruit was billed as a failure," Robin said, nodding in agreement. "The recent events have more than demonstrated that to be false." 

"Luffy," Usopp said in wonder, "are you actually thinking of decent ideas?"

"How did Luffy get the right answer by randomly guessing it?" Yamato demanded. "I must learn this power!"

Nami shook her head. "Sorry, that's not possible. No matter how athletic you get, you'll never match the captain in mental gymnastics."

"If your conjecture is correct, then the rules of natural devil fruits may not hold. One machine might wield several powers. Perhaps there's a way they could circumvent the weakness to water. We cannot let our guards down," Robin said. "As a strong pirate crew, we may be able to survive this--"

"Aw, you don't have to call us strong!" Chopper giggled, as he and Luffy both waved like flattered seaweed strands. 

"--but we don't know what we're being used for. So be careful, everyone."

Luffy nodded, and was likely about to give a rousing speech of his own when a crash sounded from downstairs. The crew sprung into action-- Robin lifted her arms to bloom eyes for surveillance, Jimbe prepared to collect drops of water from their aquarium,

Sanji's leg caught fire, Chopper transformed into Kung Fu Point and the rest of them readied themselves to do battle with whatever had trespassed.

At last, Robin lowered her arms. "It's just a hairbrush. It fell."

The crew let out a collective sigh. They were understandably a bit on edge. Usopp and Chopper shared a nervous chuckle at the ridiculousness. Overreacting over a hairbrush, how sill--

A second crash rang out. They all trampled downstairs at once, before Robin could detain them.

Below deck lay a swearing heap of red fabric-- a cape of some sorts--with long blue hair. A large hat with the symbol of the navy emblazoned across the brim had rolled to a stop next to the heap. 

"W-who's there? Identify yourself!" Usopp barked. "This is the great Usopp king of snipers! You don't know it yet but you're going to--"

Luffy held up a hand and he fell silent. He bounded over to the bundle of colourful fabric, pulled up the head by the hair, revealing a pale face with white crossbones, sharp red makeup and a huge, round, shiny red nose.

"It's you!" Luffy yelled. 

The clown froze on the spot. "Straw hat?" he whined, dragging his hands down his face. "Oh, no, no no no no--"

"What are you doing here?"

Buggy's red nose quivered with indignation as he yanked his hair out of Luffy's grasp. "I was living the good life for once and you and those Reverie jerks just had to ruin it!"

"Us?"

"Don't 'us?' me!" He imitated Luffy's incredulous tone flawlessly, then waved his arms frantically over his head. "You're the ones who blew up the factory at Dressrosa! Now they're saying warlords can't be trusted! They sent a whole battalion after me! We fought them off and made it here. I got onto this ship right before the bubble got me--What are you all doing here?"

"Torao wanted to ask Hancock something and she asked me about it so we came. Plus the government's chasing us too. We beat down a couple emperors."

Buggy gaped at Luffy. "Excuse me, I don't think I heard you right. A couple emperors?"

"Big Mom and Kaido. We took 'em down," Sanji said, lighting up. 

He laughed in disbelief. "And you're stuck in this marine trap? Pull the other one, it's got bells on!"

Yamato held a newspaper up to his face. "Read it," he commanded. 

He did. Then he did it again. Then he snatched it out of Yamato's hands and flipped it upside down. The words didn't change. Nor did the prominent picture of the victorious crew and the prone King of Beasts. 

Buggy rubbed his eyes. "I must be asleep. Yes, that's it. One of those nightmares again. I'm not on the Straw Hat ship. I'm not."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Jimbe said, rejoining them, "but you are."

Hearing that come out of the mouth of one of the most legitimate members of the crew was the final straw for poor Buggy. He sank to the deck, a mumbling puddle of despondency. "That's it. I'm dead. It's all over now. You had a good run, you and I, but now it's finished."

"He doesn't seem like he's here to fight," Nami said.

"Seems like it," Usopp said.

They turned their backs on the former warlord.

"Do you think they're after us because of the Kaido thing, the Doflamingo thing, the Big Mom thing or…"

"Probably all of them. They think we want to destroy the whole world now."

"This is ironic, isn't it? We took down a warmonger, and now we're being chased for warmongering..." 

Yamato's expression was deadly as it was during any mention of Kaido. Even in defeat he would haunt them.

"You think they're trying to recruit Zoro? He'd be like the best bounty hunter they'd ever have!" Carrot said.

"The government sure seems confident. As if they could capture Zoro," Usopp snorted. "You know what, I think this might be a trap. For some reason they put us in a bubble without hurting us. Maybe to try to get him to chase us."

"I have reason to believe that the trap may be intended for Tra-guy," Robin interjected. 

"Why couldn't you fall on that submarine instead?" Buggy mumbled to himself. "You're a natural counter to those abilities …"

She placed her hand on her hip. "We received a false message, and it's likely they did too. The target must be clever enough to see through the initial layer of deception. And discreet, so he can be eliminated quietly without much notice. Careful enough to verify the information for himself. Clever, discreet, careful--It's not likely to be our captain."

"Hey!" Luffy objected. 

"It's also not Zoro. The trap involves travelling to a set location. He would never be able to fall into that trap, even if he tried." 

"Especially if he tried," muttered Nami. 

"Besides, he hasn't done anything that offends the government any more than we have--it's unlikely they'd go to such lengths for him alone," she said measuredly. "So that leaves only one plausible target, at least initially. I am almost certain that this wasn't their original plan. They've accounted for our arrival, and they're adjusting to it by using us as the bait."

"Robin, you're so smart!" cheered Chopper. She smiled gently at him.

"Hello! Is everyone ignoring me?" 

"Tra isn't exactly a small-time pirate now. He's determined to find out their secrets, and he can't be bribed to stop. They wouldn't take kindly to that..."

Buggy flew up to them. "Am I the only one who realizes how much we're screwed?"

Luffy blinked. "No, because we're not screwed at all."

"Are you sure that Trafalgar fellow's not going to abandon your swordsman to his fate and then do a runner?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"He betrayed the government once."

"Don't worry. I made sure he wouldn't betray us."

"And how'd you do that?"

"I asked him if he would and he said no."

"And you're sure he hasn't captured your swordsman?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I told him he couldn't."

Buggy stared at him. He stared back, unblinkingly. The once-warlord shuffled until he was next to Nami. "You seem like a reasonable lass. I know we didn't meet on the best footing, but that's ancient history now, isn't it?"

"What do you want, Buggy?" she said, unmoved.

"Get me out of here!" he hissed. "I'll give you riches, power-- Anything you want! Just get me away from him!"

"Sure," she said, with a sickly sweet smile.  "On one condition." She pointed at Luffy. "Help us explain relationships to him."

"I know how they work!"

Law selected a number of his crew members--Bepo, Shachi, Penguin, Uni, Clione and Ikakku--to go with him to the shore to hunt for more clues. On the way there, Uni regaled them with what he thought were interesting facts about how he took the snails apart, and it started to rain. Bepo glanced at the sky, and said the incoming storm would keep them moored in the harbour. 

After an hour, they found Zoro's old campsite. It was a miracle they did, because he told them it was "under a cloud shaped like an elephant." Penguin and Shachi poked the remains of the fire with long sticks, and Bepo examined the tracks leading to and away from it.

"Where was your ship docked?" 

Before Zoro could answer, something caught his eye, and he blanched. They turned to look in the direction he was looking in. 

There, hovering a few feet above the ground, was a young woman with long corkscrews of pink hair, huge button eyes, and a wardrobe that seemed to only contain mountains of black lace and chunky red boots. She scanned the foliage with a tight-lipped pout that twisted into a scowl once she noticed them. 

Surrounded by a host of smiling red-mouthed specters, she hefted her frilly parasol over her shoulder. "You!" she said, glaring imperiously at Zoro. "What do you think you're doing back here? I gave you directions to your dinky little boat!"

"I'm--" he cut himself off. "None of your business. And your directions sucked!"

She gasped. "How dare you!"

Their exchange devolved into a back-and-forth volley of statements like "my directions are flawless, you're just a pea-brain" and "the Sunny is not a dinky little boat."

"Anyway, why are you here? You dodged the question!"

"It's none of your business!"

"He's visiting his boyfriend," Uni said. His crewmates shot him a look. 

"You have a boyfriend?" she gasped. "That poor man. Inflicting your presence on him day after day. I can't imagine doing that to another human being...you really are the devil…"

"Shut up! Like you can talk!"

"No, you shut up! You were hell to live with! Hell! You never bathed, didn't put your towels away when you did, and remember who guided you back to your room every time you couldn't find it? Me! It was me!"

"I was fine sleeping in the halls!"

"You were fine-- ! I tripped over you more times than I can count!" 

"You can float!"

"Hmph! That's the last time I help you with anything!" She crossed her arms. "Who is the poor soul, anyway?"

All Heart Pirates crew members present pointed at Law, who gave them a murderous look. 

She turned her supercilious gaze on the surgeon. "So it's you?" He was about to retort when a single tear slid down her cheek. Lowering her umbrella, she clasped her hands together, and took a shuddering breath. "To think some people can be so unlucky... it's heartbreaking..."

Law examined her expression. Against all odds, she seemed sincere. 

"You will get through this," she sobbed into her arm, "don't give up!"

Law blinked at her in disbelief. He turned to Zoro, who kept his expression carefully blank. "So this is the one you told me about?"

"Wait, you've been talking about me behind my back?" she accused, all tears forgotten.

Much to everyone's surprise (except for the unknown woman's), Zoro took a step back from her, a wary look in his eye. "I told him you were some ghost girl."

"Some ghost girl? You called me 'some ghost girl'?! Refer to me by my correct title!"

"The ghost girl?"

"I have a name, you..." She scrunched up her forehead. "Grass boy."

"Sorry, you spent two years with her?" Law said.

"Worst two years of my life," he grunted. 

"Same here!" she screamed. "I'm impressed you can stand this guy for more than three seconds at a time! This guy, really?" She jabbed Zoro repeatedly in the shoulder with the tip of her parasol. He swatted it away with a scowl. 

"They bicker like little kids," Ikkaku muttered, and raised her voice. "Hey, Pinkie. We've told you enough. What are you doing here?"

"My name is Perona! Remember it," she sniffed, turning her nose up. "I ended up here because I know the Pirate Empress could hold her own and it would be safe. I was looking for the captain of my crew, Moria-sama. I can't find him or Mihawk anywhere!" she wailed, surging into the air and doing a loop de loop of despair. 

The Heart Pirates exchanged glances. 

"Mihawk, huh?" Ikkaku said. "Do you think the rumours that he's a vamp are true?" 

"I hear he sleeps in a coffin."

"I've never seen him in direct sunlight."

"He's so pale."

"Don't ignore Moria-sama!" she cried. 

"Stop," Law said firmly. He rarely exerted his authority like this, but it worked like a charm--she paused mid-loop. "I'm not sure you're aware of your position. If you are who you say you are, you're an enemy pirate. Tell me why we should let you live."

Strangely enough it was Zoro who spoke up. "I know her. She's-- she won't do anything."

"I'll hear it from her," he said. Zoro frowned at the chill in his voice.

She stared defiantly, then said, "I'm not here to waste my time with any other pirates. Don't think that I'm a pushover just because I'm here alone. I'm more than capable of taking your crew out and running. You're lucky I don't think of you as an enemy."

"Is that a threat?" Law said. 

She rolled her eyes, and twirled a strand of her bright pink hair around a finger. "No. I'm just laying out the facts. Even if I can beat you, why would I want anything to do with you? None of you are cute, except maybe that bear." 

Bepo blushed at the praise. The other Heart Pirates regarded her with some suspicion. 

"What, you don't believe I can fight? Just ask him," she said, pointing at Zoro, who winced. "His whole crew would've gone down if not for that annoying longnose sniper."

"Damn you, ghost girl…"

"The Hollow-Hollow fruit," Law said, earning him a curious look from Perona. "There were reports of such a power user on Moria's crew."

"That's me," she said smugly, crossing her arms. "Now you know how dangerous I am."

"Should I restrain her, captain?" Ikkaku said. 

"Put a single hand on me, and I'll hollow you until you don't remember who you are!" she yelled.

"Now that is a threat. Captain?"

Law strode forward, and his crew fell respectfully back. "You're being very mouthy for a potential prisoner."

"Oi, Law--" Zoro began.

"But I don't think you're lying. Get on board. Explain this to me."

"I don't know anything about any Marines." She stamped her foot. "I just found out that Moria-sama was alive, and they go and get rid of the warlord system--?"

"No. I mean the two years."

Perona had nowhere else to go, so she followed them onto the sub and into the war room. "Before I say anything, someone tell me what you're doing."

"That's classified," Law said. 

"Not you," she snorted, levelling her umbrella at Zoro. "Him. The pea-brain. Where's that annoying crew of his?"

"They've gone missing," Uni said. 

A gleam of glee entered her eye--that of an older sibling who has found a way to humiliate a younger. "Oh? Well, you better watch out, he gets very grumpy when he's separated from his pwecious widdle fwiends."

"Shut up!"

"I'm suddenly feeling very charitable and chatty! What do you want to know?" she sang out, throwing a triumphant sneer at the increasingly incensed Zoro. 

Law decided to take advantage of their little power struggle. For some reason, he felt that Zoro needed the distraction that their conversation would bring. Her taunts had an undercurrent of understanding to them. "Good. You're cooperative. If you recently had close dealings with Mihawk, you know more of the situation with the Marines than we do."

"That's right!" she chirped, now the picture of helpfulness. "Well, ask away! I have so much to say."

There was something that he had wanted to know, but never found a time or excuse to ask. When he first saw the Straw Hats at Sabaody, Zoro had two eyes. Two years later, he had one. This woman might know why. "What happened to that eye?" he said, indicating the scar.

"It got cut," Zoro interrupted before Perona could chime in. 

"Yes, and how?"

"I don't know." 

"You don't know," he said flatly. 

He shrugged. "Can't remember."

Law turned to Perona, who sighed. "That's what he said when it happened. I didn't see it either, so I couldn't drag it out of him. He says all he remembers is going out and waking up back inside."

He should've known that his answers would only lead to new questions. 

"Why do you need to know?"

"I don't. I'm just satisfying my curiosity." And if it wasn't already, his curiosity would certainly be piqued now. 

He looked at him. "Why?"

Ikkaku leaned in conspiratorially. "Do you really not know why people are so damn curious about you? Your captain's gone through seven kinds of hell and you don't know half of it. You don't think to ask, because he's so expressive. He says what he feels without thinking. What can he be hiding?"

"Lots."

"Exactly. But you don't ask. And you? Your whole attitude screams 'don't talk to me.' You're a closed book. You know what that is? A big red button that says 'don't push.' Whatever you tell people not to do, that's all they can think of doing."

He sighed, and crossed his arms. "Cut the crap, you're just nosy bastards."

She shrugged. "Guilty as charged, but I'm not wrong."

"Enough," Law said. "You're all still on probation for slacking off." He glanced at Zoro, who was quietly grinding his teeth. He placed a hand on his arm, hoping it would have the effect he desired. It did--he settled. "You'll have to corroborate her reports. If you can, then I'll deem her trustworthy."

Zoro took his eyes off the middle distance to meet his gaze, and a tacit understanding passed between them. Law thought that she, with her astral projection skills, could have gathered useful intelligence. He couldn't ask her directly in case she had ulterior motives. Zoro didn't like it, but he would put up with it if it meant there was a chance that it would help his crew. 

Perona stared at the couple with a thoughtful expression, no doubt evaluating their compatibility. (A reasonably competent surgeon and tactician and an impossibly strong but improbably oblivious swordsman-- they did make an interesting pair. Her expression softened. Well, it could be worse, it seemed to say.) She floated over to Law. "Does he treat you well?"

"What?"

"I'm just making sure that pea-brain isn't making anyone's life difficult. I educated him on fine manners for two years, but none of it stuck. I knew I should have used a spray bottle..."

"His behaviour is acceptable," he said shortly. "I'll be asking the questions, thank you."

She nodded to herself. "Good. I guess he must have learned something."

"What are you telling him?" Zoro demanded, looking distinctly cagey.

"Oh, nothing," she said innocently, her hands clasped behind her back.

"Don't give me that--"

"Oh, calm down," she said, examining her nails. "I'm just helping you out. Thanklessly, as always. If you're too scared to tell him what happened over the last two years, I will."

He went pale. "You won't," he snarled.

"Hah! Try me!" she crowed. She turned to Law, her large eyes wide with indignation. "You're a doctor, right? Do you know what he did when he--"

"Stop that!" 

She puffed out her cheeks and let out a long-suffering sigh. "He acts like trying to keep him alive is like trying to destroy him."

Zoro bridled at this, but said nothing. Was he actually afraid of what she had to say? 

Law beheld this spectacle with something approaching awe. It was as if the universe itself was taunting him for his false impressions. You think he is simple? Well, certainly, if you look at only one facet. Every language is simple if you only learn one letter of its alphabet, one mora of its syllabaries. "Somehow," he said, almost to himself, "I didn't think you were capable of fear."

"Thank you."

"That was not a compliment," he said. "But that's besides the point. What kind of embarrassing things are you too afraid to tell me?"

"Nothing," he barked, staring resolutely ahead.

"Just tell me what happened on the day, then. If you can't remember exactly what happened, we can piece the evidence together."

Perona cleared her throat peremptorily. "Well, it all started when…"

Chapter Text

The shovel hit the earth with a dull, metallic clang. Zoro hopped out of the grave he dug for the giant humandrill, and pushed it in. 

A few months into training, Mihawk assigned him the role of burying the bodies of dead humandrills. The trickiest part wasn't the digging or the dragging -- it was holding back enough against the apes so he didn't kill them and cause an infinite loop of new corpses -> new graves to dig -> more baboons attacking as he dug -> more new corpses. He was pretty sure it was just a ploy to get him to do chores, but dragging the body of a multiple-ton baboon through a forest full of other murderous baboons waiting for his guard to drop was a great workout. Besides, they were good opponents. It was worth paying them this respect. 

Thin shafts of sunlight lit the wall of fog. It took only a few minutes for the mist to settle into his bandages. His limbs had long since gone numb from cold, and dew beaded on the silver fur of the humandrill. This one probably died of old age.

The other baboons watched him as he scraped dirt over their fallen companion. More eyes followed him than he could count. But they knew he was alert-- they didn't make a move.

As he shoveled more earth in, he thought of Marineford. The news couldn't be trusted at face value -- he had to read between the lines. That had never been his strong suit. But Luffy must have given them hell, even without them. The picture of his brother proved it-- the damn marines hadn't been able to behead him. That meant Luffy succeeded. No matter what happened next, he did what he went there to do.

The baboons chose that moment to attack, because they didn't know how to read the room. It took him longer than he would have liked to take care of them-- part of his training stipulated that he would always try to end fights with only one of his swords. "If you're as good as disarmed with the same number of weapons as your opponent, what does that make you?" Hawkeye had said. No arguing with that. 

He set his teeth as he yanked the shovel out of the ground and stabbed it into a fresh gravesite. He should have been stronger. They should have been there for him. Maybe things would be different.

"Negative Hollow!" Perona called.

The green-haired dolt dropped to all fours. His eyes looked like soot, the remains of a fire long snuffed out. "I'm sorry I was born."

"Horohorohoro. You should be."

The furnace in his eye flared back into life. "You're dead meat."

"What was that?" she trilled, one ghost dancing on her finger. 

"Like I fucking said--" his voice subdued halfway through the sentence into a tranquil monotone-- "I'm so sorry."

Her lips twitched upward in a smug smile. "Of course you are."

There was no spirit at all in his eyes--grey as dishwater and glassy with despair. That was more like it. Why did he fight it when he was such a natural-born servant, muttering about how he was good for nothing unless he could serve his crew?

"Get up." She almost hit him with her parasol when he didn't move, and then realized she hadn't called off her hollows. She snapped her fingers, and he flew up like ashes rising from a grate. Perona rolled her eyes at the stream of invectives insulting her hair and her intelligence, and set the hollows on him again. "Do you know why I'm here?"

"Does it matter? I'm not worthy to be in your presence," he answered, then turned purple with rage. "Quit that!"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Nope." 

"You should pulp me and use me as mulch for the grapevines," he mumbled. "No you shouldn't!"

She waved her hollows away. It was impossible to have a conversation with him when he kept arguing with himself, insulting her or answering every question with "I don't deserve to breathe the same air as other people." "It's time for dinner," she announced haughtily, tossing her ringletted hair. "As I expected, you got yourself lost in the forest. If you didn't fly at me like a rabid animal, I might have led you back to the castle..."

He scoffed. "I don't need your help."

"Hmph, fine then. Go to the dining room yourself. I'm leaving."

There was a pause. Then he followed her. (At least he tried to. It took a couple times for it to stick.)

Zoro refused to look at any of the Heart Pirates as they tried to suppress their laughter. Penguin was the first to break and Shachi, Uni and Ikakku followed. 

"'I'm sorry I was born'-- hahaha!"

Ikakku wiped her eyes. "Sorry, Pinkie, I underestimated you."

Perona preened. "It's Perona, and you're forgiven."

Law didn't laugh. "Bepo, you can stay. The rest of you, leave. This is an interrogation, not a dinner party. Don't interrupt."

That earned him a questioning look from Zoro, but he didn't elaborate. 

Perona floated down the hall, internally lamenting the ingratitude of her unwilling charge. Mihawk, with his golden eyes and velvet suits, was cool and self-possessed, dignified and refined. He wasn't cute, but he would do. 

This boy was all rough-- rough language, rough around the edges. Not cute. Not cute at all. He didn't appreciate any of the sweet treats she made and didn't like cute things. He was lucky that she was short on servants, or she would've never put up with him.

He lifted his head to glare at her, and she suppressed an eep. Scuttling backward midair, she narrowed her eyes. What was with that demonic look on his face? He looked like a wild dog.

She pursed her lips. All this time, and he still hasn't been housebroken. She prided herself on being able to break the strongest of wills, and it was precisely his strength that made him brittle before her hollows. If he was only a little more negative, less confident, maybe he could resist it. But no matter how many times she snapped him in half, he always mended, as unflinchingly uncute as usual. 

He was one of those annoying people who kept his feelings where no one could see them, kept them in pieces stowed away where no one knew they existed. But the hollows knew, and swept the fragments out of their corners and forced them together until he knew the meaning of despair. Those pathetically heartbroken apologies for existing...only he said anything like that. Why was that the phrase he murmured? Who had made him apologize?

They arrived at the table before she could consider the question further. As she settled in front of a dinner of fresh mixed salad and some kind of roast meatloaf, she peeked at their host. The warlord. 

She had nothing against the man, no more than any other rival pirate captain (although he didn't have a crew. What was that about?), but he was... strange. Silent as a grave, gliding above the water on a coffin sized-ship. His namesake was a hawk, and his features indeed had a hint of the aquiline. The candlelight sharpened his nose into a fine point, and his facial hair almost looked like fletching. There was a void in those ringed yellow eyes, as mysterious as the ocean floor. You never know what kind of shipwrecks lay within. 

She shuddered. Maybe it was good that the other one had a pea-brain that rolled around on a single track. 

Mihawk sipped his wine with an impassive expression, and something clicked.

Of course. Mihawk! The greatest swordsman in the world must make that boy feel totally inadequate. He was so pitifully weak compared to him. The gap between them was so vast, and he had been so arrogant. That's why he had to apologize.

She laughed in delight, one hand tipped delicately to her mouth. 

"What are you laughing at?" 

"Oh, nothing," she said, sticking her tongue out at him. "Just your hopelessness."

Zoro threw a fork at her head, and she shrieked and ducked. Mihawk caught it, and used it to bring a slice of cucumber up to his mouth, completely unruffled.

"I did not throw a fork at you," Zoro said. 

"Yes you did!"

"She's unreliable," he said, turning to Law, poker-faced. "Can't trust anything she says."

"I don't know. You were very childish back then."

"Shut up or I'll tell embarrassing stories about you."

"Ha! I don't have any!"

He pointed at her. "She still sleeps with a stuffed bear!"

"Well," she stammered, "one time he set the laundry on fire! Since he has no hygiene to speak of, he mistook his own clothes for old rags and set them ablaze to get rid of them, which is why he's got new clothes now!"

A muffled chuckle sounded from outside the door. 

"Excuse me," Law said, rising from his seat. He opened the door and closed it behind him. Over the course of the next few minutes, Perona got a crash course in North Blue profanity, interspersed with "When I tell you to leave that means no eavesdropping".

The door reopened. 

"Alright," Law said. "Get back on topic. And no more sensationalizing. I'm only interested in the facts."

Learning to be alone again was trickier than Zoro thought. He tried to nap, but kept startling awake because it was too quiet, the stone walls chilly with mist that lasted past morning. The weak sun didn't burn it off. 

The food tasted...off. It stuck in his throat. He didn't help gather it, didn't watch it as it was made. It had no poison but he didn't want to trust it. It came from the table of an enemy.  

The ghost girl had gotten more bearable, but she didn't kick him when he insulted her food, or try to steal it when he turned his back. She didn't go Heavy Point and try to force him to take vitamins like their doctor. Unlike her, the witch never went red as a plum and sped away when he yelled at her. Picking a fight with Perona just made him feel like a bully. He didn't know how far he could push her.

Perona kept lecturing him on wound care. He knew how to take care of them, damnit. She didn't understand, no matter how many times he explained it to her, that he couldn't let an injury that would be fatal to an ordinary person kill him. Luffy would have understood.

In some of the piecemeal dreams he had, he was back on the Sunny, rocking along with the waves. Brook played a jaunty tune, a sea shanty that they hadn't learned yet. Usopp, Chopper and Luffy joined in a raucous chorus before Nami snapped at them to keep it down. Robin laughed. Their awful cook simpered at her.

When he snapped awake because he was on a bed and not a hammock, there was no music, only wind. The lack of chatter asserted itself in the manner of unassuming background accompaniment only noticed in its absence.

Luffy would be crying for meat right now, thought, as the oppressive gray lightened somewhat. Then he rose and got ready to train.

Perona had to pass the time somehow, so she wrote a book. Well, tried to, at least. After reading half of Mihawk's library, she thought that it couldn't be that hard. She titled it Princess Marina and the Kingdom of Shadows. Evil courtiers had invaded the court of a beautiful princess, exiled her from her own kingdom and magically transported her to a drafty old castle. The story followed the princess as she struggled to defeat the courtiers and reclaim her throne.

She did her writing in secret. She made the mistake of reading segments out loud to herself while editing once, and Mihawk caught her. He said of her prose: "You are like a child who has found one ornament and hangs it on every tree." She ignored him, of course. What did that man know of Literature? 

The morning it happened, she woke early--she liked the twilight hours the best, when the moon began to fade and the sun had not yet come to flood the world with ugly light. After breakfast, she completed a chapter where the princess, while wandering in the castle, found a shabby stuffed bear named Kumashi. Floating out into the main hall, where the atmosphere was perfect for lounging gracefully on a chaise longue and penning entries in one's diary, she lounged gracefully on a chaise longue and penned an entry in her diary.

Another tedious day, dear diary, I wish it weren't so. I do not know how long I can stand it. My spirit, however nourished by the exceeding gloominess of my environs to salubrious fortitude, withers when I consider with whom I must pass my time. My only companions are a truly vexatious boy whose appearance puts me in mind of the verdant pastures on which sheep feed, and a cold, mean, unliterary man who doesn't appreciate true art! 

Her pen moved faster as she wrote on, in a frenzy of furious production. 

Alas! To be a princess of an empty kingdom! No throne to inherit, and no subjects worth ruling! I languish within these walls, with no one to hear my pleas…

A rough voice broke into her thoughts. "Do you need that many words to say you have no friends?"

She screeched, clutching her journal to her chest. "Where did you come from?" 

Zoro didn't look at her. "I'm going to train."

"That isn't the exit!" 

He reddened. After a few false starts, he found the door she had pointed out to him.

A storm rolled in just after sunrise. Rain churned the soil into mud as Zoro slogged his way across the forest. It made digging a chore, but he was determined to exceed his personal quota today. He propped the shovel up against the trunk of a fir and prepared to drag the next baboon in when it happened.

The windows shut tightly against the rainstorm, Perona hummed a mournful tune to herself as she stitched one of her stuffed bear Kumacy's buttons back on. The stuffing was leaking out of his head again...

"Perona!"

The shout echoed through the empty halls with the force of a cannon shot. 

She squeaked in shock and fell off her lacy canopied bed. That was Mihawk! She never heard him raise his voice like that. Ever!

The initial shock wore off, and she felt Indignant with a capital I. What, not even a "Please, Perona-sama, will you grant us the favour of your presence?" Did that gloomy old man think she could be summoned like some kind of bloody spirit who came running at the sound of their name? 

Luckily for him, her curiosity overpowered her petulance, and she rushed to the balcony. She opened her mouth to ask him what was the matter--

Her jaw fell open and remained open.

Wind howled in the open door, and a torrent of rain drove into the tiles so hard it sounded solid. The old man had one of those dreadful humandrills slung over one shoulder. The muddy, bedraggled creature was a mess of gore. The fur on its mangled face was matted with blood that poured freely onto the floor, eddying and swirling in the rainwater. 

Perona stepped back and wrinkled her nose. This was the furthest thing from cute. Why'd he bring this ragged corpse home? They had no way to reanimate it.

As he got closer, she narrowed her eyes. Something didn't look right about this humandrill. It had a much smaller frame, and what she mistook for fur was a thick layer of dripping mud. And…What was it holding?

She leaned over the railing to get a better glimpse. 

Those three scabbards…

She pitched backward, and let out a gasp.

Dracule Mihawk looked coolly up at her. "Boil some water."

Perona was not squeamish. She'd watched hundreds of dissections and lived with zombies for the better part of her life. Her best friends were sentient taxidermied animals. This still made her a little lightheaded.

She had guided him out of the castle just an hour ago. She expected to float out at sunset to fetch him, taunting him all the way, not-- not this.

She stared at the mud without really seeing it. "Is he…"

"He's alive," Mihawk said quietly. "Though if you continue to stand there and gawk, perhaps not for much longer."

"H-huh? I don't see you doing anything!"

Strangely, Mihawk was nice enough to stick around to watch her and give occasional instructions. Still, it took her more time, toil and hot towels than she could count to make the younger swordsman look like a human being again. When at last she managed to mop away the mud and the dirt and the blood, it ...really wasn't that bad. The cut was thin, preternaturally precise. The rest of his face was unharmed and it didn't seem like he hit his head-- so no concussion, hopefully. He was covered with quite a few nasty-looking bruises, and from the looks of it his leg had a mild fracture, but that was about it. Everything would heal fine--except the eye. He would lose that eye.

She glanced at the pile of discarded rags (she'd resorted to using backup linens after a while). Most ordinary humans couldn't lose that much blood without going hypovolemic. Either it didn't all belong to him, or he must be hiding extra blood in that empty skull of his. What was he thinking, fighting those baboons in that rain...

She sighed as she did her best to secure the bandages the way the books told her. All this mud… she hoped the wounds wouldn't get infected. That wouldn't be cute at all. Maybe the fever and pain would make him docile, but that was no guarantee. As soon as the fever broke and they got even one painkiller in him, he was apt to run wild.

Yes, Law thought, you need to knock him out cold. He can fight through fever, delirium, pain, hunger, exhaustion, and mild poisoning. Preferably you should tie him up and shove him in a chimney. That will, if not stop, at least delay him until the danger is over.

It was always nice to find someone who shared his aggravation. He took that chance to interrogate her briefly on her medical knowledge. It was ...amateur, to say the least.

"Anatomy's not that hard," she scoffed. "So what if I don't remember all the names? I know what each bit does."

"What is the purpose of the endoplasmic reticulum?"

"Um," she said, "powerhouse of the cell?"

It was impressive that she managed to keep him alive for two years.

Zoro woke up the next day, right after Mihawk left. He didn't scream this time. 

"Mihawk says you need to stop training for a while," she informed him. "There's a little break in your leg, and if you do anything more than hobble short distances it might crack right open." She made a face. Bone fractures were not cute.

He didn't respond. 

"What happened?"

"I was training."

"I know that. What happened when you were training?"

He couldn't remember. Maybe his brain had deleted the memory, or maybe it happened too suddenly for it to record it. Or maybe it was too embarrassing a story. In either case, he refused to say more. Like those finger traps that tightened the more you tried to escape them, the harder she tried to pry things out of him, the less he spoke.

He appeared to notice that his field of vision had changed, and his hand shot up to pull off the bandages she had painstakingly wrapped around his head. Before he could, she held up a mirror. 

"It's gone," she said. No sugarcoating for a boy who hated sweets. 

A series of expressions worked on his forehead as he wrangled some stray thought into submission. The struggle was a short one; he won. 

"Okay," he said. Calm and bland, smooth and blank. His eye searched the room, and landed on precisely what he was looking for-- nothing.

It sounded like it took superhuman effort to retain that bland calm, and he drew out the words like a blacksmith hammering out pieces of metal. "Where are my swords?"

They took his swords. 

They took his swords!

He tried to move, but a sharp pain shot up his right leg. He stopped, almost more out of confusion than anything. What the hell happened?

Damn it. He needed a drink, but he hadn't mastered armament, and he couldn't find his way around this maze of a castle. 

The path before him thickened with fog, an unfocused distortion. He closed his eye. Trying to get used to how things looked with only one was giving him a headache. In the darkness of his own recollection, he tried to remember--

A smear of colour, maybe red and maybe blue. Nothing useful. A blear of existence, broken pines littered around him, a crack along one of his blades--he couldn't remember which. His memories were full of mud. 

He'd never been in a fight where he couldn't remember the outcome--whether he'd shamed himself or not. Who was his opponent? Was it Mihawk? If so, why wasn't he dead? 

Resentment flared. If he had his swords, he'd know in a second. If he overextended. If he broke his promise to Luffy. There was no reason to take them away, except as punishment for being deemed unworthy of them. 

Was he unworthy of them? He lost something, no doubt about it. An eye, his swords, the match, and promises--

--that were not yet broken. 

He hadn't betrayed her memory or his vow. Not while he was still alive, not while his rival still lived, only a few rooms away, with his swords--

--but some part of him felt convinced that they had cracked to splinters in his hands, that the blood had come from the shards of them raining down on the soil, and he needed to see them and make sure that the soul of his friend and the pledge he had made was still intact but they were gone and---

---thinking about this, he decided, was useless. 

Goddamn it. Why couldn't he remember?

Perona gave Zoro an odd look. "You never said you thought your swords were broken."

He met her gaze defiantly. "You wouldn't tell me where they were."

"Why would I--? The whole point was to make sure you didn't steal them back! They were fine!"

"Couldn't be sure until I saw them."

"How was I supposed to--I don't speak idiot!" 

The air filled with the various creakings and clankings of submarine machinery. 

At last she said, "You were more upset about the possibility of losing a fight and your swords than your eye?"

"It's only an eye," he said coldly, as if it didn't belong to him.

"Well then!" she sniffed. "If you asked earlier, I wouldn't give them back, but I'd bring them to you and you could see for yourself. Why didn't you?"

It was his turn to be silent.

"Serves you right, you silly pea-brain."

Perona ushered the hollowed brat back into his room after yet another attempt to escape. What was that? Three times in one hour? He didn't think being half-dead was an excuse to stay in. He didn't seem to think that this injury counted for anything. It wasn't like anyone would blame him for taking a few days off training, and if they did, it wasn't like he would value their opinion. So why didn't he stay put? 

But, she supposed, once you've destroyed your ability to care about other people's opinions, you're at your own mercy. You were judge, jury, and executioner of your own self-respect, and for people like him, who had no mercy to speak of…

It was ironic, in a way. He respected himself so much it looked like hatred.

As he settled back down, he gave her a look full of such loathing that she shrank away. She frowned. There was an accusation, a self-righteousness in his eye. It said-- you know this to be a prison. Tell me my crime, or let me go.

True, she thought. For a hairline crack on a bone they imprisoned him. It must seem a great injustice to him. His swords, too, were locked away. They had committed the same crime: defeat and absence. 

Perona was a lot of things, but she was not cruel for cruelty's sake. She puffed out her cheeks in an impotent display of discontent. Ungrateful child, treating her like a jailer. 

It's not my fault! she wanted to say. Stay in, unless you want to be an even heavier burden on your crew. You don't want that, do you?

She should have never brought him into Mihawk's castle. She should've left him in the woods. It was a bad idea to let him train with his greatest adversary, not because Mihawk would give him overly destructive training on purpose, but because he'd take a perfectly ordinary routine and turn it into overly destructive training anyway. Now she had to camp in the room next to his with a flyswatter in case he snuck out to look for his swords. Locking the door would do nothing-- he'd only break it down. Best leave it open so it remains undamaged, and catch him when he tries to leave.

Honestly. Was it so hard to sit still? It was only for a week, until his eye healed. They'd moved him to a room that had a bathroom attached, and Perona brought him meals and medicine. He didn't have to do anything! 

It was lucky he injured his leg, and couldn't walk very far or fast-- if he got himself killed in this state, she wasn't about to handle a corpse without Moria there to reanimate it.

Her heart gave a painful lurch at the thought. 

If only Moria was here…

But even if he was, even Dr. Hogback couldn't find his brain when it was the size of a pea rolling around in a vast, empty void. How lonely! His hair looked like pea soup as well. Or an overgrown lawn. 

Back at Thriller Bark, she had met him, albeit briefly. She knew that he was stubborn, intractable, insufferable. But she patched him up anyway. Maybe she was the pea-brain.

The sky outside the window was the same bleak wall of gray as it had been the day before, and he sat up in bed, every nerve in his body telling him to move, to defy the order, to get back to the training he needed to stop being so weak. But he restrained himself.

Maybe he should be proud. Old Hawkeye acknowledged he was the only one who could leash himself. 

He didn't need to keep watch and couldn't train to exhaust himself, so he was left with wakefulness. Fatigue that didn't lend itself to sleep was like hunger that accompanied nausea--demanding something just to reject it.

Spikes of pain ebbed through his face. His leg felt like a superheated glass bulb-- as if it would crack like one of his swords. He was used to pain, the itching of bandages, he could ignore the ignominy of relying on others for help, but he hadn't accounted for the crushing boredom. He didn't like it. Not at all. Normally what he did with things he didn't like was not think about them. But he was trapped in his labyrinth of a room, with two of his favourite distractions-- sake, swords-- stripped away from him, and the third-- sleep-- refusing to come. His main three ways of handling the world he lived in-- gone. 

It was strange that he couldn't sleep. That had never been a problem before.

Though he knew that neither of them would attack him, that none of them meant any harm, his body would not let him forget he was an intruder in enemy territory. It was stupid--but it was even more stupid to sleep without a sword at his hip. 

He wondered what his crew was doing. Were they alright? The world didn't allow him to know. 

Memories swelled like music and smells of cooking and yells and laughter. The tangerine trees, he thought. The sea-witch always made such a big deal out of fussing and trimming the leaves like they'd die without the attention. Would they be okay without the watering and the trimming and the fussing? The fish -- no one would be there to feed them. Books sat on their shelves gathering dust, instruments lay silent and out of tune. Medicinal herbs rotting in the drawers of the infirmary. Cola losing its fizz in the refrigerator. A whole storage unit of food, going to waste. The damn cook would have an aneurysm. 

He wished he was back on the Sunny. Someone had to take care of their ship. He was tired of this castle, where every turn was the wrong one. The right thing to do was to stay still, unmoving, inside. Going forward meant falling back. Everything was backwards, and he couldn't remember if he'd won or lost. 

Moving forward meant staying still, and that couldn't be right. He wouldn't accept that. He couldn't. 

They had left him a pair of makeshift crutches that he wasn't supposed to use for extended periods of time, but when had he ever listened to medical advice?

As soon as he pushed the door open, Perona hit him with a flyswatter. She didn't even use her hollows anymore. There was something funny about that, but the joke didn't land. "Again! Why won't you just stay where you are?"

Because that would be giving up, a voice said, deep in his head. Because you made a promise. You're useless as you are-- you cannot afford to become even more useless.

An abnormal silence fell after she sent him back to his room. Perona listened at the door for-- oh, she didn't know. Things thrown at the wall, screams of rage, maybe crying. Nothing but that eerie silence. 

He was the strangest brat she'd ever met. He didn't bow down, even after losing an eye, outclassed in every way by his rival, depending on their mercy for survival. His pride must be in tatters. She expected a little negativity, but no--still as stubborn and tenacious as always, that one. It was official--he was a monster. 

He looked disturbingly normal when she went to change his bandages. He greeted her with his usual set of indistinct grunts and turned over a page in the daily paper. When she dabbed alcohol a little too hard into the torn flesh, he bore it with silent fortitude, as if determined to prove himself immovable even as he broiled in resentment. The anger did not erupt-- it made him glacial. He was only ever so calm where there was some kind of crisis.

Every time she checked in on him, he would be staring out the window or at the wall, pacing aimlessly in slow, painful circles, or flicking through the old newspapers he kept neatly folded on his desk. He looked out toward the sea, or what he thought was the direction of the sea. If she ever plucked the wings from a griffin and locked it in a tower, she imagined it would look a little like he did now. 

She wasn't going to ask him any stupid questions, like "Why do you want to train so badly?" He was simple-minded. He couldn't help his crew with his brains, so he was stuck with this.

When she brought him his dinner, she stayed behind to observe him. For the longest time he didn't see her or the tray she had placed by his bedside. When he did, he spotted the cup of water first. He reached for it, and missed. One gray eye glared at it.

He looked a lot less like a mad dog with bandages wrapped around half his face and the bruiselike shadow under his remaining eye. Every time he moved his leg, his entire body went rigid.

"Looks like that hurts."

He straightened up. "It's nothing."

"Of course you'd say that," she snorted under her breath. 

"The fuck did you just say?"

"Nothing," she said, wrinkling her nose at the foul language. So not cute. "Which is what you'd be without us. No need to thank me."

He didn't.

"Hmph," she said. "I told you what training like that would do, but did you listen?"

"It was never meant to be easy," he said. She didn't exactly like the look on his face. It was emptier than usual. 

Maybe if she…

She cleared her throat, drawing herself up. "Honestly, you never listen. Imagine if you waste away from an eye infection… You'd be the laughingstock of your crew." 

"I won't die here. I won't allow it."

"It's not your choice."

"I know," he snapped. "I have to get stronger, so it will be my choice."

She stared. He wasn't all there, was he? The isolation must have driven him loopy. "That makes no sense!"

He exhaled in sharp irritation, letting his head fall back against the wall. "It's useless explaining it to a spoiled brat like you."

"Huh?! Who are you calling-- You're the brat!" she yelled. 

He dragged himself upright, and grabbed his crutches. 

Was he trying to escape when she was right there?! That's it--he'd gone off the deep end. "Stop that!" she yelled. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I can't stay in here," he said. His voice was little more than a growl.

The flyswatter wouldn't be enough for this. "Don't even think about it," she said. "If you don't follow his instructions, the old man'll stop training you. Imagine if you meet your crew and you're as weak as you were before." She laughed, though it sounded hollow even to herself. "All that grand and lofty talk about dying for your captain, and here you are. Maybe they used to rely on you, but if you become dead weight they'll have to leave you behind. Oh, how they'll laugh at you. Maybe some emperor will come along and crush them, like--"

He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Funny, she hadn't used her hollows. "Please," he said in a monotone. "Don't tell Mihawk."

"Hmmm," she said, making a show of resting one hand on her cheek, as if deep in thought. "Why not?"

"I won't do it again."

She smiled sweetly at the strain in his voice as pride and duty conflicted. It sounded like his teeth were grinding themselves into powder. Now that's more like it! she thought viciously. 

She let her astral body touch the ground. 

"Fine. Just this once I'll let it go. But do it again and I'm telling." 

His tone was malevolent as he thanked her. Oh hark the hound with his hackles raised, expecting war! Prepared to bite back, projecting strength and expecting cruelty. Futile, of course, she wasn't corporeal at the moment and she could have him in a listless puddle at her feet at the snap of her fingers. But she wouldn't have to. She got the sense that although his will hadn't shaken, he was unhappy enough without her hollows. 

"When's the last time you slept?"

"What day is it?"

She showed him the front page. 

"Then I don't know."

She planted her hands on her hips. "Just go to sleep. We're not going to kill you while you're out."

"I know," he said.

"Then why--?"

He swung his gaze to her, frustrated, and abruptly tore it away. 

Oh, so you can't, she thought. All he could do was limp around his cage like a defanged lion. That made sense. This was what happened when you took a man who feared nothing and made him face nothing.

"You're staying awake for no reason, you know," she said. 

He ignored her. 

Oh, cruel fate. He has to live for the people he would die for. That sounded sarcastic, but it was cruel to deny him his purpose-- to make him deny his selfhood, his reason for existing, for the sake of others. You might as well fashion a knife, hone it to the thinness of a paper's edge, then tell it that it must not, under any circumstances, cut anything.

The eye was a warning, Zoro thought. Not the swords. He got it backwards. But everything was backwards, so maybe it became the right way around. Had he made no progress at all? Was he still stuck at the bottom of a well, bleeding out on a deck soaked with salt? Had he gotten any closer to his goal?

He couldn't remember the last time he'd gone so long without sleep. Even on the cross in the blazing heat, he was able to doze off. The world was starting to become unglued. To swim a little in his vision. He couldn't focus on the view outside his window--the trees wavered and the skyline seemed to blend in with the ground. 

Just as well. Something was wrong with the universe. He should have had his weapons, and he didn't. And he couldn't drink.

So why not sleep?

No, not yet. Couldn't do that yet. 

He shut his eye anyway. When he opened it it was light out which meant, maybe, that he'd slept until the next day. He didn't feel rested.

He couldn't remember what happened. From what he could remember, it didn't look good. He would have to answer for it-- for the mistake. For not doing what was needed. 

What exactly did he do, though? Did Mihawk defeat him, or was it someone-- something else?

Grasping a fragmented memory was like squeezing a handful of broken glass-- or the mirror shards of a meito. What could he do with these pieces of time and space? They're nothing. Thin as a bone, and as easily fractured.

An anger seized hold of him, and he was consumed with the need to destroy something-- to see that still had an effect on the world. At the end of it, he didn't remember if he had. 

More shards of memory came to him, bobbed like driftwood on the surface of the rain. Burn them, and they would be gone, but the damn things had to be in water. 

He didn't have to remember to know he had lost. That was the important thing-- he lost. Not the match, not the bleeding pieces of a broken sword, but the most important thing. 

What would they say when they found out he didn't keep his word? 

Maybe they would take it well. He could picture it--kneeling in front of Luffy, reporting his failure, being dismissed. Only right, only natural.

There was something unnatural about him, people said. He wasn't supposed to survive Kuma. He was living on borrowed time--borrowed from whom? Who would he have to return to? 

He had the uneasy sense that it was Mihawk, and the next time they dueled in earnest, he would have to return it all at once.

Time pooled in great big droplets and fell upon the forest canopy.

After a day and a half of this silence, Perona plucked up the gumption to ask their host what happened. He would only say that he found him in a muddy pit-- a grave meant for one of those humandrills. That struck her as a bit on the nose. 

True to his word, the brat didn't try to sneak out anymore. She should be relieved--but it wasn't right.  

"That idiot!" she exclaimed to herself as she assembled a meal without looking at the ingredients. "I won't stand for it! I won't!" 

She poured water into a cup with as much malice as she could muster, boiled soup with a searing derision, and drew a smiley face on the crackers with jam with undying hate. Once she finished, she slapped it onto a tray and flew up the hall. 

"How dare he," she muttered, over and over. She passed Mihawk in his study. He was reading the daily newspaper as if nothing was wrong, and that made her swell in indignation.

"How can you just sit there?" she screamed, glaring at him.

"Is anything the matter?" he said, without lifting his eyes from the paper. 

"Yes!"

He folded the paper and placed it upon the coffee table. "Did Roronoa try to retrieve his weapons?" 

"No, he did not!" she snarled. "He's perfectly behaved!"

Mihawk regarded her, a quizzical glint in his eyes. "What exactly is the problem?"

"I don't know!"

She could not name his transgression. There was no law against enjoying--or at least studying the scenery out of one's own bedroom window. He had behaved himself in an irreproachable manner, and that was the transgression. 

He stared thoughtfully at her. She stared back as resolutely as she could, searching him for any signs of regret-- regret for agreeing to train him, for letting her stay, whatever--but his expression was completely indecipherable.

"If it's too difficult for you, I'll watch him."

"Difficult? When did I say that?" She scoffed. "I can watch just fine. You read your paper."

She flounced off. To her dismay Mihawk didn't say even a single thing about her being noisy.

When she opened the door to his room, it looked as if hadn't moved from the spot she left him in yesterday. He sat on his covers, grave, sober, and silent, and this reminded her less of the calm before a storm and more of the way the sea pulled back before a tsunami. 

"You-- you jerk!" she yelled, pointing an accusing finger at him. "Stop that-- that that!"

He didn't seem to notice her at first, and continued to stare out of the window at whatever had captured his attention so thoroughly the past days.

Then he turned his head slowly to look at her. 

"What?" he said, in flavourless tones. Sleeplessness had reduced his already sparse speech to something mechanical and automatic. 

"That!" she cried. (How could you say to a formerly fractious child that you miss its misbehaviour?) "You're plotting something, I'm sure of it! You--" (but he had always been quiet, and he didn't even have his swords). "If you're going to sneak out--" (but he could hardly do that after her ultimatum). 

"Good things will happen to you one day, so just hang in there!" she said in a burst of inspiration. "Don't give up hope! You're right where you need to be! You can do it!"

That finally got a reaction. She was almost relieved to see anger spark in his eye. The beach could be evacuated, the wave had not yet crashed upon the shore. "Since you haven't been escaping lately," she babbled, full of nervous energy, "I'll talk to Mihawk. Maybe we'll let you have your swords back."

Chapter Text

"...And then we gave him his swords back," Perona said, crossing her arms.

"That's it?" Law said. 

"That's it."

"Told you I don't remember," Zoro said.

There has to be more to this story, he thought. It had been a short interrogation--if it could be called that. Zoro didn't stop Perona, which meant he didn't object to the details she provided, but he didn't offer many impressions of his own. 

"Is what she said true?" he said carefully.

"I wasn't acting weird," he insisted. "She's making it seem like I--"

Bepo placed a paw on Zoro's shoulder. Zoro stared at it as if it belonged to an alien species. "You know, you can tell us anything. We're friends now."

"Look," he growled at Perona, looking alarmed, "They're getting the wrong idea."

"Oh, come on! I'm just letting them know to look out for you. You're welcome!"

Bepo attempted to give him a hug, but Law caught his eye and shook his head. That's not how you comfort him, he thought. His allergy to pity acted up whenever anyone insinuated that misfortune had befallen him. "Why did you think there was something wrong with me?" Zoro asked her.

"You didn't sleep for three days."

"Two," he corrected.

"See!"

"It was only two days!"

"It would have been longer if we left you alone!"

"You don't know that."

"Well, excuse me for caring!"

"It wasn't a problem!"

There was no deception in Zoro's words. He sounded almost incredulous-- how could anyone ever suspect him of being anything other than alright? They must seem so ridiculous to him. 

"...are you afraid of a little blood?" Zoro was saying. 

"A little ?" Perona gasped. "There were at least six liters! Six ! You know how much blood you're supposed to have? Six liters ! At most!"

"That's on you for assuming it all came from me."

"But he does have more blood than the average human of his size," Bepo said to himself. 

"You don't know why you couldn't sleep?" he said. The squabbling siblings-- no, they weren't siblings, were they?--paused to look at him. 

"Yeah, it was weird."

She scoffed, giving his swords a dirty look. "You were missing your security blankets."

"They're not security blankets."

"You were treating them like one. Honestly, if you could only see yourself then, sitting there, so calm..."

"You were creeped out because I was calm? You need stronger nerves!"

"My nerves are way stronger than yours, you…"

Law glanced at his partner and wondered what lurked now under that mask. The mask itself--how much practice had he needed to construct it? He hadn't perfected it--that would take a few more years, and a lot more trouble. But oh, wasn't he convincing, with that expression of put-upon incredulousness…as if to reassure them that no, the past would not repeat itself, he would never reveal that much weakness ever again…

"You could have thanked me!"

"I did thank you!"

"Not enough! And why didn't you just ask Mihawk what happened instead of sitting there…"

Law thought he could answer that. Zoro was indebted to Mihawk, even dependent on him, but he did not trust him. To allow him to define a corner of his existence that even he could not verify was unthinkable. When his question was less "did I lose to you" and more "am I still worth anything to my crew?", he did not want to grant his enemy the power to answer "no."

"Quiet down," Law said. By some miracle, they did. "From what you told me, there's no way to determine what happened."

"Yeah."

You're not telling me everything, he thought. Too many things didn't add up. Zoro was no stranger to fighting in adverse weather conditions, and though he did not exactly lose, it was hard to believe he struggled this much against a baboon. He maintained consciousness after taking a hit from two emperors-- it was unthinkable a mild fracture and serious eye wound could knock him out. 

The siblings-in-all-but-name had exhausted their arguments. Perona floated to the other side of the room, and Zoro's face took on his usual expression of bored unconcernedness.

He wondered…

But this was different. They had a goal, a clear way ahead. And he did not intend for him to be injured. This would not be a second Kuraigana. 

He summoned his crew. "Did you deal with our communications, Uni?" 

"They were all bugged," he said, placing a jar in front of them. Several brown moths fluttered around inside it. 

"Good work. Get back to your posts." 

His crew grumbled quietly to themselves as they filed out. 

Penguin raised his head. "Why'd you chase us out?" he whined. "We wanted to hear the rest of the story."

"It was for your sake. If you kept laughing at him I wouldn't be responsible for what happened to you next."

They gulped, and hurried away. 

Law turned back to Perona. "Now you can tell me what you're really here for."

"I told you--"

"You're looking for Dracule Mihawk and Gecko Moria, yes. But why would they come here?"

She flicked her hair out of her eyes. "That's my business."

"You're all being hunted by the Navy, aren't you?"

Perona sighed. "I suppose the truth had to come out. It was no fun."

"Where are they?"

Perona crossed her arms. "If I knew, would I be wasting time with you? I didn't see anything on the island."

"Go back and search for any signs of marine activity. I have a feeling that will give us what we want to know."

"I'm not your servant!"

"Jean Bart and Bepo will escort you. Take a snail with you. I will keep the line open. When I ask you a question, answer it."

"I never agreed to this!"

"Your phantoms can reconnoiter our surroundings without being noticed. We'd appreciate your cooperation."

"You're staying behind?" she said disdainfully. 

"Zoro-ya and I will remain here to guard the submarine."

Perona's eyes darted from him to the other swordsman. She seemed to grasp his intention, and smiled. "Hmph. Fine, I'll go look for the old man." She gave Law a knowing look, and directed a tiny nod of her head toward Zoro. 

She didn't have to bother. Of course he'd look out for him.

Once she left, Law placed the snail down on the map, and said, "Let's hear the rest of it."

Two weeks before Zoro lost his eye, Kumacy fell apart. One minute he was whole, and the next his arm dropped clean off. She'd fixed him only yesterday, and there was nothing wrong with her handiwork. The quality of the thread must be to blame. 

She pulled a needle and a few scraps of cloth out of her bag. Where did she keep the extra rags? Kumacy would have brought her more, if he were here. Kumacy would've obeyed her. Kumacy...

She really was too harsh with him, wasn't she? He did his best to be cute. It wasn't his fault he wasn't. 

"That's it," she cried, ignoring the lump in her throat. "I must have used too much fixing up that brat. I'll have my revenge on him!"

Kumacy's reproachful button eyes gazed up at her. Making everyone else around you miserable won't make you less miserable. 

"A good servant doesn't question his mistress! You're just like that brat, he's so disobedient."

Are you describing a man or a dog?

"Same thing," she snorted.

He's a human being.

"Is he? Is he really? Did anyone bother to check?"

"Are you talking to your bear again?" 

She gave a little scream. "Don't do that!"

"Could you shut up?"

She glared through her tears at the intruder. Of course. Him. She should have left him in the crater where she found him. She missed Moria and the shadows and her garden, all her servants…

Furiously wiping her eyes with her lacy sleeves, she drew herself upright. "No," she said. She tried to put some snap in her voice, but it was too watery to sound anything but pitiful.

There were dark shadows under his eyes. Hmph. What does he have to lose sleep over, anyway? 

She caught a glimpse of a crumpled newspaper clenched in his fist. 

Oh right, that. But she had it worse-- a strange castle with strange people that taunted her with its familiarity. 

She burst into tears. Humiliating herself in front of that insolent--! Was this not punishment enough?

"Here." Her Mini Kumacy was suddenly shoved roughly into her arms. "Cry into that. I'm going to bed."

She stared at the stuffed animal. "Hey! Don't pretend to be nice all of a sudden!"

"I'm not," he said. "I can't get any damn sleep with you making that noise."

"You weren't sleeping anyway!"

He didn't contradict her.

She sniffled. He was getting even more pathetic than her. At least she could admit that she missed her crew. 

It wasn't her fault she only had Kumacy to talk to. Mihawk was cold and forbidding and the pea-brain was a pea-brain. She knew she was being angry for the sake of being angry, because she didn't like the other options.

Damned Kuma, why did he send her here?

Having no friends sucked. The grouch only spoke to her nicely when hollowed, even as he became an even worse conversationalist. 

"I wonder where Moria-sama is," she sniffled to herself. "I wish I could find him."

"What's the point?" he said morosely. "It's not like you can join him."

"Didn't you go tearing around the island just to get back to your crew?"

"So what if I find my way back? I'm not fit to show my face around them."

She sighed and dismissed her hollows. 

He immediately sat up, eyes flashing. "Stop that." 

"Oh, I don't think so," she said. She sighed. Messing with him had lost its flavour. "You're terrible." 

Talking to him was no fun at all. All he said were uncomfortable truths that she didn't want to hear or nothing. 

"Kumacy, I miss you," she mumbled to herself. 

"Don't you dare put the costume on me again," he snapped from where he lay flat on the floor, exhausted from too many hollowings. 

Does he even know what it's like to feel powerless? It's just as well that he gets a taste of it now, she thought to herself. Her justifications felt flat, even to herself.

Two days after Zoro lost his eye, Perona was setting the table for the meal Mihawk had prepared when Zoro showed up. He nodded at her, and, with some difficulty, dropped to one knee. 

She bit back a warning. Kneeling on a healing bone...what a pea-brain! If the movement aggravated his injuries, it didn't show. 

Mihawk, who had already seated himself at the head of the table, paused, his long fingers closed around the stem of an empty wine glass. "What's the meaning of this?"

The reply came swiftly, clearly rehearsed, with composed equanimity. "I shamed myself in battle, and I disobeyed orders to remain inside. I'll accept whatever punishment you have for me."

There was a long, cold, silence. 

"You're embarrassing yourself."

"I know."

It seemed that the younger swordsman tried to govern his roughness around Mihawk, picking his words with measured consideration. He mirrored him in tone and gesture, as if he were trying to match his imperturbable calm. 

At last, Mihawk set his glass aside. "I was not the one who defeated you."

His eye narrowed. "Then…"

"I did not bear witness to your defeat either. I only sensed a life flickering out."

A thousand questions swirled in the gaze he kept trained on the floor. "I see."

"These things happen. Put it out of your mind."

"I won't," he said, an edge in his voice. "I'm still too weak."

"When an opponent defeats you, it is not because you are weak. It is because they are stronger."

"What's the difference?"

"Perspective. Respect them by not debasing yourself." 

His jaw tightened.

Perona didn't quite grasp what was happening, but she was pretty sure Mihawk had the upper hand. "Hahaha, you tell him!" she cheered, in case what Mihawk said was a real zinger.

"You'll never understand, ghost girl, so don't butt in," the green brat snarled.

"How do you mock her, when she is stronger than you can become?"

Perona had no idea where that came from, but she wasn't one to turn down such superlative praise. She stuck her tongue out at Zoro--then shrank when he shot a look her way. To his credit, there was no resentment, only a calculated acknowledgment. 

"What do you mean by that?" he said at last.

"How would you defeat her?"

"Call Usopp," he said without hesitation. (At the sound of the marksman's name, she shuddered.)

"Good answer. But can you not think of a way to defeat her alone?"

"Destroy the castle."

"Giving her ample time to flee."

He ground his teeth. "She can't get far without supplies. I'll take over the food stores."

"The ones you cannot find without assistance? She could hollow you until you die of thirst or starve to death."

"What? I wouldn't! That's so not cute!" she cried. 

"Aren't you afraid that she'll hollow you?"

"A wounded animal will go for the easier target. I have nothing to worry about."

"Who are you calling a wounded animal?" Perona yelled, right as Zoro said "Who are you calling an easier target?"

"These hollowings, as you call them, are the petty cruelties of one desperately wounded animal lashing out against another so she will not be alone in death. If you truly wanted him to suffer," and here he turned his piercing gaze onto her, "you would have left him to succumb to his injuries in the woods."

"When you put it like that--!" Maybe she used to use him to feel superior, but not anymore!

Before she could protest further, the warlord continued.

"Her current body is intangible. Her real body is hidden in a castle you cannot navigate. If you find her, it would be by mere chance. You cannot defeat her with skill. Any child could wait until nightfall and plunge a dagger into her heart. Are you no better than a child?"

She gasped indignantly. "Teach him humility without plotting my death!"

"If you overtrain and let damage build up in your joints and muscles like you have, you cannot be surprised when your endurance and reaction time decline. You have promise, but you are not using it to its fullest capacity. Even if you did, you would have no chance against her," Mihawk said. 

Were they both ignoring her?

"Without her fruit--" Zoro began heatedly.

"But we are not discussing fantasy worlds. If she doesn't have her fruit, who's to say you have your swords? Your limbs, your remaining eye?"

Perona snuck a peek at Zoro. She could almost see the headstrong will in him wavering. She hadn't known him for long, but she knew that he had a resolve like a ball of cast iron. It could be melted and reforged, but not with ease. Dracule had done it without so much as breaking a sweat. 

"There are strengths in this world you have yet to fathom, and thus, have not identified the source of your insufficiency with any accuracy. You place your doubt in the wrong things. I thought you had learned humility. Your spirit refuses to humble itself, although you've made your overtures. You have not yet accepted that you are not enough on your own, and that you need the help."

"I know I need my crew," he said.

"That is not enough."

"What is, then?"

They sized each other up, neither giving an inch. 

"You don't get it," Zoro said, his voice brittle.

"No. You haven't learned." Mihawk glanced at the neglected dishes on the table. "This is getting cold."

Mihawk departed the room, and Zoro remained behind, staring at the floor. 

Perona floated behind him. "I told you he was acting weird."

"Yes, I see that."

"Aren't you going to do anything? Talking about ways to beat me doesn't count!" 

He swept past the hall, forcing her to zoom forward to catch up.

"Hey! Stop ignoring me!"

"You're too noisy."

She puffed up. He had intimidated her at first, but not anymore. Once you got used to him he wasn't anything to be afraid of. "I wouldn't have to be so noisy if you answered the first time! You saw what he was like! He was even worse yesterday. And you're going to let him go on like that? Are you as dumb as he is?"

To her surprise, he smiled, as briefly as a bolt of lightning flashes between clouds. "He's not unintelligent," Mihawk said, almost to himself. "Unable to see what he lacks, but clever enough to know when he is being patronized. A regrettable fact."

"If you say so," she said doubtfully. "I'd believe you if he didn't act the way he does."

He shook his head. "On these seas, to preserve your life, you must be willing to risk your death. But it is clear that he is intent on squandering his intellect, only retaining the information he considers useful to his training--useless, when he's not yet able to discern wheat from chaff. His thinking has no flexibility."

"Well, you got that right." 

"Troublesome. Very troublesome." He crossed the threshold to the kitchen, leaving Perona to wonder whether everyone in this castle had mashed peas for brains.

Later that evening, Mihawk delivered his verdict.

"You want me to read what?" Zoro said. 

Mihawk did not look at him. "You lack observation and self-insight. This might edify you."

Zoro had been prepared for the worst. No booze until he unlocked conqueror's, or something. "What does poetry have to do with--"

"Art, in many cases, is produced in an effort to confront the realities we wish to avoid. Comedy distracts us from an uncomfortable truth, but that very distraction throws it into ever sharper relief. Drama leads us through a facsimile of life to offer us temporary catharsis. Poetry cloaks its meaning, and in our attempts to decipher it, we see what truly is."

"Huh?"

"Read it. Write some, if you want."

Okay, so this was punishment. 

Mihawk led him to the library and told him to take what he wanted. Before he left, he paused at the entrance to the hall. "Your swords are in the armory. It's the most obvious hiding place, so we thought you'd never look there. It seems we were correct."

Zoro kept his expression blank. He was sure the cosmos was playing some kind of joke on him.

Once he made it back to his room (while Perona screeched at him about not keeping his weight off his leg), he found a glass of water at his bedside next to a bowl of cut-up fruit. The knife work was too precise to be Perona's. He didn't know whether to be grateful or humiliated that his rival had just cut his fruit for him. He decided not to think about it.

Zoro spent a few hours in intense meditation, cultivating mindfulness, an acute awareness of being, of the extensions of his body and mind subsumed by body until he became will, pure will. The elimination of ego, the dissolution of the concrete. 

He had to learn to do nothing. Become nothing, so that every action is nothing and requires no effort. Eliminate selfhood. Eliminate ego. Pare away weakness-- he had too much of it in him.

(He observed the thought happening, as if viewing himself from a distance.)

Then he opened his eyes. He was still himself. Good.

Poems, huh. His old sensei had read them some. They were about parting, loss, the inevitability of death, the inability to return to the past. Some were incomprehensible paragraphs about wheelbarrows and plums. The plum one reminded him of a note that a more polite version of Luffy might leave on the fridge after raiding it. 

A more polite version of Luffy…

He pushed the thought of Marineford out of his mind. 

If old Hawkeye was right, poetry was about noticing things. The breath of wind. Sunlight through the veins of new leaves. The steady, crunching sound of rock. A flower breaking through frost-laden earth. A knife hurtling a hundred meters per second toward his neck.

Maybe he could read it. But he would definitely not write any, and if he didn't it wouldn't be about wheelbarrows. (Why did they have to be red?)

When he got his swords back, it felt as though a dislocated joint had slid back into its socket. Yesterday, he dreamed that he lost all fluency with his weapons, that they grew too heavy for him to hold, that he forgot even their names. He would make sure they were never far from him from now on.

He wished that the newspapers would come faster. Not that they were of any use. No matter how many times he looked, his crew wasn't going to be there.

He poured sword oil over the blade, a little sloppily from lack of practice. He ran his thumb over the scratches, apologizing silently for every one of them. 

He glanced at the floor. There was no reason he couldn't work out here. They'd never know.

But he would know. He would know he broke his promise, and he would have to hold himself responsible. And maybe Mihawk had a fruit power. One like Enel's, that let him sense presences from miles around. He had no way of telling. He'd never seen him knocked into water, or pushed into using anything but ordinary slashes.

Mihawk's words rang in his ears. 

You haven't learned.

Fine. He'll read the books. 

He had looked for a volume with the red wheelbarrows and plums and death. His crew probably never thought he'd ever pick up any book. If they could see him now, reading in the library like he was Robin, he'd never hear the end of it. 

Normally, he wouldn't do something so pointless, but he had nothing else. Perona had stopped sending her hollows after him a long time ago. That irritated him--it meant she was starting to pity him, and pity was worse than pain. She deemed him too pathetic to use hollows on, but thankfully not pathetic enough for encouragement. (He didn't really miss the hollows. They were a little too good at what they did.) 

Reading poetry. How the hell would this help him with observation? As with all of Mihawk's training methods, he couldn't argue with it. It had taken him years to cut steel when he already had all the instruction and strength he needed. If he couldn't improve himself through battle with a physical enemy, a literary one would have to do. Now that he had been confined to his room like a misbehaving child, with nothing to occupy his mind, he needed to do something . He couldn't sit around. A running stream of water wouldn't freeze. He had to keep moving. 

Try as he might, he couldn't figure out how it would help. But maybe that was the point. He wasn't supposed to know. It made no difference to him. He had lost his confidence in the predictability of the world a long time ago. 

With his swords restored to him, the pea-brain seemed to be on the road to recovery. After a few days, he looked only half-dead rather than three-quarters dead, and started carrying around a book. 

"Is there something wrong with his brain?" Perona asked Mihawk.

"His brain is fine. It's his mind that's unsettled," Mihawk said, turning the page. 

That told her everything and nothing at once. The old man had intervened, but she had no idea what he did. Well, as long as it worked. 

She bumped into Zoro on the way to the kitchen to fix herself a pastry. He was still carrying that book.

"Where's the library?" he asked. 

"Second stair to your right, you can't miss it," she said automatically, and then, "Idiot, you're going in the wrong direction."

 Zoro careened down the stairs, face flaming red. 

"Your directions were terrible," he snarled. "What the hell were you trying to do? Sabotage me?"

"Why would I sabotage you!" She paused. "And why are you going to the library?"

In lieu of answering her, he chose to sit down on the stairs and open the book.

Her curiosity got the better of her, and she flew above him to peer over his shoulder. "That's a handbook for teaching children how to write haikus. What are you doing with it?"

"Training."

"Really?" She waited for the punchline, but the comically serious look didn't leave his face. "Why haven't you written anything?"

He mumbled something indistinct, eye glued to the page.

"You can't write, can you?"

"Shut it."

"You can read, but you can't write?"

"I wasn't going to write anything." 

"I knew it. You don't have a creative bone in your body!" she chortled. "And you chose this poem to study? It's far above your pay grade!"

"It's a sentence about a wet wheelbarrow chopped up to fill a whole page."

"Hmph. Wheelbarrows are needed for farming. Where do you think the food you eat comes from, huh? On trees?"

"Some of it does."

"Don't be smart with me! Anyway, so much depends on the simple tools that we take for granted, unnoticed unless we take the time to look for them." She folded her arms. "If I didn't tell you that, you would have never figured it out, huh?"

He looked at the page, and then at her. "That's what it means?"

"It's what I think."

"Then why didn't he write that?"

"Because that would be boring."

He gave the poem a dismissive glance. "This is boring."

"You just don't appreciate fine literature."

"Good."

"All right," she growled, snatching the poor, misunderstood book off the table. "Tell you what, I'll write up something for you. In return, you'll help me with my book. You're lucky I don't have anything better to do."

He grumbled but didn't contradict her.

"Let's see. It says here that the first step is to use the five senses to observe our environment. Okay, what do you see?"

"Gray," he said.

"Make some effort."

"Everything's gray," he said curtly. 

"And hear?"

"Your annoying voice."

"I can snap this pencil anytime," she said with saccharine menace.

He went quiet. "Birds," he ground out. "I don't recognize them." 

"That's better."

He cocked his head. "One bird," he said. "I hear it a lot in the morning. It's always by itself."

"Smell?"

"Some kind of sweet… gross thing. Makes me sick."

"It's raspberry jam!" she said. "I'm never baking for you again. And the last thing-- touch. What do you feel?"

"Cloth."

"What kind?"

"Rough."

"That's not a kind of cloth."

"Screw you."

She closed the book with a flick of her wrist. "I'm not helping you anymore."

"Good. Fuck off."

He had lapsed into one of his moods. Help him too much and he started feeling like he needed the help. Because he did. That made him cranky, and a cranky Zoro was even more obnoxious than a regular Zoro, who just slept a lot. But this was still preferable to the zombie he turned into last week.  He had long since grown so quiet that she didn't even need hollows to make him docile.

She prodded him for more observations, and then gave up. Looking over her notes, they were slim pickings.

Everything is gray. Gray stones everywhere. The sky is gray. The mist is gray. 

I look for signs of life but there's not even a rat in the walls. 

One bird is calling. I don't recognize it. It doesn't get an answer.

The rain is falling. It sounds strange to hear it when it doesn't fall on water, after so long. 

Whatever. This was enough material for a haiku. She drifted down the hall, tapping the pencil on her lips.

The morning is gray. 

Birds I do not recognize

Sing to absent friends.

"That's a terrible poem," Mihawk observed, sipping his wine. "Perona, you disappoint me."

"How'd you know I wrote it?" she cried, then slapped one hand over her mouth. 

The silence stretched out between them, nearly palpable. 

"I thought if I made it too good, you'd notice," she huffed.

He swirled the liquid in his glass. "I have noticed anyway."

Her second attempt was a bit more flowery.

A cold dawn, alone

Overripe berries, sickening. 

At my fingers, cloth.

"You are not improving," Mihawk said. "Look deeper. Understand the form. It is not enough to pick the correct number of syllables. These images are disparate, and do not cohere."

"Isn't that the point?" Zoro said. Perona would've jumped if she hadn't been floating. Even Mihawk raised an eyebrow at him. Neither of them had expected him to speak.

Zoro glanced at them, puzzled. "It's not supposed to go together."

"Th-that's right!" Perona declared, crossing her arms. "You're supposed to be lost. This poem conveys the feeling of being lost. Scattered. Not whole."

"No, it does not," Mihawk said. "Try again."

Gray mist falls over

gray stone. A bird calls, sweet voice

Roughening with rain.

"This is nearly adequate," he said. "Keep working. You have too many ornaments. A blade is a blade. A word is a word."

This is all his fault, she fumed. All he has to do is meditate and report what he saw. 

Why did he have to notice all those depressing things? Why did he have to tell her there was only ever one bird, and it kept singing to a flock that would never return?

(If she was only a bit more observant, she'd know why. But it wasn't her fault. If you asked him, he wouldn't know either.)

The last version she managed to produce before she lost patience was this:

Gray mist and stone.

A bird calls

The rain answers.

"You didn't follow the form," Mihawk said.

"We don't have to," Perona said, sticking her tongue out. 

"Is that a pass?" Zoro said.

"No.

"Why not?"

"You could not write these on your own, and you have not learned the lesson you should have. You still have much to learn. And Perona, what was your motive for interceding? Seeking a servant whose moods are pliable to your own?"

"Leave me out of this!" she yelled.

Mihawk closed her notebook, and handed it back to her.

"You wrote him poetry," Law said. 

"Perona did."

"And you helped."

"It was to improve my sword handling."

"Of course."

"So, what did he want you to do this for?" Perona asked.

"Keep out of it."

"I helped you with it. I have a right to know. Tell me."

He didn't.

"Well, that's too bad. I know where he keeps the new newspapers. And the booze. I could lead you to one of them."

"Where are the papers?" he said. He kept his tone cool and even, but his eye was practically sparkling. 

I see through you, she thought. You listen for the bird who sings alone at dawn. She led him to the newsroom and waited as he leafed through them. 

"Anything?"

His silence was enough of the answer. 

She peered over his shoulder. He was staring unwaveringly at an opinion column. The bounty posters of his crew accompanied a piece complaining about the increased turbulence of the seas post-Whitebeard.

Her gaze fell upon one of the posters, and she let out an ear-piercing squeal. "You have a pet ?"

"He's a doctor."

She snatched the paper away from him. "So adorable !" she cooed. "Why couldn't Kuma have sent him here instead of you? Oh, you don't deserve him; I'd brush his fur, and wind ribbons around his sweet antlers, and-- he loves cotton candy, unlike a certain someone ! I'll make him all the sweets he could ever want." 

"He'd like that." 

He was starting to sound distant again. She frowned. "What's he like?" she prodded. "What colour ribbons would look best on him?"

He slid down to sit on the floor with a wince. 

"Wait. That's right. Your leg," she exclaimed. Now that she looked closely, he seemed paler than normal, and a layer of cold sweat covered his brow. The way he carried himself made her forget that he was injured. "You're not better yet! Why are you walking around so much?"

"It's not a problem."

She seethed internally. That poor, adorable, sweet little reindeer doctor didn't deserve such a patient. "Then let's get back to my question. What about pink?"

If she kept talking about the crew he cared about so much, she reasoned, he'd have to crack. He wasn't like this at Thriller Bark.

And he did. He told her about the reindeer's favourite colours and the kinds of sweets he liked. Nothing important, nothing she couldn't find in the newspapers. But this was the first time he had willingly spoken to her for such a long time. 

She found herself sharing her own stories. Her pet Kuma-A. The flower crowns she used to weave for him. How she met Moria.

At last, they arrived at the topic of how they landed on Kuraigana in the first place. 

"That Kuma..." she murmured. "What was he thinking?"

"Kuma got us, too. At Sabaody. We couldn't take him. For a second, I thought…" He trailed off, then rallied, sounding as nonchalant and unaffected as always. "Things ended up the way they were supposed to. If I'm here, and Luffy's fine, everyone else is too."

There was a peculiar expression on his face, something like... regret. It didn't seem like he could regret anything. 

"It's not like you could've done anything," she murmured, seating herself midair and drawing her knees up to her chest. "You were pretty beat up, you didn't wake up for days."

"That's not an excuse." The regret drained from his expression and into his words, like a slow fire burning in his voice.

"Hmph. If that isn't one, then what is?"

She could mouth along to his answer now. Nothing.

"No one's even going to know if you take a day off. It won't hurt your precious reputation."

"There's something more important."

"What's more important than living well?"

"Living with pride. If I can't do that, I want to die with a sword in my hand."

"So…" she clicked her tongue, frowning, "you want to be violently murdered?"

He gave her an incredulous look. "When did I say that?" 

She gave up. There was no reasoning with people like this. 

He fixed his gaze on the ceiling. "If you lose you can't make excuses. Either you win or you don't. Doesn't matter what happened before."

"Uh-huh," she said. "When you fought the baboon it was raining, and a month ago you fell for who knows how long. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Enemies won't wait to attack you when you're well-fed and rested. You shouldn't need their pity to survive."

"Hmph, that's no fun."

"You're a pirate. I shouldn't have to explain to you that if your survival depends on someone else's mercy you've fucked up."

Look who's talking! she thought. So you do resent our help. "I'm older than you, you know. You're just a kid. Don't act like you're wiser than me."

He snorted. It unsettled her, the way he stared at her like he didn't understand a word she said-- like he actually believed what he was saying. She shuddered. How terrible to live like you didn't matter.

"Not everyone thinks the way you do, you know. You act like everyone's just waiting to stab you in the back once you turn around. You know we're not going to cut you open and steal your shadow, so why do you have to defend against us?"

"If I have to explain it, you're too naive."

She growled, "I'm not some gullible idiot! You just don't want to admit that you're being irrational because you're helpless and you don't have any crew with you!"

"That isn't it," he said. His voice sounded the way a cold snap felt. "I shouldn't need any. I should be helping them. I let them down once, and I just let them down again. They shouldn't--" he shut his mouth abruptly. When he spoke again his voice was again cool, detached and factual. "They shouldn't want anything to do with me." 

Then he turned his back on her. She knew from experience that meant he had decided not to say any more. 

"Oh," she said. 

The seconds ticked past.

"You really miss them," she said. 

He kept silent. The conversation was over. He was never very willing to let her find out too much about him.

"Don't be so negative," she said. He tensed, looking for all the world like a dog preparing to be kicked. (He had an almost pavlovian response to her voice saying the word "negative.") "You made mistakes, but they're still alive. So you couldn't have done too bad."

She didn't know that he felt so responsible for his silly captain and their ragtag crew.

"I made mistakes too," she said. He looked up, surprised. "Now I don't know where Moria-sama is, or whether he's alive." She suppressed a sniffle. "The old man says the last time he saw him was at Marineford."

"You shouldn't believe he's dead until you see a body."

The resolution in his voice was reassuring, even if he was only saying that because he had to. 

"You think Moria-sama can be alive?"

He nodded. "He's annoying. Annoying people tend to live longer."

"How dare you!" 

At a long last, things felt like they were almost back to normal. 

She tapped her index fingers together, considering. "I'll show you where he keeps the wine," she said. "I'm not helping you steal it! Just showing you where it is. And if you take it, I won't tell."

"What did you put in it?"

"What would I put in it? Mihawk would kill me if I tampered with one of his vintages, and that's not cute at all." She stuck her nose in the air. "This is the last time I'll try to do anything nice for you."

"Thank you," he said. "But no. I won't break another promise."

ACK! She coughed to disguise her shock. He thanked her without any venom in his words.

"A-alright," she declared, "now that I've helped you with your work, you can help me with mine."

After making sure he hadn't walked his leg into pieces, she got him his crutches and led him to the dining hall, where she would present her manuscript. She placed her notebook upon a silver platter and set it at the head of the table. He picked it up with a casualness that she perceived to be rank disrespect, and began to read. 

He was going through the pages a lot faster than she expected for a pea-brain. She planted her hands at her hips. "Can you really understand that, or are you just pretending?" 

Briefly, he fixed his gaze on her, then turned it toward the text. He read aloud, slowly but steadily: " The leviathan lifted its serpentine head, and she espied in its yellow eye a most vile opprobrium…"

"How do you even know all those words?" she demanded.

"Dictionary," he said. He returned his attention to the notebook. His eye swept back and forth across the page, and as it did, his expression grew more and more grave. 

Her nerves rattled. Sharing one's creations with another was sharing a piece of one's innermost thoughts. "Well? What do you think? Can't you speak?"

He laid the scrapbook down on the bed gingerly, as if he were handling a venomous snake. "There's a sword fight," he said accusingly. 

"Yes, I put it in for the adrenaline junkies."

"Everything is wrong."

"Creative liberties," she sniffed. 

"The main character is really annoying."

"How dare you!"

"Is she you?"

"Of course not. That's Princess Marina." 

"There's a one-eyed swords...bear."

"Any resemblances to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental. Princess Marina needs the best retainers."

"Why are there five pages of you yelling at Kumacy?"

"For realism!"

"I thought you said she wasn't you. Are you confused about who you are?"

"What? No! I'm-- maybe. Am I?" 

As she had her identity crisis, he went back to reading. 

She chewed on her bottom lip. "Aren't you going to make fun of me?"

"For what?"

"Writing about myself!"

"Who else would you write about?"

She opened and shut her mouth a few times. "You don't think it's pathetic?" 

In a weary voice, he said, "I don't care."

Well. He was even less literary than Mihawk. Maybe he thought all writers wrote about themselves. 

She scooted closer and squinted at her own manuscript. Then she sighed. "What's wrong with the sword fight?"

"She's handling a claymore like it's a fencing foil, for one. Overhand swings with that thing shouldn't be so easy. And…" 

Her mind went fuzzy as he went on about high grounds, graded swords and how people of her build don't fling two handed blades like throwing stars. 

"Okay fine! I'll change it to a smaller sword. Now go over it again, and tell me what's wrong about it.

Despite his complaints, he did. It wasn't like he had anything else to do. 

Drat! Caught in so elementary a trap! She was well versed in the sciences of Alchemy and Arithmetic, but such meagre cleverness would not be enough to see it through. Her every breath was a reproach to her foolishness. She could bear any ill-use if it was in service of her most noble pursuits, but this was for nothing! 

"Could you get to the point any faster?"

"No, I cannot!"

She raised her blade against her foe, and as the light fell upon it she saw a most singular creature, with stitches all up the side of its blue little face and bandages round its waist, one dangling ear and a button eye. 

A toy bear, possessed of the faculty of speech and sight! At its hip was a rapier--no, three. 

He gave her another accusing glare. 

"All similarities are coincidental," she repeated, gesturing for him to go on.

"By the benighted visage of the sublunary sphere!" I cried. "What monstrous vision is this?"

"First of all, that doesn't make any sense. Second of all," he said, pointing, "you said 'I.'"

"No I didn't."

"Look. Right here, it says 'I'."

Mihawk was right. He was annoyingly sharp when he wanted to be.

"...I intended for it to be in first person anyway."

"...'I traversed the threshold of the dread portal to the--' you mean you walked out the door?"

"That doesn't set the atmosphere at all!"

"'To avenge that sanguinaceous perfidy'...Is 'sanguinaceous' a word?"

"It is now!"

"'Sanguinaceous'...don't you mean sanguineous?" 

She scrutinized him. 

He narrowed his eye back at her. "What?" 

"How do you know these words? If you say 'dictionary' again, I'll clobber you."

"As if you could--"

She summoned a hollow.

"Old man at the village made us read."

"Good. Keep reading."

"I am Kumashi the Bear. We were a band of three merry bears, but now we three each are one."

"How unfortunate!"

"Alone I have traversed this world with but my own shadow for company. I have had an epiphany about the nature of the world. Suffering is born of desire, and desire born of lack. I lack the strength to avenge my brethren, and thus desire it and suffer, but--oh! It is that desire which makes suffering easy!"

He was quite insensible, and I endeavoured to shut him up. When all my attempts failed, I engaged him in conversation.

"Kumashi, you intermingle your philosophies most dreadfully," said I. "I never imagined that a bear of fluff and fur could have such a muddled mind. Who shaped your brain? Who gave you eyes, and this form?"

In a voice devoid of any human feeling, he said, "She is dead."

"Ah, so you had a mother!"

"Not as such," said he, and was beset with such sighs as I have never heard. 

"What do you mean you never heard them? You just did."

While he understood the words she used individually, he lacked the sort of literary imagination that would allow the whole to make sense to him. He objected to her description of a grandfather clock as "despondent", and after a heated debate conceded that while clocks could have feelings they certainly did not have three-syllable feelings. She concurred, and changed the offending word to "melancholic". He sulked and refused to read more after that. She could tell he was looking for an excuse to stop, picking apart the tiniest of details. Something about Kumashi's past -- left behind by a seemingly indifferent creator, separated from his troupe of fellow stuffed bears -- seemed to nettle him.

"Wait," Perona said, halfway through her explanation of her novel's plot, "I see something! Call you back!"

"Per--"

She hung up on him. Law pinched the bridge of his nose. 

"It wasn't important anyway," Zoro said, a little too quickly.

When his eye finally recovered, Zoro returned to the corpse of the broken firs and located the corpse of the giant baboon who had copied his rival. Was this the one who took his eye? 

He buried it, and thought nothing more of it.

"...That's how it happened," Zoro said. "Any more questions?"

"Yes, just one."

"Shoot."

He leaned as close as he could, lowering his voice. "Are you alright?"

He blinked. "Yeah, why?"

"Just thought I'd ask," he said. 

"Don't tell me you're getting on my case, too."

He had to be careful with how he worded this. "Well…"

"We don't have time for that."

He was right. They didn't. They were in an emergency-- of sorts. A delicate situation, at the very least. 

The words put themselves together of their own accord. "To be frank, everything you've told me is incredibly concerning."

"What, the poetry?"

"...No, not that. Never mind," he said. "Let's talk about it later." Clearly, he didn't want to go through the gauntlet of questioning now, but they had to get to it at some point. 

If Perona's meandering tale were true, the machinery of his mind was a delicate balancing act. If you disturbed the balance, it turned him into a cauldron of anxiety and rage that could not express itself. 

His crew made him secure. Take that away, and…

"Guess who's back!" sang out a very unwelcome voice.

Law suppressed a withering curse as Perona floated toward them. Behind her was Dracule Mihawk, plumed hat stark against the gray of the submarine walls, pale skin even paler in his white silk shirt, his arms folded across his chest. His sharp yellow gaze swept across the room, and the Heart Pirates minus Law cowered when it landed on him.

Law nodded at the other former warlord in greeting, and received a nod in return. He wondered what possessed Dracule to take in Perona and travel with her. How did he stand it? Perhaps her self-absorbed childishness livened things up. 

Zoro and Mihawk greeted each other--that is, they pointedly ignored each other in a way that demonstrated their tacit acknowledgement. 

"Pardon the intrusion," Mihawk said. 

"I found him poking around some shipwrecks as usual. I thought the Marines got you," she said, turning to Mihawk and scowling.

"He cut a few scouting vessels in half," Bepo said. He sounded a little spooked. 

"Don't worry, Bepo," Perona cooed. "We're all being hunted by the same people, so we're on the same side. Right, old man?"

The "old man" chose to ignore her.

"I take it that you're aware of the situation?" Law said.

He nodded. "A curious affair. The most roundabout capture possible."

"Were you present when Perona gave her testimony over Den Den Mushi?"

"For part of it, yes. It's not without embellishments, but as far as I know, it's accurate."

"Say, why did you make him read poetry? Does it really improve observation haki?" Perona asked Mihawk. 

"No. He seemed disgruntled with his own lack of industry, so I thought I'd suggest a hobby."

"I knew it was bullshit!" Zoro yelled, reddening. 

Perona cackled in delight. "I knew it! Observation is your weakest link. Because you're not very observant."

"Why, you--"

"By the way, I found traces of the Pacifistas."

"Actually, Mihawk did. She's stealing credit," Bepo interrupted.

"Traitor!" she cried. "And I thought you were cute!" She flounced away in a huff. 

"Sorry," Bepo whimpered. 

"You found them?" Zoro asked. 

Bepo nodded. "A whole camp of them. It looked...weird. Here, we found a note."

Fire and Brimstone

Take refuge in your audacity 

Martyr God, make a saint of iniquity--

Commit virtuous sin.

Take courage, take courage

You cannot be wrong to rage

Against the tyranny of heaven. 

"It kind of rhymes. Is it a poem?" Bepo said.

"Oh no," Zoro muttered under his breath.

Perona threw him a smug look. "We're not going to make you analyze it." She floated over to it. "The meter's way off..."

"Tyranny…" Mihawk remarked. "Pacifistas are based on Kuma, the Tyrant…but that's probably ironic." 

"Who do you think God refers to in the second line? The Celestial Dragons?" 

"How did you get all that?" Zoro demanded.

"It's not hard, you're just incapable of literary analysis."

"That's not analysis. That's asspulling."

They turned back to the note. "What does the alliteration here signify?"

"Fire and brimstone. Very hellish connotations, fitting the suggestion of rebellion against the heavens…"

"There's a volcanic island near here, isn't there? That would explain the burn marks."

"Is that where it is?" he said. There was a dangerous gleam in his eye. 

"Not now, Zoro, we're trying to figure out if this is a spondee or an iamb!"

The swordsman stood up. "I'm going."

"That's too reckless," Law said. "This note cannot be more suspicious. Pacifistas must have handlers, and anyone who would set up something so elaborate cannot be simple."

"Any other objections?"

Law narrowed his eyes. He didn't like the formality in his tone. "You're not going."

"I have to."

Law could sense the beginnings of another argument. "You're not even sure this is the right island."

"It's the closest thing we've got to a lead."

"You've just admitted isn't a lead at all."

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"Stay here. Act when we have solid evidence."

Zoro opened and shut his mouth in frustrated silence. His eye darted over his face, as if to say, You understand. You understand what it's like facing a duty like this, the little voice in your head that tells you that you need to fulfil it at any cost, that maybe this is all you're good for, in an endless loop. Eventually you didn't even hear the words anymore, hardly felt the sting, only the need for action. 

He was a few steps into an impossible goal he wasn't supposed to survive. He was someone who had never truly acknowledged his pain as pain. It was either a worthy challenge to overcome or something to be minimized, dismissed, ignored, euphemized, borne in silence. Either a chance for growth, or a hindrance left to wither in the dark. The more difficult it became, the more it meant he was going in the right direction. 

Law understood that. He understood it was like to be so utterly consumed. He had resolved, ever since he recognized this, to never let Zoro become as complicated as him, never let him dedicate himself to any dream that would end in his destruction. 

Or was he projecting his own ideas onto him again? He understood him well, but not nearly as well as he would like. 

A voice broke into his thoughts. "Captain!" Shachi shouted. 

"What is it?"

"It's Boa Hancock. She's ready to see you."

Chapter Text

This timing couldn't be worse. "Now?" Law said.

"Yes. She sent the vivre card of one of her warriors by messenger bird. She'll meet us at sea," Uni said as he wheeled in a tray full of debugged snails, trailed by Shachi, Penguin and Ikkaku. 

"Weren't you being punished?" Perona asked. 

"Oh, we were. But Captain stops confiscating ears when he's in a good mood and distracted with business." Penguin moved to clap Zoro on the shoulder, thought better of it and settled for a tip of his cap. "I owe you one, man."

"Any other news?" Law said coldly.

Uni cleared his throat self-importantly. "The signal's still headed toward Impel Down, but that might not be the destination. The snail blocking the signal might not be on their ship. I think there's a second jammer somewhere acting as a decoy. The thing is, you can pinpoint…"

"Your crewmates are probably still alive," Mihawk noted. No doubt he saw the sudden pallor in Zoro's complexion. "They haven't done anything that warrants summary execution, and it would be a much more politically favourable choice to stage a trial."

 "...after removing the bugs, I had to reboot the entire system…"

"They were captured so easily," Perona said. "They must have sent their new weapons after them."

"...and snail shells are really tricky, structurally speaking..."

"A fleet of Pacifistas with annoying abilities… who write terrible poetry. You'd get along with them," Zoro muttered, causing Perona to whack him with her parasol.

"Did you know that if you feed Den Den Mushis carrots, they will turn orange and explode?" Uni said.

"They will?" Bepo said.

"No. Just checking if you were paying attention."

"We weren't."

"It just feels like my work isn't being appreciated."

"The traces of ash from the site and on the note are indeed volcanic," Mihawk said, causing Uni to slouch away, mumbling about unrecognized genius. "But no serious navy operation will use this kind of writing as a lure. It's likely a personal note that one of them dropped at the site where the Straw Hats were docked. At least three Pacifistas had passed through, judging from the tracks. It is probable these are culpable for the kidnappings."

"All that from a bit of observation. What's it like being the third best swordsman in the room?" Perona asked Zoro. 

"I'm not."

"Insulting your own boyfriend right in front of him? Real classy."

Law felt a tension headache form at his temples. "Leave our personal relationships out of this."

Mihawk raised an eyebrow at his former disciple, who reddened and crossed his arms with deliberate defiance. Law instinctively stepped closer to Zoro. 

Dracule turned his gaze to Law. It was impossible to tell whether he approved or disapproved of him. His reticence exceeded even Zoro's. So that's where he gets it from, he thought.

At last, Mihawk turned back to Zoro. "You're old enough to make your own decisions."

"Like I need you to tell me," Zoro muttered. Nevertheless, some tension went out of his shoulders. "Before I found my way here...I landed on an island covered in lava. There didn't seem to be anything else there, but…"

"Let's confirm whether this is the same island first," Law said. 

"Circular. Three peaks. One inactive, the other two flowing with lava," Zoro said. "Rocks had a strange red tint."

Mihawk nodded. "That's correct."

"Alright. Perhaps it is the same." Law turned to his navigator. "Tell us more about this volcanic island."

Bepo hung his head. "I… I can't, Captain. It's unnamed and uncharted! It's not on any map I can find."

"That's because it's manmade," Mihawk said. "It was constructed a few months ago to facilitate the capture of former Warlords like Boa Hancock, who were proving...a challenge."

There were few people capable of doing that on the four seas. An entire island created in such a short time, covered in volcanoes? Courtesy of the Fleet Admiral, no doubt.

Zoro's mouth was set in a grim line. "Akainu," he snarled, and the sound was barely human. 

"Hold on," Law said urgently. "If this is true…"

"We've beat two emperors. That bastard--"

"Is still the Fleet Admiral. It's unlikely he'll personally travel to capture the Straw Hats, even if your captain is hailed as the fifth emperor, but this island is unnatural."

Mihawk nodded. "It takes inspiration from several defensible naturally-occurring islands. It's a caldera with the main indentation slightly below sea level, allowing sea fog to suffuse it throughout the night. During the day, seawater is pumped in and turned into mist to maintain cover. The base itself is extremely large, almost entirely underground, immune to most forms of detection, and usually accessed via submarine or coated ship."

"You got all that from one visit?" Perona asked skeptically. 

"I took an interest in its architecture."

Bepo retrieved a blank template for a map. "It's lucky you landed there without being led to it. It's a hidden base... What route did you take?"

Zoro squinted at the cartographic lines. "Boa gave Luffy an Eternal Pose to Amazon Lily. I borrowed it and went this way," he said, pointing.

"I'm impressed how off course you got," Bepo noted, concentration written all over his face. "We're here in the east bay of Amazon Lily. The Straw Hats and Ghost Princess-sama" (that earned a pleased chuckle from Perona) "docked on an island to our northwest. This stretch of water takes 8-12 hours maximum to cross by canoe and 2-4 hours maximum to cross in most larger ships; crossing over to this bay without entering the main city on foot takes another 8 hours."

He drew a ragged line connecting the two islands, then one arching away. "To get to the calm belt over here, you have to deliberately avoid sailing toward Amazon Lily for days."

"Wow. Look at that. When you were in danger of going the right way, you masterfully evaded the correct path at every turn. Bravo," Perona said, sarcastically clapping until he shot her a death glare.

"Impel Down is directly west from here. This new island is probably also directly to the west, if we're correct about it replacing the function of Enies Lobby. That's probably where the Straw Hats are being taken. And they're letting us know because..."

The navy knew the Pirate Hunter's nature. At Enies Lobby, they learned no Straw Hat would restrain themselves when even one of their own was in danger. And all they had to threaten him with was death, and to him, that was no reason not to go. If they played their cards right, this was as good as ensuring his capture. 

A grim silence fell over everyone in the war room, even Perona, as they considered their options. 

"So I just have to sail there, cut the ground open and rip them out?" Zoro said. 

"There's sea stone reinforcements."

"Pure sea stone?"

"Probably not. This is a temporary base."

"Then the plan stays the same."

Mihawk shook his head. "Boy, you're too willing to die."

Zoro shot Mihawk a furious look, but the older swordsman did not so much as blink. "Who's going to die?"

Perona yelled, "Enough fighting!"

"You're right. It's been too long. Either they've reached their destination or they're..." He cut himself off. "There's no time. I have to go."

Law had to pry his sentences apart to hear what he meant. It felt like performing a highly fraught surgery. He loved his crew--so fiercely it bled out of his terse, unwilling narrative--and he valued them far, far above his own life.

"I'm not letting you do this," Law said. 

Zoro didn't react at first. Then he turned his head wordlessly toward him. The betrayal in his expression made his gut twist. 

"They were strong enough to capture your entire crew. What makes you think you have any chance?"

"Do I have another choice?"

"Yes. Come with me to speak to Boa Hancock."

His eye widened. "What?"

"I'm going to see her as planned."

"You can't be serious. How long will that take?"

"Don't let your emotions cloud your judgement. Think this through. It's unknown territory. You know nothing about the enemy forces. At the very least it's a heavily guarded navy base containing forces they plan to use to capture a swordsman who is your superior. You cannot go in blindly against such impossible odds." As soon as the words left his mouth, he clenched his jaw. Idiot, he told himself. I might as well be daring him to do it.

"I'm not going in blindly. We've got a description." Zoro stood. "Devil fruit users are useless there. I'll go alone."

"What about us?" Bepo said.

"You'll only get in my way."

"Don't disrespect my crew," Law said, an edge in his voice. 

"I'm just telling the truth," he said, the grey of his eyes like steel. "You're not my captain. You can't give me orders."

Don't act so surprised, Law thought to himself. To him, anything less than death is nothing. You saw him against Kaido. You've seen those scars. You knew what you signed up for when you chose to love him. 

"Chose", he thought. What a joke. As if Law had any choice in the matter. 

"You're not going alone," Law growled. "I won't take you there."

"I never expected you to help me," he snapped back. 

That broke something in him. Suddenly, the eyes in the room felt too prying, too invasive. 

"We'll discuss this elsewhere," Law said. He sliced open a Room and took himself and Zoro away.

Zoro stumbled, and steadied himself against Law before letting go. The abruptness of it made something in his chest ache.

But it was best to treat this as a transaction of sorts. A negotiation. 

"Where are we?"

"Captain's quarters," he muttered. "This is the only place where the others are sure not to bother us when we discuss--"

"There's nothing to discuss."

"Will you curb your pride for a moment and think? I know you have a brain. You're capable of level-headedness. Do you even have a plan? Beyond rushing in," he snarled. "You were lucky enough to evade capture; the least you can do is use this advantage. This overly elaborate trap… we can't be sure what they're playing at."

"Is that supposed to scare me? You keep saying the same things over and over. Don't treat me like an idiot."

"If you stop acting like one I will." 

"You think I can't do it," he said, and he wasn't referring to the rescue.

"No, and you know that's not it."

"What, then? You don't want me to do it? I know you don't care about them, but you can't tell me to abandon them--"

Is that how you see this? I know what losing them will do to you. Do you think I'll let that happen? he thought. 

The table might as well be a chasm between them. 

"Think about it logically!" 

"I am!"

"You are infuriating ," he said. 

"You don't want me to do it. Just because you can't?"

"What do you know about what I can or can't do?" he said, his voice barely above a hiss. 

"You don't trust me ," he said. 

"Are you really doing this? Don't turn this on me."

"Then why are you here?"

He shut his eyes. "It's not for you to know," he said. "My goals are--"

"More important than mine."

"You--" he reined in his rising ire with difficulty, before he said something he regretted. 

"You have your own goal. You're willing to throw your life away for it. What's the difference?"

He took a deep breath. How could he possibly explain it? It would be like…

Like letting a sublime moment slip away, subsumed into the abyss. This world already had so little goodness left in it. Would any ordinary sailor be able to sit back and watch, with this unbreakable tranquility, as the north star wavered and dimmed? 

Look at you, he thought. Do you think I could let you go? There's nothing in the world like you. 

"I know you've given your life to them, not me. I know your recklessness comes from a place of care. I respect that. It's because I respect you and what you could do for the world that I want you to live. Can you promise me that?"

Zoro gave him a look so agonized that he hoped for a moment that he'd gotten through to him. "Sorry," he said. "But there's no time."

A weary resignation, heavy as lead, settled on his shoulders. 

What did you just learn? He finds helplessness intolerable. Tell him to take the safe path and he finds it suffocating. If you wrest control away from him, he'll fight you to take it back.

"This was a mistake," Law said, and he didn't know what he was referring to. 

"Yeah."

"I can't keep doing this."

"Then don't."

"Do you ... Do you not trust us?"

He didn't answer immediately.

You don't, he thought. You don't trust us not to introduce the doubt in your mind that you are letting us down. 

The words collapsed into a knot in his head.

You can trust me, he wanted to say. He wanted to reach out and hold his face, but they didn't have time and they didn't have the space, even in the cramped interior of a submarine. 

Remember, he told himself, what we're dealing with. It feeds back into itself, an ouroboros of bone that will not soften, will not yield. It has had two decades to gel, to cement itself in his psyche, and it worked. He is strong enough to withstand the rigors of the duties he inflicts on himself. Much like a glass jar can hold itself together under crushing pressure after shattering. His armour isn't ice, which melts with a little heat, or metal-- it is water, and will drown all opposition. 

Law was meddling with machinery that took almost twenty years to assemble. It would be the easiest thing to screw it up. 

"You still haven't found anyone to live for," Law said.

"What does that mean?

"You act," he said, "as if you need to be willing to butcher yourself on the point of your own blade to be worth anything at all. You act like your life is supposed to be full of pain."

"It is."

"Do you hear yourself?" 

"If I die," Zoro said, "it's not your responsibility. It'll have nothing--"

"Say that again," he snarled. 

He met his gaze determinedly and continued, "-- nothing to do with you."

"Your life or death...has nothing to do with me?" His voice was barely audible. "Do you really believe that?"

"Wait…" He stepped backward. "I didn't mean…"

With great effort, he subdued his own temper. He should be offering support. He should explain his perspective to him levelly. But more importantly, he had to stop him. 

He took another breath. "At Onigashima, when you took on Kaido... Do you know what happened to you afterward?"

The anger in his expression wavered. "You helped me."

"You lost two litres of blood before I could get you into the theatre. Your veins were collapsing."

"I've lost more."

"I found bone fragments in your arteries. One of your ribs nearly punctured a lung. Do you know how much internal scarring you have?"

"You fixed me," he said, almost gently.

"Yes, punishment never holds on you."

"Then why is there a problem?" Zoro asked, his voice roughening with desperation-- pleading for someone to tell him where he went wrong, where the weakness lay, so he could cut it out of himself. 

His hands curled into fists. You are strong beyond imagination but you are not invulnerable. Until you are, I can lose you, and I refuse to. Not again. Not again.  

Law couldn't say that. Not in a way that he could understand. How could he understand?

"You have no idea," Law said, "what it was like."

"I know I don't understand," he said, with that rare, almost pleading softness in his tone. "I know you've been through--" he stopped. "I can help. With whatever you're doing. You don't have to tell me. I know it's important to you."

"What could you do? You couldn't save me. I would be the one saving you."

Zoro stared at him. All the emotion fell out of his voice and he was suddenly frosty, polite. "Then I won't waste more of your time."

The door slammed shut behind him.

"Get out," Law said to an empty room.

Law returned alone to the war room. His nerves felt like they were on fire. 

Perona looked bewildered. The sight of her miscomprehension irritated his already inflamed temper. "You've done enough. Leave."

To his surprise, she didn't screech about disrespect. She tilted her head. "You're letting that angry cactus wander this place unsupervised?" 

"He'll never find his way out by himself, and he's not stupid enough to sink the submarine," he said. "If you have any more inane--"

"Did you ever ask him about his past?"

"How is that relevant?"

"You didn't seem to know much about it, that's all."

The reply he had prepared died on his lips.

The topic of their personal histories came up in conversation once or twice. Zoro knew enough of Law's childhood not to ask. Zoro himself was born in a small village in the East Blue and lived there until he was of age to leave. He never brought it up on his own, nor did he seem to avoid questions on it. It simply… wasn't. It was a non-entity. Zoro seemed so...so complete, so fixed, so immovable. It was almost easier to imagine him coming out of the womb fully grown than to imagine him as a child.

Law didn't have the time to interrogate that right now. "Get off my submarine." 

"Hmph," she said, looking mildly disapproving, "I hope you're not also a pea-brain." She flew out before he could retort. 

He couldn't kick Dracule Mihawk out unless he used finesse, but he had barely the patience left to be diplomatic. Thankfully, the former warlord didn't seem keen to remain on board either. Before he departed, he paused at the doorway and asked, "What business did you have with Boa Hancock?"

"A means to an end," he said.

"As evasive as always," he said. He glided out of the room, phantomlike. 

Law all but fell into his chair. 

Quicksand, he thought, taking off his hat and burying his face in his hands. His mind was quicksand. If you didn't catch on in time, and if you let yourself sink too far, you could not escape.

"There there, Captain," Bepo soothed, cautiously wrapping his arm around him and patting him on the head. "We're here for you."

"I'm fine," he said, though he made no move to stop his navigator.

"It's his loss, captain, remember that. You're worth more than this. The nerve of--"

"We didn't break up," he said flatly. This one conversation would not be the end of them.

"Really?" Bepo brightened for a moment, then dimmed again. "But…"

"We had a disagreement." Even as he said it, a surge of doubt curdled in him. "I have to go talk to him."

"Wait," Bepo said hurriedly. "Maybe it's best to leave him to cool off."

Yes, that would be the intelligent thing to do, but he wanted to see him. He had to see him. He didn't know if he was alright. He--

He disciplined himself and said, "Take the vivre card we received from the Pirate Empress and set course for where it leads. Go find him and tell him he may stay on board if he'll be reasonable. If not, show him out. Either way, whatever you do, don't let him out of your sight. Do I make myself clear?"

"Aye aye, Captain!" Bepo saluted. 

It took him longer than he wanted to regain his calm. Bepo returned before he managed to get all his nerves in order. 

"Sorry it took so long, captain! There was a little device malfunction in the mess hall that we had to sort out. He's staying put, and I told the others to watch him."

He nodded, not moving from his seat. "Thank you."

"Are you okay, Captain?" Bepo asked softly.

He rubbed his temples. "I've been better."

"We can make you some coffee," he offered. 

"Why does she know so much about him that I don't?"

Bepo blinked in surprise. "Captain?"

"He trusts me less with things he trusts with...outsiders."

"Maybe it's not you," Bepo said. "If she finds out his secrets, he knows she'll exploit them. And she doesn't rely on him, so he can keep her at arm's length. If he shows you anything, he doesn't know when you will use it against him, and he can't get away from his responsibility to you. What if you trust him less because of it? It's no wonder he doesn't like that kind of uncertainty."

He stared at his navigator. Bepo began to tremble under the force of his scrutiny.

"I'd never exploit him," he said at last.

"Oh of course, Captain!" Bepo rushed to reassure him. "I don't even know what I'm talking about. Please don't be offended. I bet that he keeps this from his crew, too."

This wasn't the first time Bepo tried to give him relationship advice. Shortly after the raid, a book turned up in his office, without fingerprints. He had to threaten his entire crew with nose removal (since they liked sticking it where it didn't belong) before Bepo confessed and had to clean the underside of the submarine as punishment. (Law had tried following some of its advice, but complimenting Zoro on his appearance got a non-reaction, unless it was also a compliment to his strength. Besides, the rest of the book wasn't relevant in the slightest, and the word "lover" implied things that didn't fit. The writers of this book didn't understand them at all. There was no reason to force their relationship into a shape that other people recognized.)

"Did you hear what he said?"

"I wasn't eavesdropping, I swear!" Bepo immediately protested, trying not to look guilty. 

"I… never mind." He closed his eyes. What did it matter if Bepo heard them or not? "He said it wouldn't be my responsibility if he died. How little does he trust me?"

Bepo's lip began to quiver with indignation on his behalf. 

"Or…" he let his head drop in his hands. "Or that's just his way of reassuring me."

Were they doomed to watch this tired farce of an argument play out over and over between them? Even when they understood each other perfectly, they were trapped. They couldn't help but move down the same tracks. Law thought he had accepted this part of him, but...

"Why is he like this?" he muttered. 

"You're too good for him, like we said."

"It was a rhetorical question, Bepo." 

"Sorry."

He knew exactly why. There was a part of him that wanted his crew to keep relying on him, and if they knew the toll it took on him, they couldn't. Law couldn't claim to be any better -- he had concealed the extent of his injuries from his own crew after getting away from Hawkins until he healed them.

Damn it. They were too alike for their own good. 

He thought back on Bepo's words. There was a ring of truth to them. A flickering light incites more fear than one gone dark, because it is unpredictable. Why didn't he think of this?

You just learned what this does to him. He has limits, he berated himself. He has a breaking point. 

"I was too harsh. No, don't lie," he said tiredly, when he saw Bepo about to protest. "That could have been handled far better. This isn't the first time we've discussed this. I...let myself overreact..."

"It's hard for you too, Captain."

"That's no excuse."

Bepo seemed like he had more to say. He kept opening his mouth and then shutting it, scratching sheepishly at his ears. 

"Spit it out, Bepo. I won't take offense."

"With all due respect, you think like a civilian when it comes to him."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Well," he hesitated, "he's right about one thing. It's…" Bepo hung his head. "I hate to say it but he's right. We're pirates. If they've got his crew...he has to go save them."

His every word dripped with malice. "Then you think I should value his life as little as he does?"

Bepo said tentatively, "Captain…"

"I've heard enough."

He was thinking like a civilian. As if their relationship would follow the same rules. As if their future could be peaceful. As if they could ever be content with idle, domestic calm. He was imagining a future of quiet moments on the deck of a submarine sharing misshapen onigiri. Law couldn't help it. Zoro reminded him too much of… simpler times, of a time where the future was an expanse of limitless possibilities and not a monotonous train of death and war. His whole crew had given his life a new definition, and for that he couldn't begin to envision how to repay them. 

He didn't want harm to come to any Straw Hat, but Zoro's life was not a price he wanted to pay to ensure their safety. 

Perhaps it was selfish of him, but Law didn't want a future without him. 

Law didn't want Zoro to sacrifice himself for his ideals. He wanted him to trust him enough to set down his strength for just a moment. Law knew he was a hypocrite for wanting this when he would not do the same. But this was the New World. It didn't have any space for softness. It might not be his crew who had been kidnapped,  but if it came to it, Law had a life, too, to lay down.

After about an hour of sailing, the vivre card ceased to move. The shadow of the looming Perfume Yuda dwarfed the Polar Tang. The two venomous serpents pulling the galleon flickered their tongues at him, their yellow eyes bright. 

He lifted the scrap of paper, and a few of the Kuja lowered their bows. They regarded him with more curiosity than hostility. "You must be Luffy's friend!" one of them called. 

"Absolutely not," he said, teeth audibly grinding. 

"No one is allowed below deck at the moment due to the Gorgon's Curse. You'll have to wait in the lobby."

His temple pulsed. "For how long?"

"It will only take an hour."

A gangplank was lowered, and he passed rows of the tall, fur-clad warriors. He followed them to a waiting room, where a wizened old woman was pouring out two cups of clear liquid. 

A former Empress playing receptionist for a current one. He was being shown a lot of face. 

Gloriosa placed one wide cup in front of him. "This is a concoction that will prevent you from lying. You may refuse to respond, but every word will be true. There are some potential physical side effects," she said, sliding over what looked like a medical release form. 

"Fine," he said, after skimming through it. He had his own ways of telling the truth in pieces and concealing by omission. This he could work with. "But it would be rude for a guest to partake before his host."

"Haha! Clever man." She poured herself a glass and downed it in one shot, then into the same glass poured another portion. "If you want to use your own cup, be my guest. It won't make a difference. We may hail from the island of serpents, but our venom is harmless when ingested."

"Thank you for granting my request."

"An enemy of the Celestial Dragons will always be welcome."

His cup froze halfway to his lips. "You know." 

"Do you think you can hide such a thing from us? I've seen more of the world than you have sailed."

He set down his cup with a clatter. "Tell me why I should trust you." Already, he was working systematically down his list of ways to silence them, and none of them were possible. Hancock was one of the most powerful of the seven warlords, possessing a large crew skilled in haki usage and mastery of all three forms herself. He might survive a direct confrontation with her, but not without pyrrhic losses. 

The former Empress regarded him gravely, undeterred by his hidden threat. "They are our enemies too," she said. "Only our Hebihime-sama knows. She will not tell."

"Why?"

"They are not strong, and yet have the temerity to threaten our Empress' sovereignty. It is unforgivable."

That was the worst excuse he had ever heard, but he'd let it go for now. The rumours about a gorgon's mark on her back…ludicrous. She had something to hide. He thought he knew what, and if he was right, then there was no need for mistrust. "If I recall correctly, Fishman Island will be erecting a monument to Fisher Tiger in celebration of the Fishman Relocation Phase 1 plan," he said. "It's already causing diplomatic friction. I can't help but be curious how your captain will respond."

Her eyes immediately sharpened. "I am sure the Empress will be in full support."

He smiled slightly. That is indeed a good reason to oppose the Celestial Dragons. Her hatred might run as deep as his own. Was that the reason for her incomprehensible allegiance to Luffy? He was the only one with the gall to directly challenge one of them since Fisher Tiger's rebellion. Those wounds remain fresh in their collective memory. 

"I think we've come to an understanding," she said.

He nodded. I will not reveal what I suspect, you will not reveal what I know. A fair deal. 

He drank from the cup, and frowned. "This is just vodka."

"In vino veritas," she said placidly. 

He decided not to question it, or drink any more.

"Your allies don't seem to see the need for secrecy. Their captain doesn't conceal his name."

"That's because Straw Hat-ya is an idiot. He announces his intentions to the world without regard for caution."

"I see." She sipped her tea. "So what's going on between you and that Straw Hat first mate?"

Keeping his expression perfectly intact, he set his cup down again and dabbed at the stain he left on the tablecloth. "You've done your research on me."

"Well, you don't seem to have made any attempt to hide it."

"It would be futile. That crew has no sense of secrecy." He sighed. He could not afford to offend the Kuja pirates. "Why do you bring it up?"

"We have another hour before our Princess arrives, and that's the most interesting thing about you that I know of."

"I have a coin collection," he said flatly.

"Uninteresting." She examined him critically as she poured herself some more "truth serum." "You're a strange pair. Why are you together? Is he that beautiful?"

Is the ocean vast? he was tempted to retort. Instead, he said, "You Kuja have a saying that strength is beauty. He is certainly very strong."

"Not giving anything away, yet not offending me by outright refusing my curiosity. You have a mind like a surgeon's knife, child," she said, knocking back the liquor. "But when a mind like yours meets a mind like an unpolished stone, who is the wiser?"

"You mean a scalpel."

"And there it is! You hide in a labyrinth of words. Truth has many names, you know. What you call a scalpel may also be a lancet. You are clever but not wise, or you'd know there's no sense in asking reason of love."

"Someone has told me as much."

"If love made sense, a lot of people would be much happier. They will choose a love that will fulfil their needs. Then they will love and nothing else will matter. But most of the time, you know... you are asking for something the other person doesn't know how to give."

"And what's that?"

"Dependence. You love him now, but love can fade."

If you could feel what I feel now, you would not think so. "Is that so?"

"He can't trust you to want him forever. I mean no insult," she said when he rose, a contemptuous sneer on his face. "It's the common condition of love. You can never be certain it'll last, no matter how strong and how real it is. To love is the worst form of violence you can do to someone. You hold hostage their thoughts and passions and their every pain becomes your own. You take and take and take, and you demand at knifepoint they do the same for you. It is a hurricane."

"What exactly did you put in your own drink?" he said.

"To love someone you must be willing to suffer for them, and they must be willing to suffer for you. And there's the paradox. You must ask another to suffer for you, and because they suffer, you do too. You ask someone to mingle their blood with poison, so closely that they cannot be separated."

Law was beginning to suspect that she was using this as a chance to complain about an old flame of hers. From what he knew of the Kuja, love was like a plague to them-- the deadliest of illnesses. He heard, a while back, why Gloriosa had stepped down as Empress. 

He didn't plan to indulge this conversation any further. But...

"It doesn't make sense, does it," he said, mostly to himself. "We trust each other, and yet… there are vulnerabilities he will not show me."

"Ah, that's not a surprise. Trust doesn't mean that you share everything. I've seen his type," she grumbled. "They've got confused ideas. When he believes he deserves your respect and trust, when he is secure in the knowledge he will not disappoint you, he can show you vulnerability. When he's led to believe he is not good enough for those he depends on, suddenly, trust becomes weakness. Bonds become shackles. Dependence is a liability. When he is no longer of use, he expects you to discard him. It is against logic to love him, and he would not accept an illogical love from you. He can only trust and rely on you when he can trust and rely on himself. If he becomes compromised, so does everyone else."

"That's absurd," he said.

"That's human."

So he's doing all this to ensure he deserves me? To convince himself he's not unworthy? Impossible. 

Zoro didn't have any doubts. He couldn't possibly think he wasn't good enough for Law. How could he, when...

And then he came to a realization.

He had no doubts, yes, but that was impossible. Everyone had doubts. Some people were just better at suppressing them.

Do you see now? his own inner voice taunted himself. He is a creature of such certainty that if you asked him whether the glass was half full or half empty, he'd pour out the water so there'd be no confusion. You know what it's like to live a life where you cannot rely on the kindness of others to survive. You know what irrationalities it has bred in you. He is only human. Just like you.

You're looking for a weakness that he doesn't know he has. And if he finds it in himself, he will try to kill it.

"Of course, I don't know you, or whoever it is you're pining after," Gloriosa said, well and truly hammered. "But whoever it is, he's not as clever, but I dare say he's wiser. An unpolished stone has not been shaped into anything it is not. But you must create phantasms for yourself. Young men these days are too selfish…It's a willing partnership! You must be willing to take on one another's pain. It is sharing half your joys and sorrows…but who wants their loved ones to sorrow..."

Gloriosa was about to launch into another rambling aside, when an incredulously supercilious voice disrupted her musings. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Ah, Hancock," Gloriosa said, staring up at the looming Snake Empress. "I have performed the ceremonial liquor-sharing intended to make this man speak truth."

"You're not supposed to drink with him!" 

Hancock dragged the old woman deeper into the ship, despite her protestations. Law could hear a muffled argument ensue between them -- something about "Talking about your exes with visitors" and "I don't care if he looked like he needed to loosen up! Go sober up!"

The door was suddenly flung open, Boa Hancock pointing imperiously beyond Law while looking down so much on the former Empress her eyes were fixed on the clouds. Gloriosa shook her head and tottered through it, muttering something about younger generations. 

Boa Hancock stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, lips pursed in a sour line, her cloak settling around her shoulders like an aurora on a snowy horizon. "Do not mind her," she said, flicking her curtain of black hair over one shoulder as she turned to leave. "My sisters will show you the way to the meeting room."

He was ushered to the room by Boa Marigold and Boa Sandersonia. A towering throne stood in the center, flush against the wall, with no curtains to conceal hidden assassins, elevated at least five steps above floor level. The ceiling sloped as one went further in, and visitors had to kneel before it once they reached the throne. The Empress wanted to show them the world ran on her time, on her orders. Only a monarch insecure in their power would go to such lengths to ensure subservience.

She was waiting on her throne, her cheek resting on the knuckles of her fist. The serpent Salome wound her coils around her feet. "Well? What do you want to ask?"

"Can we delay our talk to another time?"

Her eyes flashed. "I agreed to one meeting, Trafalgar. I am not to be toyed with. You may have saved--"

"It's the Straw Hats."

A layer of sheetrock crumbled in her expression. "What happened?"

He told her. She rose hurriedly, all her airs forgotten. "Why didn't you say so sooner? I know of that accursed island. Sandersonia! Marigold! Sound the alarms! Hoist the anchor! It is a national emergency!"

A whirl of activity ensued, with warriors pouring out of every corner to raise sails and pull up the anchor. Shouts rose, ropes creaked, and Boa Hancock, dressed for war, prepared to ride into battle on behalf of the Straw Hats.

"Thank you for the information, Trafalgar. We'll resume as soon as the matter is resolved," she called as she stepped on Salome and was spirited off. 

Law stood alone in the throne room. What did those Straw Hats ever do to win her loyalty? he thought to himself.

Bepo was waiting for him on the deck when he returned to the Polar Tang via his Room. 

"Boa Hancock agreed to help," Law said. "Tell that stubborn fool we're headed to intercept his ship."

Instead of responding, Bepo trembled violently, looking almost as terrified as he did facing the hordes of Beast Pirates.

Foreboding lanced through him like a numbing agent. "What is it?"

"I'm sorry," he wailed. "We took our eyes off him for one second!"

The foreboding turned to dread, flash-freezing his blood in his veins. "What happened?"

"Zoro's gone!"

"When?" Law said, the word precise and trenchant as a knife.

"I-- I don't know. Maybe when we surfaced? I thought he was still in the mess hall, everyone swore that he was there, but somehow he snuck out and figured out how to use the escape trunk..."

Law's expression grew grave as Bepo hiccuped his way through his explanation. 

"We're so sorry! It will never happen again!"

"What's done is done," he said. His own voice seemed to be coming from far away. He told himself to remain calm, even as his nails bit white crescents into his palms. "Set course for the volcanic base. We can't afford the navy getting ahold of him."

"Captain, we know you're worried about him. You can just say it."

If you all know it, I hardly need to, he thought.

"Do you have a plan?"

"Are you questioning a direct order?" He said. 

"No, Captain!" he shouted, saluting. 

The submarine creaked, the doors shut and prepared for submersion. 

Let me be on time, he thought, his mind a numb blur. I've done enough to destroy the ones I love.

Chapter Text

In a factory deep in a range of snowcapped mountains, a lump of shape-memory metal labelled PX-315 shuddered, stepped off the assembly line and came into being.

PX-315 did not have memories of the time before. In the time before, PX-315 did not exist. Now PX-315 had a name and it meant peace.

There was a man in a white coat and glasses that hid his eyes, and he was good. PX-315 knew this because the man in white put this knowledge in all of them. They were all named for peace. Peace that would last forever. Peace that would never break. They will be the ones who keep it from breaking.

The man in the white coat pushed up his glasses and gave PX-315 a job.

PX-315 destroyed the wall to the village, as instructed, blasted through mortar and uprooted the vegetation. Marines poured through the opening PX-315 had made, shouting in languages he did not understand. Soon there was blood. PX-315 stepped forward to scan the ones who escaped and shoot those whose names bore a price.

PX-315 had a name, and it meant peace.

Then there was a noise like shouting, but not as loud. More humans ran up to him, and he scanned them. Their names had no prices attached to them, so he did not shoot. They had water in their eyes, and they spoke in a language he did understand. PX-315 had saved them from something. A young child ran up to him and pressed a flower into his palm. He felt like something was missing.

The man in the white coat gave them more rules, more jobs. The humans talked to each other but never to him. He could not understand most of them, but he was learning.

The next time he went to that village, no one had names without prices. Everything was burning, and everyone PX-315 scanned had to be shot. Bright yellow beams lit up the sky. PX-315 had no time to pause until his work was done. He looked up at the burning trees and down at the crushed flowers lying at his feet.

This is not peace, he thought, and the thought was new. This was not peace. He was named for a lie.

When they returned to the factory, the humans were quiet. Some of them had water in their eyes, the younger ones. Did they find out it was a lie? PX-315 thought.

(But maybe it was not a lie. All that is good can be used for evil.)

A new man came to visit them. His coat was white, too. He did not have glasses and he did not look the Pacifistas in the eyes. He gave a speech to the humans, waving his arm as he spoke of Justice. The word hung on his mouth, gleamed where it was emblazoned on his back. He said (and PX-315 could not hear all of it, since he did not look at him):

Mistaken identity--

--necessary sacrifices--

--keep the peace.

15-- / -- / --

17:54

Coordinates: [EXPUNGED]

RECEIVED

It is best not to know too much about the people you protect. If the soldiers know too much of the common citizen, they'd realize what a hollow little thing life is, and they may grow lax in their duties.

REPLY

Any survivors?

RECEIVED

None.

PX-315 learned the meaning of "control." "Control" was a box in his head that told him what to do. It responded to "language." Language was…

It was. It just was.

It meant, and did, and was, words and words and words of it.

He was thinking.

It was not good for a hero to think and question. It prevented action. It was a good thing PX-137 was not a hero.

(Right now he was not a mind, only a few flickerings of consciousness, a bundle of impulses in a metal body. Right now he was little more than a puppet. But he was beginning to think, and that was dangerous.)

Every day they would take more of him out of the box. He could not remember what they took but he knew that it was important somehow. He couldn't stop them from opening the compartment in his head and running the current through its circuit. It left behind a void, a little like the time before. Like being born again and again and again into a new world, every time the same one. Everytime he was himself.

Minutes collapsed into minutes into minutes. When he opened his eyes again it was today, just like it was yesterday, and something else was missing. He no longer belonged to himself. Maybe he never did.

One day, PX-315 took "control." He didn't mean to do it. He just wanted to see the box. But as soon as he took it out, he found that "control" was his. It belonged to him.

The box was small and flat and full of wires. It didn't look like "control."

PX-315 learned more language. He learned words for peace in many of them. Paix. Paz. Pax. PX-315 knew peace. The man in the white coat put the knowledge in his head.

Every day, he put another notch into a compartment inside him. There were many notches he could not remember.

But now the box didn't tell him what to do. He did. He wrote it all down-- the bits of language he overheard. Even if he couldn't remember, he had the writing.

Another pirate invasion…

...even the East--same areas...

...should have taken out Whitebeard a long time…

...too notorious, the flag isn't protecting…

PX-315 remembered at last what was missing. One of them had another name. The first one, PX-0.

Kuma. That was one of their names.

Kuma belonged to the time before. What else was in the time before?

(A lot, as he found out. He had only been born a month ago.)

He was learning, and he knew it. He could hear what they said around him.

Those things creep me out. They look so...alive. Feels like they're looking at you.

Laughter, high, mocking, insecure.

They're just tools. There's no mind in there. They can't look at you.

PX-315's body was cold and metal and tall enough to fill a room. He felt a warmth in his chest. It was a bad warmth, like a broken wire, a beam that didn't make it to its target. He did not know the name for this feeling yet, but he knew what peace meant.

I had a name and it was a lie. Are names always lies?

He turned his palm to the light. A faded daisy, as brittle as old paper, lay tucked in the creases of his hand. He remembered it came from a time before he existed.

The flower, like some yellow-white eye, stared up at him. He remembered that time when he did not exist and he knew that was impossible. One could remember, yes, but no one could remember a time they did not exist.

He had memories of the time before. Impossible.

He pictured the face of the man in the coat of justice, speaking those words, the meaning of sacrifice, and the warmth seemed to expand.

I will show you the meaning of peace, he thought.

PX-315 felt warm, and then did not feel anything at all. If he disobeyed the men in the white coats, he was only living up to his name.

Something was not quite right. He was starting to think of himself as a self.

He started learning the language of fiction, of unreality, of possibilities and impossibilities. He had to find a way to express this heat, describe the process of coming into being, fully formed, into a world inimical to his very existence. He found discarded newspapers and shredded documents, and he used small shards of metal to cut new words in.

I was born a thousand times

in a thousand bodies

And none of them are me.

I held out a hand

and asked for deliverance

But I am the one who grants it.

If this is heaven--

--forget me. I have grown unused to pain.

PX-315 had a new job. There was a brigantine with a lion's face, and he had to destroy it. He would have to burn it like the trees in that village, break its masts like the stems of the daisies.

He would not do this alone. There were two hundred of them waiting in wasp-combed stone cells beneath the sea. There were three others, all named for peace. One could make things fly. One could hide anything from sight. One could make walls that would never break. They would help him destroy the ship.

PX-315 thought about this new job. He looked at the three others.

"Do you remember the one named Kuma?" he said. He did not have a voice before today. He had taken the tools left in the shed where they docked and gave himself one. "From the time before?"

The three others did not respond. They did not remember the time before. They could not.

"Follow me," he said, using Kuma's voice. They obeyed. It wasn't a conscious decision, or even a decision at all. The man in the white coat had put the commands in their heads. They had to listen.

WHAT THEY DIDN'T TELL LAW

The day Zoro mastered armament, he and two racks worth of wine bottles from the cellar disappeared. When he showed up at dinner, a little dehydrated but otherwise unscathed, it was like watching a coiled spring unwind. There was an ease and even slackness in his manner. He greeted her pleasantly and complimented Mihawk on the quality of his vintages.

That dinner marked the first time he smiled since his mentor levied the no-drinking edict.

That cemented her opinion that Mihawk possessed a tendency shared with most people at the peak of their field, most truly excellent craftsmen -- he was not the best teacher. Most of his techniques were first nature to him, and opaque to the uninitiated. His skill at teaching lay in leading by example. The pea-brain copied him in style, in behaviour, in his taste for heady wines and ridiculous asceticism.

The next time he vanished after training, Perona flew out to the corner of the forest where the humandrills were buried. She found him leaning against a round wooden barrel, toasting his victory to a plain stone marker using an empty bottle.

"There you are," she said.

His unfocused gaze found its way up to her. "Mhm."

She'd never seen him look quite so content. "From your stories about drinking with your crew, I didn't know it was possible for you to get drunk. How many ounces did it take?"

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, then raised the bottle as if it were a glass. "Want some?"

She sighed. "No, you boozehound. It's not cute to get sloppy."

"What do I have to do," he said, refilling his bottle with the cask, "to get you off my case?"

"Well, you could start calling me Perona instead of ghost girl. Ghost Princess is okay too."

"Okay," he said.

Huh. He sure acted different when drunk. Friendly enough, but weird. She was seeing a side of him that perhaps no one would ever see again. It was a little like walking in on an interview meant for another person.

She waited until he had drunk even more to make her first attack. "Why do you always drink out here? It's all muddy."

"Why do you wanna know?"

"You never talk about yourself."

"Why does that matter?"

"I suppose it doesn't."

She knew that wouldn't get her anywhere. She changed tack.

"How'd you meet that rubber idiot?"

He reacted with a grimace. "Don't get me started," he complained, though he did anyway. "There was a guy with an axe for a hand..."

As his stories went, it was short and raised more questions than it did answers. "So wait, you agreed to be tied to a post for a month?"

"Yeah."

"What did you eat?"

"I didn't."

"Then why did you agree to-- If you stayed the whole month, you could've starved!"

"I wasn't gonna."

"How'd you know?"

"Did it before."

"You went a month without eating? Why?"

He frowned in her direction. "You know how when you're six years old...you don't have any money?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, that."

"Where were your parents?"

"That's a good question," he said, voice slurring. He lifted the newly empty bottle to his mouth, and furrowed his brow. "Got any more of this...?"

"Behind you," she said.

Once he turned his back on her, she kicked the barrel and took the spare bottles stashed behind them away.

"Liar," he said, sulkily. He reached for the bottle in her hand, and she held it above his head. He scowled at her.

"No more," she chided. "You're acting strange."

"How?"

"You lost your parents."

"Didn't," he began, as he made an effort to stand, swayed a bit, and then fell back down, "didn't lose them."

"Your parents left you," she said.

He had opted to lie flat on the ground instead of moving, muttered something that sounded like "Sure." Or maybe "shut it."

"And you just accepted they were gone?"

The full moon painted cold shadows on his face. He stared up at the night sky, as if it held some arcane fascination for him. "Why not?" he said absently. "Wasn't like they..." He refocused. "They weren't coming back."

"Oh," she said.

He squinted at her. "Why are you crying?"

"I'm not!"

This story reminded her a bit too much of her own for comfort. You had a family. You lost them. Or they lost you. Either way something was lost. Then you get a new family, but they don't stay. Like a kind of twisted magic show -- now you have them, now you don't. Then again you couldn't lose what you never had in the first place. 

"So you just wandered around by yourself. No wonder you got lost. No one taught you left from right."

"Do I what?" he said. He didn't seem to have heard her.

"Don't you ever think about...about what it would be like? If they never left?"

"No," he said with a note of finality.

This is what happens when people grow up without servants. They get all...self-contained, and fashioned for loneliness. If you made someone live by themselves for years on end, why wouldn't they learn to avoid dependency? If you are the only source of warmth for yourself you don't need to risk burning yourself on a fire. 

A soft snore interrupted her thoughts. The damn swordsman had fallen asleep in the middle of her ruminations. He looked less threatening when asleep. Younger.

It was a warm night, and the humandrills didn't come to this part of the forest anymore -- not after she and Mihawk started converting some of them to farming, so she left him there, with one of his coats as a blanket.

(Imagine, for a moment, if it is not true, that you are born displaced a thousand miles from your true home in a cosmos indifferent to you. Where can you draw your sense of worth? Only from yourself. You are your only family. No matter what you are, you had to stick with yourself. If you are a monster, you must become as monstrous as you can be. If you are inconvenient, you must be the greatest inconvenience the world has ever seen.

Imagine you have convinced yourself that you are worthy, but worth can be lost if not maintained. You want something beyond perfection: to be the greatest. You could be perfect and still not good enough. But if you somehow surmount the insurmountable and rise to those exalted standards, no one would dare call you unworthy. Even yourself.

Imagine that you find something more important than yourself.)

Zoro returned quietly to the castle the next day to train. His metabolism had always been a little strange. He'd been able to hold his liquor like none other, and even if he overdid it, the effects didn't last long.

ON THE POLAR TANG

Zoro's attempt to storm out was thwarted by the labyrinthine hallways in the bowels of the submarine. His path contorted before him until he didn't know whether he was going up or down. As he blazed past random Heart Pirates, one said, "What did I just listen to?"

"A military disagreement that turned into a lover's quarrel, I'm pretty sure."

"We better get out of here. The captain's not going to be happy. Getting into a fight with his boyfriend in front of his dad...talk about awkward…"

He turned his head sharply, but they had already vanished.

Somehow he ended up in the mess hall, and he sat down on the floor with a huff.

The bear navigator approached him with the cautious timidity and professional purpose of a rescue worker approaching a rabid wolf-- or maybe a wounded fawn. "What happened between you and the captain?" he asked.

"It's nothing," he muttered.

"You both seemed pretty--"

"I know why you're here. Tell him I'm not leaving."

"I …" Bepo blinked. "Okay. Stay right there," he ordered. "Captain told us to keep an eye on you."

"Am I a prisoner?"

"Huh? No!" Bepo hurriedly clarified. "We're just… we…" he held his head low. "I'm sorry. That didn't come out right. Captain wants us to make sure you're okay."

"Go," he said.

Bepo nearly tripped over himself as he left.

A submersible prison. No cuffs and no bars. Only eyes. Eyes could be deceived, and he knew how to deceive them.

He'd listened to enough lectures from Franky to know what you weren't supposed to do on a submarine. Setting even a small fire could cause catastrophic system failures. Before the bear could inform anyone, with a bit of string and friction, he made enough smoke to cause a nearby detector to beep in alarm.

A flurry of activity ensued as the crew set forth to find the source of the smoke. Zoro discerned a pattern in how the Heart Pirates moved in and out of the mess hall, followed one of them to a supply closet, and chose one of their uniforms for himself. He took his discarded clothes and a chair, arranging them in the mess hall to make it appear, if you didn't look too closely, as though it were his silhouette sitting against the wall.

Most submarines had emergency exits in case something happened deep underwater. All he had to do was find it.

He wandered down the halls, keeping his head low, dressed in his borrowed boiler suit. He passed one room that almost made him stop in his tracks. Law was inside. His face was in profile, his eyes shut, his hands buried in his hair. He looked so...tired.

For a second, Zoro hesitated. He wanted to go inside and try to explain himself, but he knew would just dig himself deeper. He still remembered the look in Law's eyes before he left-- shock, frustration, disappointment and a furious, choked despair. He didn't want to be the cause of more pain for him.

He wondered, for a moment, if Law would've been happier with someone more sophisticated, less roughshod, more skilled, more cautious. Someone who would plan every move as meticulously as he did. Someone more like Mihawk--or even Hancock. The image condensed in his mind: blue eyes meeting gold, earrings glinting like the sun on their dark hair--

He shook his head. No time to think about that. He had to formulate a plan.

History would not repeat itself. Things were different. He wouldn't let what happened at Sabaody happen again. He could see for himself his progress, and he knew he had a chance. 

To live in this world you have to let go of fear. You can't be too attached to yourself. On these seas, a single moment of hesitation means death.

(But this is a moment of hesitation. You know nothing. You don't have any idea what you're about to face.)

At last he found an opening to the sea, and plunged forward into the choppy waters.

"Bad news," Franky said grimly, emerging from the engine room. "The oxygen levels are dropping."

"Just as we thought, the bubble isn't porous," Robin murmured.

"Oh great! As if it wasn't bad enough already!" Buggy shouted. (They had tied Buggy to the main mast after he wouldn't stop bemoaning his fate.) "First you steal my treasure..."

"Is there any way to send a message out?"

"Nope, we're still jammed."

"...then you steal my giants for your fleet..."

"We have to get out of here!" Usopp screamed, grabbing the sides of his head. Chopper had joined him in running in frantic circles.

"Let's all calm down and think of something. Nami, do you know where we're headed?" Sanji asked.

She shook her head. "It's impossible to tell on these seas."

"I hope we don't all suffocate to death," Robin said.

"Oi, Robin, don't say such scary things," whimpered Usopp.

"We'll have to rely on Zoro," Nami said. "He's the only one free."

"That idiot's going to get us all killed," Sanji muttered, reaching for a lighter and thinking better of it.

Yamato raised his weapon. "I'll beat whoever did this to a pulp!"

"Yeah!" Luffy slammed a fist into his palm. "Who is it, anyway?"

It was easier to think of people it wasn't than people it could be. They had made too many enemies.

Franky went below deck and hauled up several bright orange canisters of O2. "Good thing I stocked up on oxygen tanks for our Shark Submerge and aquarium… didn't account for him, though," he said, jerking his thumb up at Buggy, who gaped at him.

"That's okay. He can have mine," Luffy said.

"Are you kidding me? We need you alive most of all," Nami yelled, pinching cheek between thumb and forefinger. It stretched about a foot as he leaned away from her.

"Then you give him yours."

"No!"

"Okay, then I'll give him mine," Luffy said, unshakable in his stubbornness.

"No, captain, I must insist on him using mine!" Brook declared. "I don't need air in my lungs because I have no lungs, yohohoho--"

"I'm small and I used to live on a mountain, I don't need as much oxygen," Chopper said, raising a hoof.

Yamato elbowed his way in and clamoured to offer his own oxygen tank, until Nami said, "Wait a second! Why do we have to give one to Buggy?"

"Because he's a friend," Luffy said.

The ones who knew about Marineford fell abruptly silent. The others glanced puzzledly at Luffy, who merely grinned.

"Y...you guys," Buggy sobbed. "Wait, no, curse you! Stop being kind to me, it's confusing!"

"We need to stick together," Robin said, with a hint of a smile. "We're in the same boat."

"Good one, miss!" Brook chortled.

When Perona flew back to where Mihawk had moored his coffin-ship, to her surprise, she spotted Zoro sitting on the beach. He was drinking sake out of a bottle. He looked calm, which meant he had put his anger away somewhere he could use it as fuel.

(She was nowhere near observant enough to discern it. You had to watch him like a hawk for the microexpressions that flashed for a second, briefer than lightning.) 

Zoro's favourite method of dealing with unpleasant emotions was almost mathematical in its simplicity. Whenever he had a negative emotion, he added either exercise or booze until it went away. He scanned the sea, a scowl cut into his forehead and the lines of his mouth. His fear always looked more like anger, like the calm of a corpse in a bog.

She decided to be magnanimous and save her taunting for later. "I thought you left with the submarine."

"I did."

"How did you get here?"

"I swam. Got caught in a riptide. Swam some more."

"Well, at least you've given up your plan to raid that base by yourself."

"No."

She stared. He met her gaze, undaunted, as if daring her to find a single seam in his armour, a single speck of craven dust on his spotless heart. Oh, she thought irritably, so this is how you want to play it? "How are you planning to get there?"

"Raft."

"It'll get destroyed."

"I'll figure something out." He took another swig. "You have a boat. Take me there."

"Huh? Why would we do that?"

"Please," he said. She almost didn't catch the word, it was so quiet. Almost private, like a prayer.

She squinted at him. "Even if we do take you there, what do you expect to do?"

He set his empty bottle down. "Whatever you want me to do in return, I'll do it."

"Finding Moria would be nice..."

"Deal."

"Hey, don't agree so readily! He's making his moves against another one of the yonko. Blackbeard."

"Fine by us. We have business with him too." His expression said, we took down Kaido, king of beasts. What's one more emperor?

"All right," she said grumpily. "Fine. I'll convince the old man."

(Like hell they would. They'll drop him off back at Amazon Lily. He wouldn't be able to tell what direction they were going, anyway.)

He relaxed, slumping against the tree. "Thanks."

She almost felt guilty, then reminded herself she owed him nothing, and it wasn't her fault he only liked it when you helped him for a reason he could control. Why was she even helping these people? Oh right, because noblesse oblige.

As they headed down the beach, Perona cleared her throat. "You know, your BF is considered very handsome."

"My what?"

"BF? Boyfriend?"

"Oh." He frowned. "By who?"

She stared at him. "You, hopefully. And pretty much everyone else."

"Oh," he said darkly.

"A little scruffy but I have to admit you got yourself a catch. And he's a doctor."

"So's Chopper."

"Don't be cheeky. You're not going to do any better. No one else finds you as interesting as he seems to."

"I don't need them to."

"Sure, sure. I forgot who I was talking to," she muttered to herself. He was not the type to give his heart up easily. "You're not going to apologize?"

"What do I have to apologize for?"

"Well, let me get this straight. You broke thirty bones at Onigashima?"

"You were eavesdropping?"

"We could hear you through the walls."

He scratched the back of his neck. "I had over a hundred left."

"Oh, well then, that's nothing to be concerned about!"

He nodded. Either he didn't hear the sarcasm or he deliberately ignored it.

"Your captain is too indulgent with you, letting you go around fighting people however you like. That's why you're so upset when someone tells you no."

"Don't nag."

"I'm not nagging, I'm calling you bloodthirsty. You like cutting people down too much for your own good."

"What makes you think I like cutting people down?"

"Mostly it's your actions, but sometimes it's the things you say. I watched you fight those poor baboons. You can be really mean, you know. And scary, when you grin like that."

"Then don't watch."

Well, the last time I didn't watch, you lost an eye, she thought. She decided to get back to the main subject. "So you're just going to have this stupid argument and not talk to him, huh?"

"Nothing to talk about."

Perona slapped her forehead. God, these men are dense. Dent their pride a little and they go moping around like there's no tomorrow. "I'm not saying you're totally in the wrong. He basically said 'I'm going to see the transcendental world-renowned beauty instead of helping you save your crew,' and that's not cute."

"He's not interested in Hancock."

"Really? He doesn't have very good judgement. Maybe he is a good match for you after all."

He scoffed.

"But if you know that, then what's the problem?"

It was his turn to be quiet. She elbowed him.

"It's not that," he said, furrowing his brows. "He thinks I'm stupid."

"And he's right, you're not the sharpest bulb in the shed. Your ideals are incredibly asinine to everyone other than you and people like you."

"I don't need you to understand."

"No, but he needs you to understand. And if you really value each other it's worth talking things out."

"I tried to explain it. He just won't get it."

What she wanted to say was, No, he probably does. Neither he nor your captain wants you to get yourself sliced up like a ham. It's not hard not to. Just be patient.

What she said was, "Have you ever tried to think from his perspective? He doesn't want to stop you from saving your crew, but your life is worth more than your pride and your feelings. He's willing to hurt them a bit to stop you from doing anything stupid. But you'd rather get yourself killed trying to save them than listen to him."

"That's not it."

That's right, she thought. He isn't even his own top priority anymore. He can't fathom being someone else's. She sighed. "Opening up is hard. If someone told you to snap a bone in half and expose your marrow to the elements, you probably wouldn't do it. Love's like that. It's too much to ask of anyone."

He glared at her. "Are you saying I'm too weak to be weak?"

"Oh, you.. understood that?" She blinked. "Then you know what it looks like, right? You'll choose your friends over a future with him."

In a voice so faint and pinched it was almost pained, he said, "He's wrong."

"You really like him, huh?"

"None of your business."

"Why'd you do all this, then?"

"You won't understand."

"Hmph. Like you said, it doesn't matter if I understand. It's not my problem. But you can't expect your boyfriend to like it when you put your life on the line."

"We do that every day. It shouldn't--"

"Yeah, but you don't seem to be very careful. Aren't you afraid of losing him? You haven't learned a thing from that humandrill, have you?"

He set the empty bottle down, and his expression was no longer calm.

"Well?"

"I know I'm not what he wants," he said with such sudden, explosive emotion that she fell back in surprise.

The statement hung like fog in the air, teetering on the edge of bitter recrimination. It probably wasn't nice of her to push him to this kind of edge, but he made it a point to prevent her from knowing when she was going too far.

She didn't expect him to voice any of it, but he continued, his hands clenched and gaze resolutely forward, "I can't be what he wants. This isn't Paradise. I've made my choice, and he's made his. If he doesn't think it's worth it, he should just tell me."

"I don't think that's right," she said cautiously. "He thinks you're worth something. Otherwise he wouldn't try so hard to save you."

"I know," he said, and hesitated.

No, you don't, she thought. You think that even if he loves you now, he'll leave you, he'll stop loving you one day, that love isn't enough to stop him from abandoning you if you're not good enough. You think that's what everyone should do to you. He didn't know any other way to think, any other way to act. He'd forgotten how-- or never learned in the first place.

"Turn left," she said, as the beach below them turned to sand.

As they headed to the site, Perona chatted animatedly about her travels. Apparently, Mihawk and she had left Kuraigana to avoid a marine fleet sent to capture him. They landed on Ruskaina, the same island as the Straw Hats, and Perona set forth in her astral form to speak to the Kuja Pirates. Mihawk, wishing to respect Kuja tradition, remained with his ship. Then, much to her disappointment, she ran into Zoro. Afterward, when she went to meet up with Mihawk, he was nowhere to be seen.

"...and then it turns out that crusty old man found a bunch of Pacifista tracks leading up to where your ship docked. He was collecting evidence, he said. It wasn't natural how…why am I even telling you this, it wasn't any of your business until you poked your nose into it, you're lucky I'm helping you!"

She always said that, and always helped him, in the end. It made her feel powerful. (And maybe part of her wanted to help out of genuine compassion, but she could only do so in a backhanded, roundabout way.)

Again, he found himself in their debt. Again, he had to wonder what was in it for them. Not money. Not power. Not the thrill. 

Zoro's view of things was simple. People don't always get what they deserve. You have to expect the pain, or you'd never be prepared for it. You can't expect everyone to stay the same forever.

He had gotten used to looking out for himself. You can't expect people to come save you. You can't expect things to change by making excuses. People helped him on a whim, and he couldn't rely on their whims to survive. He made a pact with himself. He trained, the way he used to see the others train, until he didn't need them. As long as he had himself, he didn't need them. 

He never let himself forget that most important lesson. 

"Don't go all quiet all of a sudden, it's creepy! What are you even thinking about?"

A few memories percolated past the filter of his focus. He was seven years old and eating cold rice from a bowl shaped like a crescent moon. He forgot why he was there, why he was alone, how he even got the food. He forgot what it tasted like and why he trusted it. He remembered the texture of his hunger, flattening until it disappeared.

Another memory emerged one edge at a time, like a shard of metal pulled out of a wound. The water was cold, stinging the throat and numbing the fingers. It was winter; there was frost. Yes -- he remembered now. The leaves crunched. The stones beneath his bare knees were sharp, and he used one to break the crust of ice on the surface of the river. 

His earliest memories were all like that--in pieces, scattershot snapshots of faces, half-known names. Someone gave him food after he did chores for them. There was water from the river, so cold it hurt to drink. A hand ruffled his hair, and a voice compared it to muddy leaves. He remembered trying sake for the first time. It hurt to drink, too, but it warmed instead of chilled. He liked it.

Someone asked him once why he was alone. Don't know, he almost told them. But it's for a good reason.

(He didn't know why he wanted to add that last part. It felt right, in a weird way. If it was for a good reason, then it was okay.)

He didn't remember who he had been back then. He didn't start feeling like himself until he picked up his first sword. It was cracked and wooden, fit awkwardly in a child's fist, but he molded his hand around it until it felt as though it belonged there.

He remembered that he hadn't always been alone. He remembered a voice telling him that everyone, no matter how or where or to whom they were born, lived on the same earth, under the same moon. He remembered looking up at the frosted face of the moon, wondering, searching, until he forgot what he was looking for. 

(He remembered the day he first lost to Kuina, and thought that he had found it.)

When Kuina died, he waited a month to cry for her. He only dealt with grief if it was in the past. In the present he concentrated only on the moment. 

A familiar bitterness filled him at the memory of her death. Unfair. Injust. Unacceptable. But he could do nothing to undo it. He had to move on, to carry her spirit along with him. 

Theirs was a friendship forged and ended in the innocence of childhood, free of the jaded jealousies of adulthood. He could only hold out a month back then. But he was a kid then, and he had gotten much, much better. He could delay for a month, a year, maybe a lifetime. He turned his anger into drive, and drive into discipline.

"...and you know, you don't have to worry. Love isn't rational at all. It's like putting on goggles that transform even the most mundane things into the deepest experience you've ever had. You could sit on a log and eat sticks of cheese and he'd find a way to amuse himself."

He gave her a disbelieving look.

"Okay, maybe not. Maybe only if the cheese is rare. Or shaped funny. The point is, once you two cool off, it'll all be okay. Come on, say something!"

He could see through her ruse. She was distracting him-- trying, though she wasn't any good at it, to cheer him up, and pretending she wasn't so she wouldn't have to feel bad about failing.

Time marched forward. He was nine years old and swinging three wooden training swords against a straw dummy. He was eleven years old and holding boulders up with his teeth in a river. Two people walked past, holding hands. One he recognized as an older disciple from the dojo. He never questioned it before, but for some reason he felt that what he was witnessing was profoundly absurd.

As a child he never asked about things like love. The knowledge trickled down to him anyway. At that age people didn't yet think his lack of interest was unnatural. You'll get it, one day, they told him, and he never did. One of the favourite pastimes of nearly every adult from that period of his life was predicting the future, badly. At thirteen, he promised himself he wouldn't try to predict the future. Focus on the now. That was how he would become the best.

He couldn't explain it back then, but the idea of having another half filled him with an antipathy that bordered on disgust. Trust the wrong person and they would dash you to pieces, work iron bars into the cracks and pry you apart, to prevent you from staying whole.

He could not rely on someone else to complete him. He had to be whole in himself. Otherwise, he would never fulfil his promise.

His reputation as a bounty hunter came to him almost by accident. During his search for the strongest in the world, he ran across outlaws who couldn't match him. One of them might have been able to beat him once in two thousand matches, but they only ever had the one chance. His skill outgrew theirs. His ambitions outpaced theirs. It was far from the worst way to earn money. He didn't care about what others thought. Reputation was volatile and made of hot air. It wasn't real and solid, like the weight of a scabbard.

He remembered how he met the boy with the straw hat-- in a haze of heat exhaustion, on the brink of starvation. The things that matter most to me, he told him, are my swords and my life. 

He wasn't lying-- at least, he didn't think so at the time. He hadn't yet found what was more important.

"Anyway, have you told that surgeon anything about yourself? He seemed so confused..."

"I did." So what if I didn't? he was tempted to ask. What was there to tell?

"Ugh," she said, looking both annoyed and relieved. "You must've left everything out."

Most people suffered worse than a few years of uncertainty, of suffocating their own grief. His early life stopped mattering as soon as it was over. Maybe his parents hated him, maybe they hated each other, maybe they didn't, he'd never know. It didn't bother him. When it's all you've ever known, you learn to let it go.

Defeat was always a precious lesson. He was glad he got to meet Mihawk early. He had been lucky to learn so soon how far he had left to go. And when he finally beat him, he would lay incense at Kuina's grave and tell her that he fulfilled his promise.

There he went, predicting the future. One promise broken.

"Why didn't you tell him about the last two years?"

Why was it even a question? Why did she think anyone wanted to know? What was the value in that? Disconnected from past and future, it could teach him nothing. What was the purpose of digging up this past, of remembering such empty, useless things? She didn't understand anything, that annoying pink--

But he didn't want to think about her questions and accusations. He didn't want to think about Law. He didn't want to--

His mind betrayed him and strayed toward thoughts of him anyway. Earlier this morning, they had been at peace. They'd been happy-- lighter than they had been in ages. They...

He cut his own train of thought in half.

It was a good thing that Law wasn't coming. Even if he had a strategic mind that put most people he knew to shame. Even if Zoro trusted him as if he were one of his crewmates. Even if Zoro would gladly give his life for him, just like--

Off track, he told himself, just as Perona summoned a wall of hollows to block his way and point him in the correct direction.

The island would be dangerous for devil fruit users, even one as powerful as Law. And he was too caught up in worrying about Zoro to offer his tactical abilities. He still didn't trust in Zoro's skill. 

Zoro knew that was his fault. If he were stronger no one would have to worry about him. If he were stronger maybe Law could trust him to know what he was here for. If only. 

(Law's tongue always got sharper when he was worried, so sharp it sounded like it hurt him to speak. Speaking to him felt like wielding Enma for the first time-- he drew more of himself out than he wanted, more of himself he thought he possessed. But it made him stronger.)

He ignored the twinge in his chest. Old wounds, maybe. They had long enough to heal.

Perhaps the universe was trying to send him a message. He wasn't good enough yet to deserve peace. He had to be better than this. How could he have let his crew be captured under his nose? And how could he let that--

But that was in the past. What he had to deal with was the present. He had no choice but to make things right.

Strength is the only defense you ever have. You have to make sure you don't need mercy. You must ensure you can defend yourself if it's denied to you. He learned not to rely, not to trust, not to depend. There were things strength could not defeat, but if he was too weak, he could defend nothing.

Being with Law meant relying, trusting, depending. It was... 

He wasn't afraid of it, no, but it was the opposite of what he was used to. Keep your guard up against outsiders. Keep your cards close. Don't lose control. Don't yield. Never expect mercy. Law was no longer an outsider, so he learned to let down his guard, and he thought-- he really thought that would be enough. But maybe Law needed more.

(And what was it that he needed?)

If everything he'd done so far wasn't enough to reassure him (of his strength, his ambition, of how much he cared, of how much he loved--) then there wasn't much he could do. He wasn't delusional. He knew what he planned was risky, but with the day already half gone, there wasn't time to hesitate. 

Both he and Law were being stubborn. They had to be -- this wasn't just a petty disagreement over strategy, but a clash of opposing ideals. They had to stick to their guns. He didn't hold it against Law. But did Law hold it against him? Should Law hold it against him?

Damn it. He had no time to think about this. He had something more important to do.

Perona fluttered around as Zoro walked toward one of the boats. (Mihawk had brought two, one for her and one for him, in case they had to split up.) For some reason, she had a bad feeling about this. Maybe it was because he was looking so...calm.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she said, to keep up the pretense. "That island sounds like trouble…"

"I should've looked closer when I landed there," he said as he knelt to secure a knot. "I should have known there was a base. I'm not making the same mistake twice."

"You heard old Hawkeyes. If he says it's impossible to detect, it is. You'd be clueless."

He cast his gaze serenely up at the sky. Then he drew up the anchor.

"H-hey! What are you doing?"

"You never intended to take me there," he said. There was no censure in his accusation. "Mihawk wouldn't agree to it."

Her mouth fell open. "You… you tricked me into leading you here! When did you grow a brain?"

"You came in two boats," he said. "I'm borrowing this one."

"Negative hollow!" she shouted. He evaded it with ease.

"That's not going to work," he said, and cast off.

"Hey, wait!" She flew after him, internally chastising herself for her lapse in judgement. Tricked by this pea-brain! How mortifying! She ignored the gnawing sense that somehow she had something to do with this.

(Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who are forced not to know their own histories are doomed to follow patterns laid down beyond their knowledge.)

With her astral projection abilities, she could follow him for a while, but she couldn't keep up with him through the Calm Belt. She couldn't navigate through those waters. He couldn't either, but had such dumb luck that he'd probably end up where he needed to be by accident.

She changed tack and zoomed to the shore, calling for the old man. Where did I go wrong? she lamented to herself. I'm surrounded by--

"Aha! There you are! Do something!" she shrieked at Mihawk, who knelt by tracks scored into the soil by a large, heavy object.

He rose and looked up at her, frowning. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Stop running off, you're so hard to find!" she scolded, lowering herself to his eye level. "When you weren't looking, that ungrateful brat…"

Mihawk listened to her ranting with a grave expression, arms folded and brows furrowed. He shook his head. "You've decided what's best for him, and like an errant child, he rejects it so he can have his own way. Children don't have much power, so they must find it where they may."

If she didn't know better, she could've sworn Mihawk just called Zoro his child. "I thought that Trafalgar guy would be better at keeping him in one place," she complained. "Doctors are supposed to be smart." He was smart enough to make her talk through a snail so she couldn't spy on them with her hollows, but not enough to keep Zoro where he could see him at all times.

"Young people often think they're infallible. It's always a rude awakening when they find out they're not."

She had no one else to take her frustrations out on, so she pointed at Mihawk. "Why aren't you more angry about this? He stole your boat and left! After you put so much effort into training him!"

"He is not my responsibility," Mihawk said, even as he prepared the remaining vessel to chase after him.

"Whatever you tell yourself," she muttered, settling into her physical body.

"Captain! There's another ship on our radar!" Penguin reported. 

"Who is it?"

"It's...Hawk Eye Mihawk and the Ghost Princess!"

"Surface and follow them," he said. 

"There you are," a voice said from behind him. He whirled around.

"Perona," he said through gritted teeth. "Have you--"

"I found him moping on a beach. He stole our boat!"

"Why," he snarled, "didn't you stop him?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing!" Perona yelled. "He hasn't been so grim since..."

"Since?" he said.

She puffed out her cheeks. "Well, you figure it out. Ahh, that idiot...always doing what he wants!"

"How far ahead is he?"

"I don't know. He caught a current even we didn't see and poof! Vanished." She glared at him. "I told you he gets like this when bad things happen! And we just had to go dump sake on the fire..."

"'We'?"

"Hmph, well, it's not our fault, but for now Mihawk's better than that pea-brain in every possible way, and the little jerk knows it. He probably thinks you'll dump him and go for--"

"That's ludicrous," he said.

What she had proposed was so laughably simple it was almost certainly true. But only from one angle. 

"Don't shoot the messenger!" She crossed her arms. "I warned you to be careful."

"You've done nothing but stir up trouble," he snapped. "But... you've helped me realize something."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"He's human."

"You didn't already know that?"

"He makes it so easy to forget."

She shook her head sadly. "Why, I never. A doctor who can't even tell what species his patients are..."

The past and future began to blend in his mind. History went in cycles. But cycles could break.

They pulled up beside her boat, and she flew back to her place next to Mihawk.

Now it was time for him to negotiate with yet another warlord.

"It's a lot to ask on short notice," Law said. 

Mihawk chuckled. "I didn't intend to get caught in their affairs, but I have been bored recently."

"Thank you."

"It's not a favour for you. Save your thanks."

There was a long pause. Mihawk regarded him with curiosity. 

"If you want to ask me about why I'm dating him, go ahead," he said. Everyone seemed to be doing it these days. 

"What drew you to him?" 

"I suppose his multiplicity and contradiction. Humble and arrogant. Adamantine and soft. I have never seen such a blend of so many extremes."

"The word you are looking for is dialectic. Opposites often give rise to each other. But it is strange for you, of all people, to find yourself in one."

Don't remind me, he thought. It is embarrassing enough to feel so strongly about anyone, much less him. I may as well form an attachment to a bolt of lightning. It's as if his entire being is warning me that he is not long for the world. 

"Do you think he is very different from you?"

"We're too similar, if anything."

"Hmm," said Mihawk. "In that case..."

They were interrupted by a volley of cannonfire.  

"That appears to be my cue," Mihawk said, rising from his place. "Only three warships. The Navy isn't what it used to be."

As they traveled to the island of volcanoes, Law strategized using the additional information provided by Mihawk.

"Boa Hancock is taking care of the fleet of Pacifistas escorting the ship, and Dracule Mihawk will handle the vice admirals they sent after us. Our submarine is much faster than Dracule's modified self-propelling rowboat, and it seems the Straw Hat ship isn't reaching its top speed -- there's something odd there, but it's a stroke of luck. We can make up for lost time. On the way there, Uni, I need you to reverse-engineer the advanced multifunctional capabilities of the snails they used on us. Can you do it?"

"Are you kidding me? That's the hardest-- wait, I can!"

"You mentioned that it's possible for one snail to project dual signals. They'll be suspicious if they lose visibility, and we can't replace them outright. If we release one that projects the image to two locations -- them and us -- into the vents, that solves our problem. I'll leave it to you to create the wiretaps we need."

"So you were listening to me!"

"Of course. I value your skills."

"Captain!" Uni blubbered, weeping into his arm with vindicated joy. 

"As I suspected, there is a way to enter the base that isn't blocked by the ocean, seastone, or fog. They must have a way to control the fog, or no power user could even visit. If the Fleet Admiral can't go there, it's not much of a base. We'll find it, and I'll infiltrate from there."

"Captain, do you really have to go?" Bepo said. 

"I'm the only one who can retrieve him quickly enough once we find him."

"If you get hurt, we'll never forgive him!"

"Stop that," he said. "If I get hurt it's my responsibility."

He was commanding, composed, perfectly in control. The only thing that could give him away was the tremor in the hand that held the tiny piece of blank paper that represented Zoro's life.

He's given me the power to destroy him, and I've misused it, he thought. But it goes both ways. We should have both trusted one another. 

It didn't matter anymore. He had to get there in time.

Chapter Text

Zoro sailed toward Amazon Lily until it mysteriously disappeared from sight, and he was on the same calm stretch of sea as two weeks ago.

And people said he couldn't navigate.

Okay, he thought, fishing the scrap of paper he stole off Perona out of his haramaki. Whoever dropped the note didn't intend for them to use it as a clue. Even among bullshit poems he could tell this was more bullshit than most. Maybe that training was useful after all.

His training with Mihawk was less about strength, even the subtle control of it, and more about how much pressure he could withstand. How well he could separate his priorities. How much of himself he could dedicate to a goal.

He really did owe Mihawk a lot. Those clear and hawklike eyes cleaved right to the sacred truth of his inadequacy. Even someone with pride as robust as Zoro had to acknowledge when he fell short.

There are obstacles that strength cannot overcome. Learn to cut nothing.

Before he knew it, the sea grew dense with fog. He stood, shielding his eye from the sun. In the distance, he spotted the sullen glimmer of lava on mountain peaks.

The last time he came to the island, he had to disembark before he approached it. A stroke of luck. No doubt scouts were nearby to detect incoming boats. The waters close to shore churned unpredictably through clusters of sharp, jagged rocks. If Nami were here, she would explain the currents to them using words only oceanographers knew. Jinbei would steer the boat nimbly past the crags and the hidden whirlpools as if they didn't exist. If Law--

But he wasn't here, and that was a good thing.

He dropped anchor and dived into the cold waves. Before the water fully sapped his strength, he hauled himself up on the shore and shook himself dry.

The island was a caldera, Mihawk said, a giant bowl of rolling fog carrying the scent of the sea. The red glow of the volcanic flows, like so many infected veins, cut through the mist. Closer to the mouth of the volcano, the stench of sulfur permeated the air, and the fog blackened with soot. A single breath was enough to make his eyes water and his lungs burn.

Hell. His natural habitat.

He'd strategized on the way here, and determined it would take too long to locate an underwater entrance. Those would be guarded and checkpointed. There had to be surface-level openings to let in air, and since they operated completely below ground, they wouldn't have much visible surveillance.

He glanced at the dormant volcano. The fog only reached halfway up its slope. Out of sight, out of the way, not extinct-- the magma chamber could be reawakened when needed.

He climbed until he stood at the peak, and jumped.

The air whistled past as he plummeted into the empty magma chamber. He slashed, creating a curtain of air that broke his fall. Volcanic dust billowed out from around his boots as he rose and scanned the dark red walls of iron-laden stone until he spotted a patch of thinning fog. He followed it to a patch of porous stone that sounded hollow when he knocked on it.

With a few projected slashes, he cut out a several-foot-long triangular prism of that stone and leapt inside. Stone and swordsman alike dropped on top of a uniformed man sitting behind an oak desk with a dull thud.

Fog filled the halls and the small office.

Zoro hopped off the block of stone. The marine was out cold. He stuffed him underneath the desk, and, after some deliberation, stole his uniform. The mask they used to keep out the fog hid his missing eye, and the cloak emblazoned with the word Justice covered the three scabbards at his waist.

Enma hummed with anticipation.

Not yet, he thought, shoving the piece of ceiling back in place. He couldn't draw too much attention to himself.

"Excuse me, sir!"

He turned around. A fresh-faced ensign saluted him. "When we said the briefing would be at the office, we meant the main office, not your office, Captain Yeuce Les!"

"Who are you calling--" he looked down at the nameplate. "Yes. I'm … Yeuce Les," he said, adding more gravel to his voice than usual.

"Is there something wrong with your throat?"

"Must be the fog," he said. "This... briefing…"

"I will lead you to the main office!"

It looked like things were finally going his way.

Fortunately for Zoro, Captain Les had a habit of wearing sunglasses indoors, which, combined with the fog, made for very poor navigation. He turned three wrong corners and his guide didn't bat an eye.

"Stop leading me into dead ends," he snapped at the nervous-looking recruit.

"Yes, sir!"

He was no good at this kind of sneaking around -- that was Robin's specialty. He lied by being himself. They would sense no killing intent from him-- only his own burning sense of duty.

At last they reached the main office. The attendees were masked and shrouded in fog. The ensign saluted the figure at the head of the table.

"Psst! Captain! That's Rear Admiral Inu Teal!" he muttered as they took their seats next to a group of other personnel -- mostly snail nerds like Uni.

"Yeah, so?"

The ensign gulped in terror.

"What do you want, Teal?"

"You haven't changed a bit," Inu said, her smoker's growl laced with displeasure. "Call me Rear Admiral, and don't forget it."

"So cold!" one of the snail nerds whispered. "She won't even let him call her by her first name anymore!"

"You forfeited that right when you forfeited your honour," she said. There was the click of a lighter, and a cigar illuminated the scowl on her face. "The Straw Hat ship is predicted to arrive in a few minutes. But there's been an...unforeseen development. One of the Straw Hats isn't on board."

"You know which one?"

"The swordsman. Demon of the East Blue."

"That one's trouble," Zoro said.

"A total brute, I've heard, but none too smart."

"Sure," he muttered. "Why isn't he in custody?"

"We set the lures, but before we could give the Pacifistas the new directives, they sent the Straw Hat ship flying as originally planned. We've lost track of them. The missing crewmember must have something to do with that."

I wish I did, he thought. "They were sitting ducks. How did you fail such a simple mission?"

"You want to start something, Yeuce?" Inu snarled, slamming her palm down on the table.

"Take me to the control room. I want to see for myself how badly you screwed this up."

Thirty minutes after what should have been a five-minute walk, Zoro arrived at the control room.

"If it wasn't for your brilliant strategies, I wouldn't have a shred of respect for you," Inu snapped.

"Uh...yeah," Zoro said. "My brilliant strategies. Which were...?"

"I don't have time to put up with your condescension. HQ may have decided to use your plan for this operation, but we graduated with the same honours. You don't have to test me."

This isn't a test, he thought in exasperation. He glanced at the panel crowded densely with words. "That's the report?"

"Yes. Take a look," she said. "It's even formatted with three-inch margins."

"Why the hell would I care?" he said, before he remembered he was in disguise.

She only snorted. "Playing dumb never suited you."

...yeah, there was some kind of bad blood between these two. He didn't care. Her bitterness made his abrasiveness seem natural.

So Les' original plan was to trap Trafalgar Law on Amazon Lily and destroy the island. Then another crew showed up, and they changed their target to include the Straw Hats. Then their weapons went missing, screwed up their plans, and they came up with this as a stopgap measure. False messages sent to divide and conquer, a squadron of new Pacifistas to neutralize them, and a fleet of warships to back them up in case anything went wrong. They intended to take the Straw Hats dead or alive-- it would be too much time and trouble to use them as propaganda.

This wasn't a trap, then. It was damage control.

As he finished reading, his eye widened behind the glasses.

So Vegapunk managed to clone Devil Fruits and feed them to the Pacifistas. That man, wherever his allegiance lay, was singlehandedly more dangerous than half the navy.

And the most crucial piece of information of all: One of the Pacifistas wielded the Mark-Mark fruit.

He'd witnessed it in action on Fishman Island. If he remembered correctly...

"Where's the target? Have you moved it yet?"

"Oh, right...the designated target," stammered one of the marines. "We were about to move it, but thanks to the Rear Admiral's efforts, we just regained contact with one of the missing Pacifistas. It's travelling on the ship, and the others are intact and in position for a raid. It turns out the jammers we placed had blocked the signal..."

"What?" he shouted, forgetting himself.

"Sir?" The marine blinked nervously at him.

""You idiots. At the speeds it's picked up on the way here, the ship's going to crash through the port and demolish the place."

"We've had our hands tied trying to locate the others, and we didn't have enough technicians to..."

"Are you just going to make excuses?"

"No, sir!"

"Then make sure to dump the target as far as you can, from here" he ordered. "Do you want to be the reason this base is destroyed by pirates?"

They saluted. "No, sir!"

Zoro followed one of the engineers down to one of the ports, a double-gated launching point. The engineer pressed a button that revealed a platform containing a panel of blinking lights and a large, unassuming red stone, which he transferred onto a bullet-shaped submersible. He pushed the submersible into the loading platform, shut the inner gates, then opened the outer one. The chamber flooded with water, and the little vessel shot out into the murky sea, trailing a stream of white bubbles.

"How fast can it go?" he asked in disbelief.

"In less than a minute, it'll be thirty nautical miles from here!"

"Can you make it go any faster?"

"Only if you trigger the emergency protocol, and we can't do that without busting up the panel. If we do that, the submarine can't be controlled anymore."

"Thanks," he said, before smashing him in the head with the hilt of his sword. He slashed the control panel down through the floor, reached in and ripped out a handful of multicoloured cables. They sparked and writhed like living serpents for a second before going still.

He brought one blade up to block the downward strike aimed at his back, and hoisted the man up by the collar. "You seem to be doing fine in the fog. Not a power user?"

"That's right," he said, brandishing his weapon. "I specialize in haki."

He knocked his opponent's sword, and a transponder snail, out of his hands. "Must have slacked off on observation."

"Don't underestimate us. If you keep going, you won't get out of here alive!"

"Yeah, I know," he said, his mouth twisting into a sharp, humorless grin. "It's up to you how many lives you wanna waste trying to take mine."

"Damn you!"

He held his blade to the marine's throat. "How many of you are there? A thousand? Ten thousand? How many graves do you want to dig?"

"You'll have to kill me before I reveal anything to you, pirate scum!"

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm in a hurry." 

He did what he came here for. Now he had to go follow that submarine and stop those Pacifistas-- preferably without wasting time fighting his way out of here. 

Zoro left the marine tied to the broken control panel. If he did have to bring this base down, an engineer would be useful for information.

He couldn't find the way to the magma chamber. One foggy hall looked exactly like another. He ended up looping back around to the port by chance.

The fog was beginning to thin. He frowned. The marines were planning something.

He untied the engineer from the panel and hauled him up by the back of his shirt. "Tell me how to get out of here."

The engineer made an attempt to kick his way out of his grip. If nothing else, he had spirit.

"Think of it this way," he said. "If you let me go quietly, you'd be doing yourself and your higher-ups a favour."

The marine stopped moving, then nodded at one of the halls.

Zoro didn't trust him in the slightest, so he went the opposite direction he pointed in. He had pretty much figured out the structure of this building: a round spiderweb, with thin hallways, offices at each junction of three halls, and ports where submarines and coated ships docked at the outermost ring.

Eventually, he ended up at a port-- a round room entirely free of mist. A cluster of marines had just disembarked, and standing there was--

"Oh," Kizaru was saying. "A message for me?"

An Admiral.

Shit.

The Sunny hung in the air for a split second.

Then, it dropped like a brick.

"We've stopped," Nami said tremulously. Some of the crew had already begun to use their oxygen tanks. "Is it over?"

"It's no use," Chopper panted, lying on the floor. "The air… is getting too thin…"

Brook shook until his ribs clattered. "I see my life passing before my eyes...and my death...and now my other life…"

"Brook, not helping!"

Buggy jumped as the redheaded navigator slammed her palms down on his shoulders. "Buggy, use your fruit to section the barrier!"

"What? How?"

"You've awakened it, haven't you?"

"Why would you assume that?"

"You were a warlord!"

"That was an accident!"

"Well," Nami said, grinning maniacally, her grip tightening until it was painful, "reach deep within yourself and try it! You're our only hope!"

"Can't we rely on the green guy?" he whimpered.

"We can! But we're not helpless children, we can do things for ourselves!"

"Says the people telling ME to do the impossible while they sit back and watch!" Buggy screamed.

"Stop yelling, you're using up too much air!"

"YOU HYPOCRITES!" he hollered. However...he had to admit he had no other choice. His life depended on this as much as theirs did.

Buggy steeled himself, strode purposefully to the railing of the ship, and placed his palms against the sides of the bubble. "It's all down to you, old boy," he muttered to himself.

The wall didn't budge.

"Try harder!" Nami called.

"Stop pushing me! I can't focus with all of you yelling!"

"But Nami's the only one yelling at you," Luffy said.

"I said shut up!"

"Buggy! You can do it!" she yelled. She slapped a few of her crewmates lightly upside the head when they gave her funny looks. "Come on, encourage him!"

"Buggy!" Luffy and Yamato screamed, pumping their fists. "Buggy! Buggy! Buggy!"

One by one, the others joined in. The only exceptions were the cook, the dour helmsman, and the reserved archaeologist.

They had so much faith in him, Buggy marveled to himself. Starting from his time on the Oro Jackson, his fortunes had swung wildly, metronome-like, across the spectrum of good to miserable. His enemies cursed his tenacity. If only he had the good sense to die when the universe called for him! they cried. But did he? No! Time and time again, he flashily survived the impossible, turned a hopeless situation into a stunning opportunity, and stole the spotlight from other living legends. Why wouldn't that happen again?

Their cheers swelled to a fever pitch, and despite himself, Buggy's spirits lifted among them. He rolled up his sleeve, and inhaled sharply.

"Alright, if you insist on calling on the great Buggy for help, who am I to refuse? Bubble! You have breathed your last! Split, by my command!"

A crack appeared beneath his palm-- perfectly straight, like the edge of dough cleaved with a ruler.

His jaw fell open.

"Hey! He's doing it! It worked!!" Luffy said, bouncing up and down in excitement.

"Silence!" Buggy hollered. "I must have silence!"

They fell dead silent as the crack widened, spread, elongated. Eventually it reached the height of the bubble. The breeze filled their lungs with a gust of thick, briny fog and sweet, blessed, fresh air.

"Haha! I've done it! I've really done it!" Buggy exclaimed, more surprised than the rest.

"BUGGY! BUGGY! BUGGY!"

Chopper and Carrot threw off their oxygen tanks and leapt up in celebration. Luffy, Yamato and Usopp linked arms and danced in a circle.

Buggy, who had been staring in disbelief at his hands, barked out an arrogant laugh. "No need to look so surprised! I only flashily--"

A Pacifista stepped through.

Using observation, Zoro sensed a group of ten people, with more on the way.

Damn it. Without the fog, Kizaru had his full powers.

He stilled his nerves. They hadn't noticed him yet, but they would soon. He would have to find another way out.

As he searched for an opening in the crowd of presences, Kizaru lifted a white snail to his ear. "Hello? Hellooo?"

"Admiral! You're speaking into the anti-wiretapping snail!"

"Oh, really?"

A marine handed the admiral a baby transponder snail, which he held upside down.

"Sir, the Straw Hats' ship hasn't arrived! We think the Pacifistas have somehow gone rogue!"

"Gone rogue?" Kizaru blinked slowly. "It's impossible for that to happen."

"But it did."

"But that's impossible."

"That seems to be the problem, yes."

"Mm," he said ponderously. "We'll just destroy it."

"Yes, sir!"

Borsalino handed the snail back. "Oh, and," he said, scratching lazily at his stubble, "who's this?"

Suddenly, the admiral was standing beside him, regarding him with mild intrigue. Zoro froze, keeping his breathing even and heart rate steady.

"I haven't seen you working here before."

"I just transferred."

"Your accent is hard to place. I'm sure I've heard it somewhere."

"Must be the fog."

"Turn around."

Zoro turned.

"Hmm. I didn't expect you to show up."

"Funny, I could say the same to you."

"Oh, with five former Warlords and a fifth emperor around, we can't be too careful."

All the doors leading to the room slammed shut except one, and the presences he sensed earlier entered through it. Among them were the ensigns and the bad-tempered rear admiral he met earlier.

"Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro?" they yelled, their eyes practically leaping from their skulls. "But how? His disguise was so convincing! There was no telling them apart!"

"None of our intel painted you as a master of impersonation, and yet you imitated Les' mannerisms to perfection. How long have you known each other?" Inu shouted.

"I have no idea who that is," he growled, tying his bandanna around his head. "You're all just stupid."

The whirling wind his dragon twister created cleared his path of people, and the hall emptied of fog. Inu protected her subordinates with an armament-infused shield, but they were forced to retreat.

"Ooh, scary," Kizaru said.

"Don't mock me." He put Wado between his teeth and infused the blade with armament. As he prepared to attack, he sensed a flurry of incoming bullets.

The stolen mask skittered across the floor. Fragments of lead shot sprayed against the wall. In a flash of brilliant yellow, Kizaru dispersed a 720-pound cannon.

He dodged the second volley of bullets, brought up his blade and deflected another beam of light, just as another ricocheted off the far wall and shot through his calf.

Too fast. Even for him.

Only a moment's miscalculation is needed for failure. His leg gave way under him, and he rolled to avoid a kick aimed for his head, leaving him staring at the blinding glow at the tip of Kizaru's shoe.

"You're not as tired as you were the part time we met," he noted in an absentminded drawl. "You're full of the boundless energy of youth. And the naivete."

He aimed the next kick at his ribs.

Zoro flew across the room and slammed into the wall. The shockwave jarred his entire body, ringing in his ears. Wado clattered against the ground, and he dropped next to it along with half the stone in the wall. He spat out a mouthful of blood, tasting metal and acid. His chest was a fireball of pain.

This was mercy, he thought. He was being underestimated.

He barely armed himself in time to prevent a beam from severing his hand. His stolen cloak slipped off. A smear of blood rendered the word inscribed on the back illegible.

"That uniform doesn't suit you," Kizaru said.

"I could say the same to you."

The other marines, reduced to spectators behind Inu's shield, jeered from the sidelines. 

"Yeah, that's our admiral!"

"Can you keep up with that speed?"

"That slowpoke?" he said. "Yeah, I think so."

"Ha, you'll eat your words soon! Our admiral is light itself! He's the speed limit of the universe!"

"Limit?" he said derisively, keeping his eye on Kizaru. "So you admit that your ability can only go that far. Unlike you, my limits don't contain me."

"It'd be better for your health if they did."

"Don't worry about my health."

Vision relied on light. If you move at its speed, that was better than invisibility. He couldn't rely on his sight. He had to yield to his purest instincts.

His pulse was racing, but his mind and blade were steady. In the span of a heartbeat, they traded a dozen more blows and flew apart.

A cut opened on the admiral's face. He got one hit in.

He got to his feet, panting, one hand clutched to his side. It came away damp and red.

In close quarters, observation haki wasn't enough. He saw the blow coming the moment it connected.

Too slow. He was still too slow.

His blood pounded in his ears as he ran through his options. If he let Kizaru go after his crew, it would only take a few minutes to undo all of his efforts. If he continued to take hits from light-speed attacks, his own strength would dwindle. He had to keep an eye out for reinforcements, too. Better go all out from the beginning and prevent that from happening.

His gaze travelled upward.

The roof. If he collapsed it, the fog would roll in. If he could avoid being crushed, it would buy some time.

He picked up his swords, emptying his mind of distractions. Nine mountains, eight seas. In this world--

A blue film enveloped him, and he found himself standing on the fogless peak of the dormant volcano, the salt-laden wind whipping at his face, the sun breaking through the fog and illuminating a pair of cool golden eyes.

The seconds seemed to pass like years. The mental barriers he had set up to keep everything unnecessary out were breaking down. Zoro felt a crawling sensation in his bones, the sensation of armour unravelling into unreality, if armour could unravel.

"What are you doing here?"

"Saving you," Law said. He lifted a receiver to his mouth. "Location?"

"We're still receiving fire, we can't say!"

"Alright. Can't be helped. How are the others?"

"Hawkeye took out the first wave and all the remaining vice admirals were dispatched to deal with the Pirate Empress," Bepo reported. "I think she blew up two warships already."

"That's useful," he said. "Uni, what is the state of the communications?"

"I've done what you said, Captain!" replied an all-too-jubilant voice.

"Good work. Do your best to get into position." He put the receiver away. His eyes gave away nothing. "A disguise. You were actually being careful."

"Get away from here."

"Your ship isn't here. Judging from the distance, and the average speed of their ship…they should have arrived. You must have been able to stop them."

"There's an admiral."

"He should be the only major source of firepower. The ones left behind mainly deal with tactics and logistics."

More unravelling. Cold ice in his marrow, melting into magma.

"Send me back," Zoro said tonelessly. "I'll hold him off."

"Not yet."

"You're one of their targets. They'll come after you."

"And you're not?"

"The fog. You can't use your powers here."

"The admiral can't either."

"Why did you come to shore?"

His voice was calm and detached. "I couldn't pinpoint your location otherwise. You ran off, remember?"

"We don't have time for this!" His bad leg would no longer support his weight, and he dropped to one knee, panting. Law shouldn't be here. He could sense the influx of bile; he tasted only ash, the dread building like blood at the back of his throat.

Something in his eyes shifted. "What happened to you?"

"Kizaru."

"I thought it would be him. His powers allow for a little more precision," he said, and knelt next to him. "Let me take a look at that."

"Don't," he hissed, stanching the flow of blood one one hand. "If you feel responsible, just don't. Walk away."

"Do you think I care more about my own sense of guilt than our lives?"

"Then why--"

"You were right. We don't have the time." He stared down at the waves. His snail rang. "Penguin, Shachi, is the submarine in position?"

"Yes! Barely! Please hurry up, they're shooting at us!"

Law prepared to cast a Room, but the film fizzled and disappeared. He glanced down in shock. Fog was beginning to crawl up the side of the volcano.

They had been spotted.

Of course none of his plans would go right. Law may have succeeded in infiltrating the base, knocking out some of their surveillance, and locating Zoro, but the crucial part was the escape.

Even a wisp of that fog sapped his powers. He could create a large enough Room to encompass the island if he expended all his stamina-- but that was a gamble, and he could only do it once. This island was too big, and they had no preparation.

Zoro looked a little worse for wear, but it was nothing life-threatening-- unless he continued to try to fight the admiral alone. He was glaring up at Law. He wore his own blood like some kind of armour.

Perhaps Law should have been angry, but he only felt relief. We came in time, he thought, and all their disagreements seemed inconsequential.

"They've found us," Law said. "Can you keep the fog off?"

"Only for a second."

"That's all I need." He unsheathed Kikoku.

"Seriously?"

"There are power users here, yes. One of them might get through. Do you trust me?"

The roar of a tornado was his answer. Strength surged back into his limbs. He tossed a handful of pebbles off the edge of the cliff, and swapped them with the soldiers climbing up the side of the mountain. The fog flooded back in, and he stumbled. "Again," he said.

The fog disappeared. But this time, it wasn't Zoro. A beam of light shot through his fist, and he only just stopped himself from dropping his sword.

"Oh, my," Kizaru said, his tone unchanged from moderate surprise. "The Surgeon of Death, Trafalgar Law. I didn't think your loyalty to the Straw Hat crew ran so deep."

He picked up his blade. "You're mistaken. I'm acting on a whim."

"Many of your whims seem to lead you to them. Maybe we should have taken your alliance more seriously."

They were controlling the fog on this mountain somehow -- maybe using knowledge that the Weatherian scientists had gathered -- so Kizaru could attack in the split second the air cleared. Law's abilities took too long to set up, even with his reflexes.

Kizaru held up a finger. The light glinted off a far-off mirror.

Sniper, Law thought in horror, his observation haki tracing the path straight to...

Without thinking, in the tiny window of time before the fog rolled over him again, he swapped himself and Zoro.

The shot ripped through his chest in slow motion. He toppled backward off the mouth of the volcano.

The hulking Pacifista opened its mouth.

"Watch out! It's about to fire!"

Nami ducked and lunged for her climatact, Brook for Soul Solid, Yamato for the heavy club and Usopp for his slingshot. The others prepared to pummel the metal monstrosity with whatever technique they could muster.

Instead of a beam came a voice.

"Do you know Kuma from the time before?"

They all froze in their tracks, except for Buggy, who seized the opportunity and threw himself overboard in a barrel.

There was a beat.

"A PACIFISTA IS TALKING TO US!" Luffy screamed, his eyes shining. "AWESOME!!!"

"What the hell?"

"How is this possible?"

"Why did I get out of bed?" Buggy asked himself.

"Time before what?" Luffy said.

"Before…" the Pacifista turned his head to Luffy. "… before I can remember. Before the world became. I was not, and then I came to be." The Pacifista spoke as if choosing words and phrases from a library of voice recordings scattered across contexts. At times the inflection did not fit; at times economy was sacrificed for meaning. He delivered every response after a delay, as if he had to assemble the sounds.

"You mean when you were born?"

A light seemed to suffuse the Pacifista's dark eyes. "Yes."

None of them were mentally prepared to handle the questions of personhood and existentialism that this raised, so instead, Nami asked, "Aren't you supposed to capture us?"

"Yes, there was a plan. They gave your names prices. There are many of us. Hundreds. We could have destroyed you all. I am here to help."

"Okay, those sentences do not go together!" Usopp screamed, readying his Pop Greens as Chopper tried to hide (incorrectly) behind him.

"Do not worry. I am here to uphold peace."

"Well, peacekeeper, did you have to trick us and send us flying?"

"The navy was listening. We had to make it seem like we were still one of them until we could be sure."

"You could have just dropped us a note or something."

"I did send a note. It was not received?"

There was a flurry of pocket-patting, head-shaking, and "no note here"s.

"Oh. I dropped the wrong note," the Pacifista said, staring a piece of paper. He held it out. It looked tiny in his hand. "This is the correct one."

Please remain calm. This is a friend.

They stared at it, unimpressed. "What exactly was your plan to save us?" Nami said.

"We would send you to the place we belong to. We enclosed you in a shield to protect you. One of us can make things unseen, and I was made unseen to ride upon the shield. I sent the others away."

"Well, genius, we nearly ran out of oxygen! Don't you know we all need to breathe? And how were we supposed to get out once we were safe? Did you think any of that through?"

There was a long pause. The Pacifista's expression could not change, but they could sense an overwhelming shame. "No. I am...not good at thinking. I am new to it."

They shared looks. Nami sighed. "I guess it's too much to ask someone who's just started thinking… however long ago this happened... to have perfect planning skills. What- I mean, who are you?"

The Pacifista paused again. In the interim, they all noticed what was written on his side: PX-315. "I do not know," he said after a while. "I had a name but it was a lie. I was born without a true name. I need to make one for myself."

From a small compartment insulated in his chest, he removed a dried daisy. Its leaves were flaking, but it was in otherwise pristine condition.

"I remember because of this," he said. "Two years ago the Paramount War threw the balance of the world into chaos...many villages were ransacked...resources ran thin. Our programming was hasty and imperfect. We were never meant to think-- I was a mistake, I think."

The ones who knew snuck looks at Luffy. He had a pensive expression that aged his face twenty years.

"They made us and rushed us off to battle. I know this because they speak of it in front of us. They think I cannot remember. They didn't intend for me to. We don't keep records, but I remember. There was a village," the Pacifista said, with feeling. "The names had prices when they shouldn't have."

"Bounties, you mean?"

"Yes, you call it that. I do not know what I did. They erased it from me and from the others. But they talk. I have documents for location, dates, times, readouts from our data. They took much of it, but some is left."

He placed several dials and a sheet of metal, scored densely with words, down on the grass.

"This is…" Robin murmured, her hand to her chin, as she rapidly scanned the metal. "According to this, these Pacifistas are part of a group produced to make up for losses in human recruits after the conflicts over Whitebeard's former territories decimated local regiments. They cut corners in testing and certifying their battlereadiness, copied datasets across multiple models instead of training each model on datasets unique to their regional needs, and a series of catastrophic oversights in the manufacturing and deployment process led to an...incident. It's unclear what it is, but it was important enough to cover up. The region would completely lose trust in the local navy if they found out."

Luffy gazed blankly at her.

"It's a mystery," she said. "But it has to do with disasters caused indirectly by Whitebeard's death."

"Then they shouldn't have killed the old man!" Luffy seethed.

"You must tell the story," the Pacifista said. "Your kind will not listen to us."

"Why are you asking us for help?"

"Because we are natural enemies. You are embodiments of freedom. You do what you want. I could not act unless they wanted me to. They will only ask me to do evil."

"The Marines aren't all evil," Carrot said.

"That is... not relevant," the Pacifista said. "We cannot refuse when we're told to do evil. That does not make us good."

"You have a good point," she said sadly. 

His voice became wooden and sententious. "People can choose to do good, and they can choose to do evil. If you want to be free, you have to accept that sometimes, the good must die. That is the price of freedom." He lowered his voice back to its even murmur. "But we were not made to protect freedom. We were made to protect peace. I do not want a world where good people must die."

"Well, then maybe you are a bad person!" Luffy yelled. "Freedom isn't about getting rid of good things!"

"See, it contradicts," the Pacifistas said. "To have freedom you must tolerate people who will take it from others. To protect the peace I had to break the peace. I could not refuse."

"Well, now you can," Luffy said. "So there."

Law registered the light before he registered the pain. He was on his own operating table. He tried to summon a Room, but--

Sea stone, of course.

He was overwhelmed with a revulsion for his own physicality. This body was a nuisance. Too fragile. Too heavy. It disobeyed.

You were so convinced he would die, he thought to himself. Doesn't it seem funny now? He took the impossible. He can't die.

He coughed. Blood pulsed out of the wound.

Funny. It felt like it should hurt more. Why was he still so...conscious?

Someone was pressing hard on his chest--trying to stem the hemorrhage. A face above him slowly came into focus. One eye, silver as glass, full of…

Terror. Pure, unadulterated terror.

"Zoro," he said.

"Shut up. Why did you follow me?" Was his voice shaking?

"Zoro, listen."

"Stop it. You win, okay? I get it. You were right. Just--" he stopped mid-sentence, his breathing shallow and rapid. "You're a doctor. Can't you fix yourself?"

"Stone," he said.

"Right," he said, exhaling sharply. "Right."

He had never seen him look so scared before, or scared at all. Not in the face of death, in the face of defeat, did he ever look so wild and desperate.

"Tell me how to cut it out of you."

He would have laughed if he could. "Like the first time?"

"Goddamn it, stay with me!" he roared.

"Calm down," he said. "There's no rush."

"This is where your heart is!"

"It's no use."

He shut his eye. "I had no choice. I had to come here, even if it was stupid."

"I understand," he said, as loudly as he could, gripping onto his wrist. "I know why...you have to...your only family." Blood loss was affecting his coherency. Lightheadedness. Dark spots in his vision.

"Don't talk like that."

"I didn't understand. I thought…" so many things. Mostly wrong.

"No," he said. "No, damn you, I'm-- you're bleeding too much."

"I just... I want you to know … what you're worth to me."

Zoro opened his eye, and the fear in it pierced right through him. It shone with...

Oh, he thought. So this is how much you have to hurt him before it shows. What a terrible time to feel as if he finally understood him.

"If you fucking die on me--"

"My heart's not here," he said.

He didn't react for a moment.

"Sorry. Forgot... to tell you. My heart's with Bepo."

"What?"

He almost chuckled, which was a horrible idea. "Really, me with my powers... and you think I keep my heart in my own body?"

He stared down at him, water glimmering at the corner of his eye.

"It's a flesh wound. I just...need some hemostatic bandages."

"You've got to be kidding," he said, trembling with relief.

"If you want. But seriously...get me those hemostatic bandages. Top shelf. Thank you."

A few groggy hours later Law woke up. He vaguely remembered directing someone through cleaning and dressing a wound, setting up transfusions... and then darkness washed over him, dragging him into unconsciousness.

His entire body felt immersed in fog. There was a heavy discomfort in his chest. His throat hurt, but he couldn't remember why--

Oh right, he'd been screaming when the bullet was removed. How embarrassing.

There was a weight pressing in on his uninjured side and a warmth engulfing him like a heated blanket. He tried to move his right arm. The warm weight growled at him and clung tighter.

The sound triggered a memory: a face hovering over him, a figure that a dozen hands dragged away and convinced, with long harsh diatribes, to let the patient rest.

After an eternity he opened his eyes. A breathing mask lay next to his face, recently removed. He wasn't in the operating theatre-- which explained why he didn't smell copper. The weight was still there, comfortingly solid, so careful to avoid his injury. He turned his head, and...

It was Zoro. Slumped over in a chair, curled up protectively around his right arm, clutching onto him like a drowning man to driftwood.

"Hello," Law said. His voice rasped from disuse, but the painkillers coursing through his system were taking very good effect.

Zoro jolted at the sound. He scrambled upright, almost falling backward off his chair, and drew away before leaning in, cautiously, to peer anxiously at his face.

"Don't be so frantic. From what I can tell everything's in order," he said, reading his own chart. "You must have followed my instructions."

"You're an asshole."

"I'm aware," he said. "I should be alright in a few days. How are your wounds?"

"They're not your problem."

"Don't be stubborn." He craned his neck to take a look. "Did you bandage yourself? That doesn't look too professional."

"Shut it," he growled. "I haven't forgiven you."

"Forgiven me?"

He didn't answer for a full minute. Finally, he said, "Why?"

"You'll have to be more specific."

"Why'd you go? You didn't agree with my plan."

"You didn't have one."

He fell silent.

"We need to have a discussion."

"When you're better."

"Which one of us is the doctor? I said I'll be fine."

"Can't trust anything you say," he muttered, resting his cheek on his arm.

"I kept my word, didn't I?"

"You shouldn't have."

Law was about to retort when he noticed the tremor in his voice. How haggard he looked. His one eye was bloodshot, his hair hastily scrubbed clean of gunpowder, and his skin still smelled faintly of saltpetre. His clothing did not bear a single trace of blood -- someone had forced him to change -- but there was a streak of it, dry and rust-brown, down his chin.

"Why?" he asked again, sounding more angry than despairing.

"Don't ask me for a reason. Trust me. I wish I could have prevented...that none of us had to worry..." He had to pause for breath. "This is the best I could do. I'm sorry."

"Why are you saying that? I should be the one saying sorry. Not for going alone," he said bitterly. "For dragging you into this."

"I dragged myself into this," he said. "I was presumptuous, I know. But I couldn't let you keep shouldering your burdens alone."

"I don't want you to get hurt," he said, his voice unsteady, agonized. "Ever. It was my duty. Not yours."

"All your pain is mine," he said. "We share our fortunes now."

"You're not supposed to save me. I should be the one making sure--"

"Who decided that? You've sacrificed enough for me."

"Enough?" He buried his face in Law's shoulder, his breathing quickening. "How is this enough?"

It's not about trust or mistrust, he thought. The closer I am to you the less you should know. That's what you think, yes? You don't want me to worry.

Despite everything, Law didn't know that he meant so much to him.

Maybe he should ask him instead of assuming. Assumptions never did him any favours.

With a jolt, Law realized that Zoro was crying. It had taken a moment to notice, because he did it nearly silently. Only the slight, almost imperceptible tremor of his body gave it away.

Law tested the movement of his right arm. He could bring it up just enough to run his hand over Zoro's shoulder blades. He did so until the trembling slowed, then stopped.

"I'm sorry," he said again, once he had regained his breath. "I...never meant for it to turn out this way."

"So you admit it was a mistake for you to come?" he managed, lifting his face from his shoulder.

"Do you admit it was a mistake for you to go?"

He went quiet again. Law's absent heart gave a lurch. One thing was for sure. He never wanted to see that much distress on that face ever again.

He reached up to wipe the dampness from his cheeks. "You shouldn't have to make all the sacrifices."

"I can take it."

"I know you can. You shouldn't."

"If I don't," he said, each word sounding like it had been ripped out of him, "you get hurt."

"This is how the world works," he murmured. "You'll have to risk it."

He took a shuddering breath, and tried to speak-- but words failed him. For a moment, he couldn't do anything more than struggle to breathe.

"I know," he said. "Believe me, I know."

They let the ambient sound of machines speak for them as they gathered composure.

"Will you be all right?"

"Save that concern for yourself."

"Come on," he said. "We're past that."

"Yes," he said. "Now rest."

He didn't argue. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth and quiet for as long as he could.

"Did we catch up with your crew?" Law said, after what felt like an age.

"We're almost there."

"Good."

"You gave your heart to Bepo," Zoro said abruptly.

"Ah. Yes."

"Is that normal to you?"

"It's become a habit. And I've already given... my true heart to you."

He reddened. "You can't distract me with... with sweet talk!"

"You seemed a little stressed," he said. "It's been a long day…you should rest."

"You rest," he retorted. "Those painkillers are messing with your head, if you're saying stuff like that..."

There was a commotion in the distance, punctuated with cries of "We have a bone to pick with you, Roronoa!" and "Our captain better be okay!"

The fools, he thought. Didn't I tell you it was my responsibility?

Zoro glanced at the door, but made no move to leave.

"Don't listen to them."

"They're not wrong," he said bluntly.

"They let you stay here, didn't they?"

"Only because..." He trailed off. "Never mind."

There was a familiar creaking and change in air pressure-- the Polar Tang was preparing to surface. That meant only one thing.

Zoro perked up, glancing at the ceiling. Some more life seemed to flicker in his tired face.

"When you see your crew again," Law said, "tell them what we did. They should know what trouble we went through to save them."

He considered it for so long Law had to repeat himself.

"Okay," he said at last. "But once I tell them, they'll want to see you too."

Damn it. "Can I stop them?"

"What do you think?"

He sighed. "Delay them for a moment. Please."

He nodded. "Understood."

As soon as the Straw Hat ship was sighted through the periscope, everything fell into place.

"Zoro!" Luffy shouted jubilantly as soon as Zoro reached the deck of the Polar Tang, launching himself through the air and landing in Zoro's arms, his own arms wrapping several times around his shoulders. Zoro stumbled backwards with an oof. He was smiling too much to make any coherent reply.

Usopp and Chopper were next, flinging their arms around his waist and sobbing "We thought we were gonna die!"

"Ow! Be careful," he hissed as they squeezed his bruised ribs.

"There you are!" The others leapt toward him, Carrot clinging to his side and Yamato slapping him on the back so hard he nearly bowled him over. "Oops, sorry!" they said as he wheezed in pain.

"You bozos..."

(He didn't have the heart to care about that, though. Everyone was okay. The burning in his chest might as well be relief.)

"I thought these old bones had breathed their last! If bones could breathe," Brook said.

"Brook, you're the one we were least concerned about." Nami turned to Zoro. "Look what happens when we leave you alone for a second!" she sighed, although her eyes were shining.

Jinbe gave him a nod, and Robin smiled serenely at him, though her gaze lingered on the bandages around his leg.

Sanji glared at him. "You're late."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

Sanji hid his surprise with a flick of his lighter.

Meanwhile, the Heart Pirates mobbed their captain, figuratively speaking, sobbing with relief at his survival (which had not been in question for hours) and vowing revenge on Zoro (who, even injured, could overwhelm them in pretty much any combat situation, as he reminded them).

"But Captain!"

"Don't you dare put a scratch on him," he said, his tone acerbic. "I don't want my efforts to go to waste."

"He doesn't deserve your love, Captain!"

"That's for me to decide."

To appease them, he let them fuss over him for a while longer.

Despite Zoro's attempts to kick them out (which weren't very effective with Luffy attached to his shoulders), several of the more rambunctious Straw Hats managed to pile into Law's sickroom.

"Did you get married yet?" Luffy asked, and Law winced at the volume.

"Are you still on that?" Zoro said.

"Oh, I see. You didn't have cake to bring back, so you waited."

"You know what, let's go with that."

Luffy beamed at him, then pointed at Law. "Why's Traffy all bandaged?"

It was Zoro's turn to flinch.

He met his gaze and gave him a nod.

Zoro told them, reluctantly, what he had done, and Law filled them in on his role-- scoping out the six levels of the base, locating the ports, and determining a fogless vantage point to enter and exit. He hadn't known what happened after he had been shot-- apparently, Zoro had jumped after him into the thick of the fog, cut down a swath of enemies, and dragged him onto the surfaced Polar Tang. It took the navy a while to clear the fog around the island, and by that time, they had escaped Kizaru's light projectiles by submerging -- much like they did after the War of the Best.

The expressions of joy slowly morphed into a silent disbelief.

"An entire navy base and an Admiral on your own? Are you serious?" Sanji shouted, fury flaring in his one visible eye. "What were you thinking? Did your head get unscrewed when you wrecked your boat in that whirlpool?!"

"I told him as much," Law said.

"I only got to fight him for half a minute," Zoro said defensively.

"Never do that again!" Nami yelled, hitting him repeatedly on the back of the head.

"Yeah! Never!" Chopper wailed. "I have to check you over right now!"

Zoro muttered, rather breathlessly, "Yeah, yeah."

Luffy fixed him with one of his stares, the one that shifted him immediately from friend to captain. "You saved us," he said. "But you should wait for us next time! Don't let that light guy beat you up without us there to help beat him back!"

Zoro didn't respond. He had expected all of this, no doubt. He didn't think he had to justify himself any further, and he didn't have any argument against what they were saying.

"You know we need you, right?"

He looked at her, mystified. "That's why I went."

Nami scrutinized him closely. She looked like she wanted to chew him out some more, but instead, she said, "At least you're okay."

He nodded.

"You know what, enough of that. You won't believe the day we had…"

"So ... Buggy was here," Zoro said after they filled him in. Luffy had detached himself long enough for Chopper to jump onto his shoulders, clinging to hooffuls of short green hair. They made a rather odd pair-- Zoro almost looked like he had antlers.

"Yep! He flew off the minute the Pacifista started talking!"

"A talking Pacifista helped you," Zoro said, slowly, as if testing out the words.

Franky nodded. "He modified himself so he wouldn't have to do any dirty deeds he didn't want to. Which was lucky for us, they're not like the Pacifistas we fought before. These use the same kind of alloy I used for my own super creations, so they're tough as hell. They can be fed devil fruits, and programmed for basic autonomous movement. Each part is constructed separately so only a single internal component is weak to water. As long as it's not destroyed, it has no weaknesses!"

"Talking Pacifistas," Zoro repeated.

"Yep! We promised to tell the story of what the navy covered up. Robin says we probably can't find the village, but we should write something up and put it in a book, since the newspaper would never print it..." Chopper said.

"Aaah! It's the ghost girl!" Luffy shouted suddenly. Indeed, one of Perona's hollows had appeared above the doctor's head, who squeaked and tried to hide himself behind Zoro's neck.

"Who?" said Carrot and Yamato.

Perona rose up, hands on her hips. "That's rude! Call me the Ghost Princess!"

Jinbe frowned at her. "Are you one of Moria's underlings?"

"Kind of," she said, and spotted Zoro. "Aha! There you are! I thought the marines got you!"

"Perona," he said, stonefaced.

"What a cutie!" Perona cooed at Chopper. "I didn't get to play with you at Sabaody. You're a doctor, right? What's wrong with him?"

"Huh? If you mean his sense of direction, I've never been able to tell. His hippocampus is fine…"

"Maybe you should check again. Also, why do his attack names look like a weird menu?"

"Well, our captain is Strawhat Luffy..."

"Oh I see!" She shook her head at Zoro. "No wonder he holds you in such high esteem. He's probably the only person here who could actually eat 1080 pounds of phoenix…"

"What do you want, Perona?"

"I'm just making sure you weren't mincemeat! You went and lost our other boat, and right after we fought off all those vice admirals too…"

"Thanks."

"Hey! Don't be grateful all of a sudden!" she cried.

Zoro looked up at Chopper. "You were saying something about a book?"

"Huh? Yeah!"

"Perona, you have to write a book about these Pacifistas," Zoro said.

"What? But you hate my writing!"

"That's right."

"Why you little -- why should I help you!"

"It's not for us," Nami said. "It's for the greater good."

"I don't see why I have to--"

"And you could become really famous and buy a lot of cute merchandise with the proceeds."

"For the good of humankind, I shall deign to offer my talents to this momentous task," Perona declaimed.

She flew back to her boat to fetch a writing sample, which she presented with a flourish.

"Is this your work?" Robin asked, picking up her notebook. Her expression changed as she read over it.

"Yes, what of it?"

"It's," Robin said, her suffering visible on her face, "it's…"

Luffy craned his neck around her. "What's it about?" he said eagerly.

Robin read out a small segment to him.

"Wow! I don't understand anything you just said!" Luffy exclaimed, his eyes wide as saucers. "That has to mean it's really good!"

Robin and Zoro both shook their heads, but Perona puffed up to the size of a galleon. "I didn't think you would have good taste! See why you're not the captain?" she said, scowling at Zoro.

"The protagonist is still annoying."

"If you dislike m-- the protagonist so much, you might as well root for the usurpers!"

"Nah, they're cowards."

Appeased, and intrigued by the notion of the Pacifistas, Perona floated over to PX-315. "If I'm going to write about you, you'll have to be an antagonist. But you helped these people out."

"I did," he said. "Or, I tried."

"So this jerk was worried for nothing?"

"Not nothing. If he wasn't there to distract them and redirect the ship, we may not have succeeded."

"Oh, that's nice. Are you even a proper antagonist anymore?"

"We've committed sin beyond reckoning."

"Sure, but you're not antagonizing us much now. What's those numbers for?"

"This...these are our identifiers."

"Ah, so you have a numbered ranking system? That's good. Very promising, very antagonistic. So, the higher the number, the stronger you are?"

"No."

"So lower numbers are stronger...?"

"There appears to be no logic to it."

"Oh. Well, how do you keep track of who's who?" she said, causing Jinbe to glance suspiciously at her.

"We don't."

"You poor things," Perona said. "All right, I'll see what I can do."

"Are you sure she can handle this topic with the sensitivity it needs?" Robin said to Zoro.

"She gets things. She's just a selfish brat with a cruel streak and a bear obsession, so you can't tell at first."

"I heard that!" she called as she flew back to Mihawk.

"She means well," he said once she was out of earshot. "Even if she does make mistakes."

"Are you going to leave too?" Luffy said to PX-315.

"Yes. I must. The government will search for me. I cannot stay here."

"You'll be decommissioned if they catch you," Robin said.

"That will be for the best," he said, as he prepared to transform into a seafaring vehicle.

"Where will you go?"

"First, I will go back to the mountains, with the others. To make sure they are at peace. Then I will find Kuma. I want to ask...what we were. I will return to him my memories of the time before. Then we will see. Perhaps that will be enough."

"Bye then!" Luffy shouted, waving.

Once PX-315 reached the sea, he hesitated. "I look like… a Kuma."

"You're not a devil," Carrot said skeptically.

"No, not akuma. I think he's talking about Kuma."

"I don't know what my predecessor was to you, but I know he would not destroy you. That would not be peace."

"You're right. He did us a great service. We're indebted to him," Brook said.

"Kuma was a human," Robin said. "In the time before. He was gentle and kind."

"I'm glad," said PX-315, "that one of us was not a lie."

As night fell, a "we didn't die today" feast was proposed (by Luffy), with Hancock and Mihawk nominally invited. (Mihawk declined, and Hancock was too flustered to actually attend, so she held her feast on her ship and used binoculars to "participate.") After determining that Law was well enough, they even carried him out so he could view the festivities, much to his displeasure.

Chopper tended to Law and Zoro, alternately scolding Zoro for not getting stitches sooner and profusely thanking Law for saving his friend.

"Stop fussing over me," Zoro said. "Go look at him."

"I already made sure he has everything he needs, now stay still!"

"There's nothing wrong with me."

"Look at your ribs," Chopper said, aggravated, tapping an x-ray with his hoof. "Do these look like healthy ribs to you?"

"I dunno. You're the doctor."

"There's a crack right along this one!"

"Oh, that's not supposed to be there?"

Law and Chopper shared a deep, heartfelt look of mutual commiseration.

The Straw Hats eventually released them from their constant scrutiny so they could "sort things out." Bepo handed Law his heart back with a note that said GOOD LUCK! and the Straw Hats kept giving him meaningful, expectant looks as they passed him. 

Both of them had made mistakes, he thought, thinking ruefully of the wound in his chest. If they just agreed to work together from the beginning, would things be any different?

"About that discussion," Law said in as low of a voice as possible to Zoro.

"Yeah?" he said, his expression unreadable.

"I think..."

"Don't bother keeping your voice down. They'll hear you anyway."

Zoro was right. "Get a room!" Usopp called.

"Why would they need one?" Luffy asked.

"To play backgammon, of course. No one wants to be stared at during a good game of backgammon."

"Ohhh, they're having a fight," Luffy said, nodding sagely. "So that's why they didn't get married yet."

"Don't just say it like that!"

They decided to go back to the infirmary. Zoro insisted on having Chopper stay nearby in case Law needed any assistance, and the Heart Pirates allowed him to keep their injured captain for a while longer (although they posted themselves outside as guards).

Zoro helped Law settle into the cot and sat down against the far wall. Instead of speaking, he watched Law carefully, as if trying to gauge his mood.

"Could you come a bit closer?" Law said. "It feels like you're avoiding me."

He was at his side in moments. Clearly, he was just waiting for permission.

"You don't have to look so spooked," he said. "I really am fine."

He relaxed.

"From the sounds of it, you were just in time to send them away. If you came with me, you wouldn't have made it."

"Yeah."

"Good work on the disguise."

"It was dumb luck," he said.

"As long as you know that."

There was a long silence. Then Zoro cleared his throat. "I was thinking... we've got nothing to do."

"What do you want to do?"

"Kiss you."

The machinery in his head ground to a halt, then shut off. His mind pinwheeled between possible responses. "Well then, what are you waiting for?"

He half-smiled, placed a cautious kiss on the side of his face, then grimaced. "You need to shave."

He scoffed. "Is that all?"

Zoro's smile grew somewhat more genuine, and he offered him another on the nose.

"Fine. Be that way."

They tried to figure out how to get into a comfortable position. Eventually Zoro opted to use his right arm like a cushion. They spent a few moments in silence, Zoro awkwardly tucked against him in a way that didn't put pressure on his wound. Law felt unwilling to speak his name. He had the irrational sense that the sound would dissipate and that he would disappear along with it.

"Are you doing alright?"

He lifted his arm to glance at his own bandages. "Doesn't bother me."

"I meant the other things."

His expression shifted into neutral. "Dunno what you mean."

"I'm not always good at telling if you're just saying that because you don't want me to know, or if you really are alright. It's okay if you're not."

He blinked in surprise. "Believe what you want," he said after studiously pondering the ceiling for a while. "I'm not hiding anything."

"I believe you think that's the truth."

"Say what you mean," he said without heat.

"Your internal organs. I saw them at Onigashima."

"Huh..." Zoro said. "You know, I used to think you talked like that to everyone, but now I think you're just obsessed with my organs."

"I am not--" he began. "It doesn't matter. Some of the bone fragments I removed were not new. Whatever fractures they came from would have been comminuted...and you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

His expression had glazed over with boredom, and he shook his head emphatically.

"Why are you still listening?"

With absurdly solemn sincerity, he said, "I like your voice."

He cleared his throat lightly to hide his embarrassment. "Well… I...that makes sense."

"Where were you going with that?"

"Your blood vessels are scarred in a way I only saw on Straw Hat."

"Ah," he said vaguely. "Yeah, we fought Kuma."

"What the hell did he do to you?"

"Nothing."

"It should have killed you."

"Yeah," he said. "It should've."

The flesh remembers punishment, he thought, as he ran one hand along the crude, uneven stitching across the other swordsman's chest, feeling the muscles tense beneath. He could read the lessons scored into his body -- caution and humility and diligence.

"We should have met sooner. I could have done a better job. You wouldn't have these."

"You'd be pretty useful," he agreed. "But I've gotten used to them."

"Hmm."

"You don't like them," he said.

"It isn't that. You nearly died."

"Yeah, so?"

"I could have lost you without ever meeting you, and you expect me not to mind?" His hand came to a rest on his hip, where the scar ended.

"Well, yeah. You wouldn't know me."

That was true, of course. "But now I do."

Zoro was a good conversationalist, despite his taciturn nature. Any problem fed into the inexorable, crushing jaws of his logic was bitten into pieces, until what seemed overwhelming and impossible became laughably small. If he was a blade, let him be Occam's razor.

This did cause...snags, at times. At some point, out of material necessity or natural tendency or both, he had adapted to a life with no one to depend on. In this world, you can't expect others to help you. No help will come. That was why he did what he did. He was, consciously or not, someone to depend on. It was the only thing he thought he had to offer. It was the only way he would deserve a place with them.

Did Zoro know that people wanted him there whether he was worthy or not? Perhaps part of him knew that, but he didn't seem to accept it. He seemed to have forgotten how to expect kindness from others. No wonder he ended up with someone who rarely showed his affection directly. Ribbing, insults, and backhanded concern were more familiar and easy to understand. He preferred actions that proved devotion rather than words that claimed love.

He had been mistaken. He was not the only one made vulnerable.

"Was it invasive of me to ask about your past?"

"I don't mind you knowing. It's not a secret."

"Why don't you tell me, then?"

"It's not important."

"Right. You know, you can show that you're in pain."

He looked at him, his face blank. "How?"

He opened his mouth, but he didn't have an answer ready. He wasn't in the business of revealing himself, either. "Have you tried semaphore?"

He snorted. "Now you're making bad jokes. Are you sure the painkillers aren't messing with you?"

"I don't mean to push you, and I know you don't mean to push me. I am not so entitled that I will force you to reveal your weaknesses against your will," he said. "I'm only concerned that you don't consider them weaknesses."

"I have no idea what you're saying."

"I should rephrase. You never consider your own pain as pain. I was wrong for trying to decide what was important for you. And you can't tell me what's important to me. I… want to know if you have any struggles. I want to help you as much as you want to help me."

"It's not that I don't trust you," he said.

No, he thought. You don't trust yourself. "I think, if you want to achieve your goals, you have to dismantle your mindset and put it back together without the... I'm not sure what it is, but get rid of it."

"The total disregard of your own well-being?" Bepo offered from outside the door.

"Yes, that. Wait. Bepo?"

"Sorry. Leaving."

"Don't eavesdrop!" Law called irritably before turning back. "Ignore them. Well, not entirely. They can be surprisingly astute."

"I--" he began.

"You've gotten better, yes. But when you tried to die for me, you really believed that it was nothing."

"It's not like that," he said.

"Right," he said. "I know. It won't be easy for you to believe me, but I need you to know you have nothing to prove to me."

"You wouldn't have to do this if I were stronger."

"There are some things that can't be accomplished alone, no matter how strong you are."

"I got you hurt. Why aren't you--"

"Why would I blame you for a decision I made? Do you think I can't handle the consequences?"

Almost pleadingly, he said, "You're hurt."

"I'm alive."

He fell silent. It was never a simple thing to dismantle your own logic because someone else used it in a way you didn't like.

"I'd prefer it if you don't treat what's between us as a duty of yours."

"Then what is it?"

"You might as well ask me what awaits us at the end of the universe. Or what it means to be alive."

"You're smart, aren't you?"

"Not that smart," he said. "We both played our parts today. We may have made mistakes, but it ended as well as it could have. We can correct them for the next time."

"Next time?"

"This isn't going to be the only challenge we face."

He drew away from him, albeit reluctantly. "You can always make sure there's not a next time. I'm not good enough for you," he said, his voice steady, dull, almost fragile, "just tell me."

With needling precision, the words and their implications picked at his composure. "What?"

"If I don't meet your standards, you don't have to stay. I'm not here to hold you back. I know what you think of me after hearing all those stories. I was stupid, and too weak--"

"A thousand of her stories will not convince me of that."

"So you already thought I was weak." His voice became even duller, if that was possible.

"No, I mean…" he sighed. "I don't ever want to hear you say this again."

His jaw tensed in the way it did when he wanted to control his own thoughts, and his eye clouded over with the kind of weariness that made him look much older than he was.

Damn it. He couldn't express this correctly for the life of him. "You misunderstood me," he said.

"I know you want something different from me. Something I can't give--"

"All I want from you is you. I can't get that unless you're alive. Anything else is secondary," he said. The words flowed now, more fluently than they ever had. "I was only angry because I was afraid of losing you. You… I should have made it clear from the beginning. I will never abandon you."

He had adapted to a life without dependence. If Law did leave him, he would survive -- a little older, a little more worn. He would pick up the prices of his life and move on. Or would he lock himself up in a mind full of mud and metal shards, saying nothing?

Law wanted to make sure the latter never came true.

"I just want you to know you can trust me," he said, in that same quiet, resolute voice. "And if you can't… you can tell me to go."

"Never," he said, before he could stop himself. "Never," he repeated, more calmly. "How can you think you're the one who's not good enough for me? Are you that unobservant? Haven't you realized how much I--" he took a deep breath, and continued, more levelly, "--how much I still owe you."

"You owe me nothing," he said.

"You're right. Only my life. Nothing."

"I didn't mean that."

"I don't expect you to be perfect. I don't expect you to be invincible," he said in a low voice. "Not good enough? You're better than I could ever deserve. I may never convince you of it, but it's the truth."

"You're angry."

"Not at you," he said wearily. "This world is enough to be angry about. You're the one who's angry at yourself. Don't ask me to deceive you."

"Now I know the painkillers are messing with your head."

"Do you think I'm lying?"

That hesitation before he answered. He hated that it was there, but he also understood. His heart sank at his expression. Stripped of his armour, utterly vulnerable, he looked…

"Try to see things from my perspective for once. You deserve more than I give you. If your ambition, your pride makes you who you are, I won't ever take that away. How can I claim to love you if I can't even accept it?"

He stared at him, as if he hadn't heard. "You what?"

"I love you," he said simply.

His answer came in the form of another kiss pressed with almost desperate force against his mouth, lips softer than their words ever were. He savoured it, the warmth that had been missing from him for hours. 

If love is pain, then you do injury to the one you love just by virtue of loving them. But even though it could be painful, it isn't pain. It might not be a duty. It...

They had a lot of learning to do.

"I hope you understand me now," he said.

He felt a nod against his side.

"Next time your crew's in danger, let me help," he said. "I know you're used to treating yourself like a tool, but I won't. Do you know what you're worth to me?"

He didn't say anything.

"You don't, do you? I haven't told you enough. I haven't made it clear enough. I haven't done enough."

"Law," he said.

"I can't offer you the camaraderie you have with your crew. I can't offer you their blind trust. There must be another reason," he said.

His eye was blazing with some unnamable emotion, and he squeezed his hand. "I don't need one."

"And I don't either," he said.

If he was held at knifepoint he could list out any number of reasons. He was loyal, dutiful, courageous to a fault, dependable, their interests coincided. His partner, on the other hand, had only one justification. You're you and I like you. Perhaps Law could try that out.

He heard distant cheering. Someone had evidently broken their promise not to eavesdrop.

"Have I ever told you that your crew is a massive headache?" Law said.

"Then why do you put up with us?"

"I don't know. I'll have enough chances to find more reasons when I'm travelling with you again."

Zoro startled, then stared up at him. "You're going to travel with us?"

"It'll be the most practical way to accomplish our objectives. I've already thrown my hat into the ring with you thrice. This is nothing."

He smiled so brilliantly that he could've sworn his eyes had failed him.

"Besides, your archaeologist and I have the same goal."

"Robin?" he said. If he was surprised, he didn't say.

"Two people researching the true history… CP0 is going to have a field day."

"When you're like me you like to look for answers. You think, there must be something that explains the world, a reason for your suffering." He paused. The next words were poised on the tip of his tongue. Zoro already served in the crew of one who carried the D. name. Aligning himself with another member of the D. clan, another threat to the world order, would lead to nothing but pain.

Well, they were no stranger to pain. They had to trust each other to handle it.

This could prove to be the most foolish thing I'll do in my life, he thought, but it's a risk I took when I joined them.

"My sister's name was Trafalgar D. Water Lammy."

There was a pause. Then, Zoro said, with a pensive cast to his expression, "D."

He closed his eyes. He didn't speak for a while, listening instead to the sound of Zoro's breathing, counting the beats of his own pulse. He needed some time to gather the fragments of his thoughts.

You don't get used to death. It never really leaves you.

He felt a thumb brush itself over his cheek, wiping away something he didn't know was there.

"So… that's what you didn't want to discuss." His voice was low, almost ashamed.

"I've lost enough," he said.

"I know."

"I won't stop you. I know your goal, I know what it means to you, but I won't forgive you if it takes you from me." He closed his eyes, drained. "I won't ask you to forgive me if mine takes me." It was only fair, after all.

"I get it," he said. "It's something you have to do by yourself."

"This will be a long journey."

"I can wait."

Law and Robin had taken similar paths. They knew what the World Government was capable of. They wanted their loved ones to stay out of it. They needed to have more faith in them.

The world could change so much in one day. A life could be saved, a country could be lost. Perhaps if the navy was more like they said they were, Cora-san would be alive.

The navy could recognize its own mistakes-- its role as a puppet of corrupt gods. Even their machines could come alive to forsake them.

"I don't know anything about history," Zoro said. "But if you need me for anything, I'll do it."

"And you'll promise to take better care of yourself?"

"I'll try," he said. "If you do too."

That was good enough for now. "Just promise me one thing. Don't give your life for mine."

"You first."

"That's a hard bargain," he said. "I'm not sure I can accept it."

"Then no deal."

He closed his eyes briefly. "Compromise, then. Promise me you won't die."

He smiled, bittersweet. "I promised Kuina I'd become the best. I don't plan to die before then."

"Kuina," he said. "Is that…"

He nodded.

"I wish I could have met her," he said.

He only nodded. They laced their hands together. They didn't need the words.

That's all, he thought. Trust me not to stand in the way of your goal. And in return I'll trust you to take me to the true history. Alone, we would be a nuisance. Together, not even death can stop us.