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Chapter Text

[x . x]

Barracks D. Rosario Isabel does not like the color white.

She has never liked it, though she could never articulate why. At least, not in words that anyone would bother to take the patience to understand, perhaps because white was the first color to betray her.

She is born in a white hospital, in a room drenched with sterile light. Enveloped in the coarse texture of a white linen cloth, she is situated in the lifeless embrace of her mother, a stranger to the community who is recognized by the locals as Jenni. A woman too pale, too silent, who stumbled upon Flevance as a sanctuary, to hide from a pursuer the city never got to see. Jenni stares at her child with a terrible kind of awe—one that Isabel will never get to know was not love, but mourning. For in giving Isabel life, her mother was made to give up her own.

Isabel is taken. There are whispers in the air—curses spoken in a mother tongue she will never remember. She is passed into another white room. Given over to strangers, a couple cloaked in the grace of wealth and white silk smiles, who live in a marble mansion where even the shadows feel bleached. She is the oldest of five; two boys and two girls, not including herself.

For a while, she lives. She plays. She grows. And she is loved, she thinks.

(But love is not absence.

It is not the silence that answers a child's question, nor the cold clock ticking through empty rooms. Love is not the aching wait for a door that never opens, nor the small, trembling hands tasked with raising other small, trembling hands. It should not taste of sacrifice, nor carry the scent of being cast aside. Love was never meant to feel like abandonment dressed as duty.

Never meant to feel like a wound.

Why? She asks herself, staring at the sick form of her brother on the bed.

Why bring more, when I can barely take care of myself?)

Then one day, it ends.

The world rots quietly at first. Hospitals overflow with the still-living. Their breaths are shallow, their eyes milk-glazed with death, their bodies blistering beneath white gowns. Their families clutch them through masks and weep into white sheets soaked in fevered sweat.

The color takes everything.

White—white—white. In the end, it clings to their skin like a curse, taut and ghostly, while poison winds through their blood.

Isabel watches the only parents she's ever known die in slow, dissolving pieces. She is left as the sole inheritor, as the first daughter to continue the legacy of a dying race, to care for children she never asked for. Their final gift to her is locked inside a sealed chest: an obsidian fruit wrapped in white silk. They never told her what it was. They only said: "If you are alone. If you are hunted. If there is nothing left."

She tries to give it to her siblings. Tries to tear a piece of it, tries to feed it into their mouths even though she's dying too. It's a stupid, desperate hope. But they can't bite anything anymore. They can't do anything besides drool and breathe in short wheezes. So she reluctantly keeps the fruit, wondering desperately how she can manage to override the hospital rules and make them ingest it any way they can.

But there is no use.

She eats it raw three days later. Bitter. Alive. It burns through her like fire made from fear.

And then she survives.

But survival is not mercy.

The genocide had already begun.

They come in boots and black coats, rifles singing. Street by street, house by house. The white mansions burn first. Then the shacks. Then the churches. Then the children. Blood turns the snow into mud. Isabel runs, barefoot, lungs ripping apart with every breath. She trips over bodies. Vomits on stone. Screams and keeps screaming, but no one comes. No one can.

Please, she begs. Her siblings. Her brothers. Her sisters. Let them live. Let them be spared.

But the hospital is already dead.

It burns like judgment.

The ground is littered with bodies, mouths parted mid-prayer, eyes glassy with stories unfinished. There is nothing left but flame and smoke and silence.

She tries to enter. Oh, how she tries. But the ruin groans against her. Walls collapsed. Beams twisted like bones. The very air refuses her passage.

The fruit in her pocket pulses with heat, whispering salvation. Eat, it tells her. Eat, and you may reach them.

But what if they're still alive? They will need it more than me. They must have it. Not me. Not me.

Never me.

But she cannot reach them. She cannot force her way through fire or stone or fate.

She screams.

She screams until her throat is raw, until it rips. She screams until blood fills her mouth and sorrow drowns her. She screams because there is nothing else left to do.

And no one left to hear her.

She stumbles into a chapel, numb, after some time wandering, hoping she gets killed too. There is nothing left. It's just her, in the end. It's always been her. Why is it always her? There, beneath a broken statue of a blindfolded saint, she finds a nun. Other children cling to her habit, attaching to the last thread of something holy. They, too, are hurt. Covered in the crimson avarice of men.

"The soldiers are giving mercy now," the nun says, voice soft like ash. "You'll be safe, child. I promise."

And Isabel, shaking, bleeding, and without a world left to belong to, believes her.

Because what else is there to believe in?

[x . x]

Isabel meets a boy named Law hours later.

It is by accident that she does.

Everything goes wrong.

She is covered in blood—some hers, most not. Her fingernails are askew, several torn off. One leg drags behind her, bone grating against flesh, every movement a white-hot scream. She crawls through a field of bodies: soldiers, children, innocents, monsters. The earth is stitched with the dead, and she is dizzy from their silence.

In her ears, the whispers return—soft and silken like gauze soaked in grave dirt. Mother Death watches over you, they murmur. The moonlight is her eye. You are safe. You are chosen. You will not fall.

The Devil Fruit writhes inside her like a second soul. Its voice is cruel and sweet. It promises protection. It promises ruin. She doesn't know what she ate. Only that it is the only reason she is still breathing, when she had acted desperately.

But she is afraid.

The ghastly power curls around her, hungry and hot. Her body struggles to mend, slow and aching, every muscle trembling with borrowed energy. Still, she pushes up—bit by bit—refusing to let the dark take her. She is repulsed that the very corpses around her seem to scream at her to set them free. As if she can still hear them, even in death.

And then she sees him.

A boy.

A boy in a strange spotted hat, hovering over the broken corpse of a nun.

He is crying.

The whispers quiet. The power within her stills, coiling close to her skin, alert. Watching.

Isabel blinks, tears mixing with blood.

She is not alone.

She is not alone.

And she doesn't know why that fact splits her chest open with such a desperate kind of relief—but it does. Maybe because it means she hasn't lost everything. That someone else has survived this nightmare. That she is not the only ghost walking among the slain.

She reaches. Her hand trembles in the air between them. Her voice comes cracked and raw, pulled from the hollow places of her lungs.

"...We need to go," she rasps, choking on iron and dust.

The boy's sobbing halts. His head jerks toward her, eyes wide—wider than fear. As if he hadn't realized anyone else could still speak. Could still suffer.

And then—something passes between them. The energy—hers, the strange force she cannot name—reaches for him.

She feels it happen: a thread, unseen but certain, stretching from her broken body to his grief-stained soul. It is not kind, but it is real.

Her gaze drops to the nun's body—the same woman who had once whispered, "Run, child. Go. Don't look back." The bullets had found her. The soldiers had not missed.

But even in death, she hadn't let herself be taken. The kind soul whisps to comfort her and the boy, something that he doesn't seem to realize. But Isabel feels it. It makes her want to vomit, to see the mangled face, to see that Isabel could have had it worse. But she'd run away with other children she'd left behind in her desperation. And still, through this agony, her sacrifice knew no bounds.

Neither will Isabel.

Not now. Not when someone else still lives.

Gunfire cracks the air behind her.

Isabel flinches, the sound tearing through her like lightning through an old tree. The whispers return in a frenzy—Run, child. Move. MOVE.

She doesn't think. She can't.

She lunges for the boy.

His limbs are stiff from shock, his fingers still curled around the dead nun's robe. Isabel grabs him by the collar and yanks, nearly collapsing under the weight of both of them. Her broken leg screams, and so does she. But she doesn't stop.

"Get up," she rasps, half-pleading, half-command. "We have to go."

He doesn't speak. But he moves. On instinct, maybe. On fear. On the raw, awful drive to live.

They run—stagger, stumble, drag—through blood-slick alleys and collapsed buildings. The fires haven't reached this part yet. But the soldiers will. They always do.

Another bullet cracks the stone near her shoulder. Debris explodes into her arm. She bites down a scream, yanks Law forward, and dives into a half-collapsed drainage tunnel choked with roots and dust.

Darkness swallows them whole.

Silence follows, save for their ragged breathing and the faint, mournful whistle of wind above.

Isabel slumps against the wall, feeling the cold stone press against her fevered skin. Her Devil Fruit energy crawls restlessly beneath her veins, itching for violence, for release—but she forces it back down.

The boy curls beside her, arms wrapped around his knees.

"You're... that girl," he says finally, voice rough with ash and tears.

She doesn't know what he means by that. She doesn't answer. She doesn't know how. Not anymore.

"I'm Law," he adds, after a moment. He doesn't offer a last name. She wouldn't either.

"Isabel," she whispers. It hurts to speak. Her lungs are wet. Her lips are dry. Her throat is itchy with the ash of gunpowder.

He nods. That's enough.

The silence stretches between them again.

She doesn't know how long they stay there for. It's a long time, she thinks, because her body begins to stitch back together, pulling at her empty stomach and body fat in preservation. It takes and takes so much that she ends up falling asleep. The boy, Law, whispers to her to get up, that she is not breathing, pleading and pleading through her restless dreams.

But her body won't wake.

It doesn't.

[x . x]

She wakes upon a forsaken shore, a world away, where no name has ever been spoken and no god dares to look.

It is night. The air is void.

The moon spills its silver across her body, too radiant for the dead, too soft for what she has become.

She feels nothing.

No breath of warmth, no heartbeat echoing through her ribs. Only the cold kiss of sand, damp and indifferent, clinging to her like ash from an old funeral. The waves of the coastal beach lap at her bare, healed feet. A horrible hunger prevails.

And still—she is alive. Terribly, impossibly alive.

As if life were not mercy, but a sentence written in salt and silence.

She doesn’t remember.

[x . x]

Years Later

[x . x]

To this day, even as a 22-year-old woman carved from grief and fire, Barracks D. Rosario Isabel gazes down at the pale scars winding across her palm, she can't help but wonder.

Was it the fruit? Was it that ancient, pulsing thing, flesh-like and veined like an organ, that chose her to live amidst everything else that died in the faint indentation of her life? Had it been this unholy miracle that tore her from the jaws of death and cast her onto the lost island of Port Angeles, far from the blood and flame of the battlefield? Had it been mercy? Or had it been something crueler, something with teeth?

They call it the Fright Knight: Yami Yami no Mi AKA the Nightmare Knight Fruit. A name spoken like a whisper in necromantic circles, spoken as if it were a curse.

A Womb in Death, someone once called it. She doesn't know who, only that the phrase echoes when she closes her eyes.

Her research—scattered, incomplete, always frustrating—offered little. The world is cautious around things that toy with the dead. But she has learned enough.

It can heal, yes—if blood is given. It can summon, too—a blade unlike any other, a double-bladed scythe forged from the fruit's will, called not by her hand but by her blood.

It can revive, in ways no one understands. It can regrow flesh, torn beyond repair. It can bind ghosts to bone, raise shadows to fight beside her. And though she has only glimpsed it in dreams, she knows the fruit harbors a place between worlds, a sanctuary or a tomb, where she might one day disappear entirely.

They say it fits her, this fruit. Her friend Nita Grim, or as she calls herself, Anita, who'd been one of the first people she met in Port Angeles and now her trusted friend, likes to joke that it was destined for her. A dark, mysterious girl given a power carved from grave-soil and myth. And Isabel? She smiles, faintly. She might even agree.

But in the small hours, when even ghosts sleep and her hands tremble beneath the weight of silence, she wonders.

She has always wondered.

Did the fruit save her?

Or did it claim her?

She will never know. The dead never do.

She doesn’t remember.

"Isabel."

Isabel halts her usual brooding session at the call of her name. She lifts her head, seeking with eyes of violet through the dark. She finds her other most trusted friend, Lysa Marr, otherwise known as Alyssa, hovering and waving something in her hand. An old, worn, coffee-stained map.

Isabel stands from her listless poise on top of the dead body she killed. She rolls her shoulders, strolling toward her. "Where was this?"

Anita pops her sunny head out of a wall corner. She points her thumb behind her, "In the client's room. We're thinking he was planning a trafficking line down the East Blue."

"That's far," Isabel acknowledges. She takes the paper from Alyssa's hands, greedily raking her eyes upon the information. Areas labeled in red mock the outdated information filtering out of her head.

Alyssa's heels quietly click toward the room again. "He was working with some guy named Doflamingo. Apparently, he was funding this for live explosion experiments," She says airily.

Isabel rolls up the map and shoves it into the back pocket of her black jeans. She offers Alyssa and Anita a nod. "This is good progress. Good work, Girs. Let's take this back to the ship and let Nallely analyze it. There's probably something else we're missing that we won't find in this old place." She flips her hair over her shoulder, scratching her scalp in contemplation in the dark as Alyssa and Anita gather closer to the exit. "I have a feeling we're about to get into some shit."

"Prolly bullshit," Anita mumbles. She rubs her blood-slicked hands in slight dismissal, staring down at her soaked yellow sundress in profound dismay. "I need a shower. I'm tired."

"Same," Alyssa pitches in, flicking a stray piece of flesh from her pink blouse.

"Let's go," Isabel says, brushing past them, her coat flaring in the salty breeze as she strides into the sunlit grounds. The light spills like fire over the crumbling stone of the abandoned balcony. She grips the edge without hesitation and vaults over, boots thudding into the soft sand below. The dunes ripple beneath her landing like sleeping beasts, and far in the distance, the sea glints like a blade. A crooked sign juts from the rock wall behind her, its chipped letters warning off-limits.

She doesn't care. She has cases to solve and coin to earn. The Marines can kiss her ass.

"Catch me!"

Isabel turns sharply, just in time for Anita to crash into her arms. A grunt escapes her as the blunt edge of Anita's weapon slams against her skull.

"Ow—" Anita winces, gripping her head like it might fall off. "Why is pain immediate?"

Isabel exhales through her nose, unamused, and drops her like luggage. She makes a noise as Alyssa's already mid-leap. Isabel catches her, barely.

"One day I'm gonna forget to catch both of you," Isabel mutters, wiping sand off her sleeves after dropping Alyssa next to Anita. "And your asses are gonna be sore."

"Yeah, yeah," Alyssa waves her off, brushing dust from her skirt like it insulted her.

Anita pushes herself up with a groan, rubbing the back of her head. "We can make cookies as recompense?" she offers, her voice honey-sweet despite the chaos. A sheepish smile tugs at her lips.

Isabel's head tilts. That gets her attention.

"That's good. I'm craving some, actually."

"Weren't you craving pozole too?" Alyssa asks as she walks beside them, boots crunching down into the sun-baked dunes.

Isabel nods like someone naming a sacred vow. "Yeah. I want both."

"Me too! Maybe we can stop at the Baratie? They know how to make it and stuff." Anita says casually, too casually. She's suspiciously looking around. "Since we're already going to investigate over there, too."

Two heads turn her way.

"You're just saying that because you wanna see Sanji," Alyssa and Isabel say in perfect unison.

Anita pauses, guilt and desire colliding on her face like rogue waves. Then she groans, dramatically.

"Yeah, so?"

"We can go," Isabel sighs, flicking a hand. Anita perks up. "But we gotta stop for some supplies first."

"Yeah, we're running out of flour and milk," Alyssa adds. "And you used all the cinnamon on the cake you fucked up.”

Their boots carve prints through the dunes as they walk, the sand swallowing their footsteps just as quickly. The air hums with heat and the quiet hiss of windblown grit. They bicker and tease, and the sun blazes on, indifferent and golden.

Isabel lifts her head, shielding her eyes with her hand. Up ahead, their ship the Luna Clave rocks gently in the shallows, glimmering like a shadowed pearl. Nallely leans over the railing, waving an empty bottle of alcohol like a prize won at war.

"We gotta get some alcohol, bitches!" she hollers, grinning like sin.

Anita throws up a fist in solidarity. "HELL YEAH."

Their laughter echoes across the cove—chaotic, hungry, alive.

Isabel wouldn’t ask for anything else in life.

Chapter Text

[x . x]

The Siren Sisters of the Grave Current is a small but deadly organization.

They do not fly in colors of spectral lights. They do not leave unworthy survivors. They do not warn.

In the folds of sea charts where no compass turns true and the wind howls of women long dead, there exists a name whispered by the doomed and the damned, passed between the teeth of drunks and priests alike. Said in prayer. Said in fear.

Barracks D. Rosario Isabel, the Kokoro no Saiban — The Judge of the Heart.

She is no pirate, nor savior. Merely a question: Who deserves to die more—the hunted or the hunter?

Captain, arbiter, executioner. Some say she was born in the ruins of Flevance, others that she rose from its graves. Neither tale is false. She is the Leader of the Siren Sisters, a clandestine quartet feared from the Calm Belt to the Grand Line, where mercy is optional and truth is blood-borne. She chooses her contracts with the eye of a mortician and the detachment of a god. Hers is the hand that tastes lies, her power a relic of judgment among the elusive threat of its creation, an accursed expense that tastes truth through blood and spills it when falsehoods are spoken.

She has many names, and one of the most popular amongst children: the Somber Siren. Their nightmares sing her a lullaby. Their mothers do not tell them she isn't real.

Her voice is the last verdict. Her blade is the final word. Her song of carnage and justice is the true melody for death. She tastes truth in blood and renders judgment through steel. A child of Flevance, reborn in shadow. Her laughter is rare, her mercy rarer. She does not question what she is. She simply asks: "Who bleeds for this?"

Though she is rarely seen, those few who are lucky enough to catch a glimpse picture her as a weeping Reaper Angel, labeled as an avenger for Women in seas dominated by men. They say her coat is stitched with curses, that she only speaks to ghosts, that her ship weeps blood when it rains.

Others describe her crew in much the same light.

There are four. There are few. But they are legends.

Each one is a weapon forged in grief. Each one bound to the next by more than blood.

The most seen and revered of the crew is Rosette Vane Lysa Marr, the Kurobara no Kanmuri — The Crown of the Black Rose.

Known in whispers as the Sanguine Siren, she grows from ruin. A combat medic with vines that bloom only for the dying, her thorns are tipped with venom, her smile sharper than her claws. She heals with purpose and strikes with elegance, the battlefield her garden, and her roots soaked in past sins. Once called Alyssa, now only those she allows near the stem may say her name, for any other is long dead.

She does not mourn her thorns. She waters them in blood.

And it's because of her beauty that her plants are well-nurtured.

Her closest associate is Rosalinda A. Nita Grim, the Taiyō no Kyōka — The Madness of the Sun.

The Solis Siren, blinding and terrible.

Light bends for her, bleeds for her, becomes a weapon too pure for salvation. They say she once cried sunlight. Now, she carves it into blades, onto skin, burning her mark on the corpses cradled by her sun. She dances like dawn upon the waves, a cruel mirror to Isabel's elusive twilight. To friends, she's Anita. To enemies, she is death by radiance. She is the strength, the forger of weapons far and wide. For there is nothing her light does not touch.

Her enemies say their shadows screamed before their eyes went blind.

The final, but no less important, is Azucena Nali Morrow, the Umi no Namida — The Ocean's Tear.

The Saccharine Siren, lovely and drowning.

With a voice sweet enough to enchant the most powerful and a grip strong enough to pull entire ships under, she commands tides with a delicate cruelty. Her fruit is not merely water—it is longing, pull, depth. She is the sea when it whispers your name in the night. They once called her Nallely; now only the brave or doomed dare remember. That, or the most worthy, her closest comrades. It is said she is but a mere myth, for she's never been seen before, but there is no need; her ship is built in her image, and her presence exists farther than any prophecy.

Some believe she is the ocean's vengeance given voice. Others say she is the sea.

They do not sail for treasure. They do not burn flags for glory. They are ghosts in the mist. Sisters in scar. Each arrival is a funeral. Each departure is a curse.

And when their ship, La Luna Clave, pulls into harbor, someone will not live to see morning.

Sometimes, it's not the target. Sometimes, it's the one who hired them.

They're rarely contracted by men for their truth and ruthless nature. They are fear incarnate in their filthy hearts, and only the most worthy of men get to see the light of day. If they do not pass judgment... death is near.

And death does not knock when the Sirens arrive. It sings.

Isabel finds this all funny.

Sure, there is some merit to their individual depictions. Not all of what's said is a lie. But there are exaggerations here and there that feed a little into her self-preserved ego. This is a truth she's wanted to unravel for nearly her entire life, so hearing in on the rumors and stories of the Siren Sisters Crew is a great pastime. She's never been more entertained.

Anita, Nallely, and Alyssa all agree.

Situated in a lone booth corner of the Baratie, the four women sit with practiced silence, each lost in their own simmering thoughts. The sea-rocked rhythm of the floating restaurant hums beneath their table, wood creaking like old bones beneath velvet finery. Light from the stained-glass windows spills across their faces, tinting the scene in fractured color—blood red, ocean blue, and gold like a dying sun.

They wait for a waiter to come and take their order.

Three months have passed since their grim discovery of Doflamingo's deeper ties—strings buried not just in people, but places, nations, and children. And though their search has carved blood into sea charts and fire into sky, there are still questions left unanswered. Still ghosts to exhume.

To Isabel, it seems it always ties back to that man. String after string pulled from the tangent yarn of justice, each death is just a placeholder for the crown: Doflamingo. Isabel's primary target.

With his defeat, she can move through passive waters and clean out the filth from the inside out. For now, she'll have to settle for taking down the minor 'big-shots' of the criminal world. That, and enjoy some proper rest.

Just a week ago, they'd docked at a local port for supplies, sailing under a false merchant flag. Now, they seek temporary shelter in the only place that's ever offered them comfort without questions: the most famed culinary haven on the sea—Baratie.

But even here, surrounded by laughter, dishes, and the gentle clang of knives on pans, there is an edge to them.

Alyssa fingers the lip of her glass like she's counting something. Anita watches the waiters too closely. Nallely hasn't spoken since they arrived, her gaze fixed on the water beyond the pane as if it might part and speak.

Isabel... is thinking. She reads the room. Every movement, breath, and shadow cast across their table. Her scythe may be holstered and her expression calm, but no one truly rests when they are hunted by the silence that follows blood.

There is peace in this place, but with Isabel's downtrodden luck, peace never lasts.

Not for the Siren Sisters.

Not for her.

"They forgot to add bomb ass pussies to the list," Anita proclaims suddenly, voice sharp with firelight confidence after a particular whisper catches her attention just behind Isabel, two booths down.

The contemplative silence shatters instantly, replaced with laughter. Alyssa snorts into her drink, and Nallely breaks into a bright cackle, nearly choking.

Isabel shakes her head, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth despite herself. The tension that had clung to the air like humidity finally lifts.

Anita throws her hands in the air, as if pleading with the gods. "It's true! If they're gonna talk about us, they might as well add that or something."

"Exactttlllyy, bruh," Alyssa drawls, mock-offended as she tosses her curly hair with overplayed dramatics.

"You just want Sanji to hear about all that, huh?" Nallely teases, glancing around the restaurant with performative suspicion, like the cook might appear from the shadows.

Anita grins, flushed and unrepentant, before slumping against her hand with a sigh. "Where is he anyway? I haven't seen him anywhere."

Nallely glances toward the swinging kitchen doors. "You want me to ask, bitch?"

Anita waves a hand, already halfway defeated. "Nah. It's fine."

"'Cuz I will," Nallely says with a thumb jerking confidently toward the front of the restaurant.

"It's fine, it's fine," Anita insists again, sitting back with a little huff. "He's probably busy."

"Probably not," Alyssa mutters, wiping a bit of mascara from the corner of her eye as her gaze scans the room. "Someone said that he got fired."

Anita gasps and bolts upright like she'd been shot. "Fired!?"

"Yeah," Isabel finally speaks, her voice low as she leans forward onto her arms, elbows on the table. "I didn't wanna say anything though, because it could be just a rumor. And it'd ruin your mood."

"Yeah," Anita exhales, shoulders drooping like sails in dead wind.

Isabel watches her for a moment, considering. Her voice softens. "It could be just a rumor, though."

"Wait, yeah. Fuuck," Nallely suddenly hisses, leaning in to whisper directly to Isabel, hand shielding her mouth—but not low enough to keep Anita from hearing. "I heard the chef talking about getting rid of somebody."

Anita lets out a broken whine. Her head drops to the table with a groan, forehead hitting the wood like a body hitting water.

"I'm never gonna see him again, am I?" Anita mumbles, voice muffled by the table's surface. "He just disappeared." She pauses, then abruptly sits up. "Wait. I'mma take a leak."

"Okay," Isabel acknowledges simply, watching as Anita slips from the booth and heads off.

The three remaining women sit in silence for a beat, the tension still lingering in the warm air. Then, without a word, Isabel lifts her hand under the table—fingers subtle and precise—and sends a projection of herself drifting quietly after Anita. It's not a full form, just a shade. A fragment. Enough to blend into the edges of reality and listen where she cannot be seen. She intends to figure this out, whether they want her to or not, because it is strange that Sanji isn't the first to greet them and flirt. He's never late.

While Nallely and Alyssa begin speaking again lightly and casually, as if trying to lift the mood, Isabel remains half-present. Her focus sharpens like a blade, eyes soft but distant as she leans back in her seat.

Her projection slips toward the back of the restaurant, ears tuned. Isabel listens through it.

A voice answers the question she didn't speak aloud. It's a bit convenient that she manages to stumble upon the very topic they're inquiring about. Her eyebrows raise. Something about the tone and silence between words creates a vast hesitation in the air at the answer she's given.

She doesn't share it yet.

She waits for Anita to come back, saying nothing.

But her mind is already working.

Something isn't right.

When Anita returns, she sits down with a relieved sigh. "So. Did he show up?"

"No," Isabel answers carefully.

Anita groans.

"Maybe he's out back," Alyssa offers weakly, trying.

Nallely squints toward the kitchen, as if hoping he'll materialize through the steam and salt.

Isabel waits a minute before admitting, "It's been weeks. Nobody's seen him."

"What?" Nallely blurts. Alyssa furrows her brows.

"Did he quit?" Anita lifts her head just enough to pout. "Did we do something? Was it me? I didn't flirt that hard. Okay. Maybe I was looking at him too much. I was kinda scared."

"Girl, you think having a normal conversation is flirting," Alyssa says.

"Okay, so? He wanted me," Anita replies, then lets her head drop once more.

Alyssa nods sagely, enabling. "He did, he did."

Isabel has been silent, listening. Her eyes flick to the kitchen doors, to the other waiters, to the way the regular rhythm of Baratie service seems unchanged, except for the empty space where Sanji should be.

"He left," Isabel says finally. Calm. Certain. She dispels the projection once she gets what she needs.

The others look at her.

"What do you mean?" Anita asks, a trace of alarm behind her voice.

"I snuck around," Isabel admits, and Anita leans forward in interest. "Someone said Sanji left in the middle of the night. Just packed up and went."

"No note?" Nallely blinks.

"No word," Isabel confirms. "Not to anyone."

"That's not something he'd do..." Anita trails off. "He wouldn't just ghost."

"You think it was something serious?" Nallely murmurs, tone shifting. "I heard there's a new pirate crew. But when isn't there? Maybe it was something he couldn't talk about?"

"Or someone," Alyssa adds, thinking.

The girls fall silent.

The clink of silverware and the murmur of other patrons fill the space, but none of it reaches their table. For a moment, the laughter and color of the Baratie fades beneath the weight of what's missing.

"Well," Anita finally says, voice low but firm, "I hope he's okay."

"You still want dessert?" Alyssa asks gently, trying to cheer her up.

Anita nods. "No. It's fine, I'm cutting off sugar."

Nallely shakes her head. "Speak for yourself. Sad bitches deserve sugar." She smiles at her encouragingly. "I'll see if they have that strawberry torte he always used to serve," Nallely says, sliding out of the booth. "Maybe they'll tell me if he left behind a recipe."

As she heads toward the counter, the others remain seated, quiet in their own thoughts.

Isabel folds her hands together, eyes narrowed slightly. She doesn't say it out loud, but she knows the way people vanish. She's seen what it looks like when someone leaves without a trace—when someone is taken by something bigger than themselves.

And she has a feeling...

They haven't seen the last of Sanji.

When they finally finish eating, Isabel and her crew drift from the glowing warmth of the Baratie and head back toward their ship.

Dusk stretches across the sky in strokes of burnt orange and rose gold, casting the sea in molten reflection. The breeze tastes of salt and sun-warmed wood, and the gulls begin to quiet as evening pulls the world toward silence.

Isabel lingers for a moment, eyes raised to the sky, thoughtful. Something she heard over dinner has been circling in her mind like a vulture. She's been holding it in her teeth, testing its weight.

She finally makes up her mind.

Her boots crunch softly against the dock as she picks up her pace and follows after Nallely. Alyssa and Ana have already disappeared into their quarters, laughter trailing behind them like smoke. Nallely walks ahead, carrying the last of their provisions toward the deck.

"Nallely," Isabel calls out.

Nallely glances back over her shoulder, pausing mid-step. "Yeah?"

Isabel nods toward the planning table near the helm, where a sprawling chart of the Grand Line still lies open under a paperweight carved from bone. The ink on its edges is stained with water and time.

"Put a pin in it," Isabel says. "Name it: Straw Hat Pirates."

Nallely blinks. "Straw Hat?" She raises her eyebrows, intrigued. "Did you hear something?"

Isabel's jaw shifts, something cold flickering across her expression.

"You could say that."

[x . x]

Six Months Later

[x . x]

Isabel huffs as she charges through the sludge-thick mud, breath misting in front of her face like smoke from a dying flame.

Each exhale comes out frosted, cold enough to crystallize the air it touches, leaving a faint trail behind her.

But she doesn't care.

The night is merciless, the jungle wet and suffocating. She cuts through the tangle of green at breakneck speed, crashing past branches, heavy boots splashing through puddles, her body driven by desperation and rage. Her ship is in danger. Her crew has gone missing. And no one's answering.

She's scoured the island, combing through carnage—her carnage—teeth gritted against the bastard's laughter still echoing in her skull. She doesn't know who the fuck is behind the attack, but she has a damn good guess.

Doflamingo.

That snake had been playing with her all along.

A seething, paralytic fury coils in her chest, stuffing her lungs with cotton soaked in blood. Her thoughts spiral through worst-case scenarios—all of them ending in pain, all of them involving her crew.

She'd sent Anita east, tasked with scouting and taking out Doflamingo’s little military. That was a month ago, when they confirmed intel that he was on the island.

Alyssa had gone west to confiscate weaponry and free any imprisoned civilians. Part of their original contract was to identify the missing and bring them home.

Nallely had been stationed on the coastal beach to prevent any unwanted arrivals or escapes.

Isabel herself was headed north to the central facility, the heart of the operation.

But everything went to hell.

First, communication with Anita went dead. Static hissed through the snail transponder every time Isabel demanded an update. Her heart was through her throat, choking on her tongue when she finally got a response, though it was by far the most chilling thing she expected. There was a scream. Brief. Cut off. Guttural in its entirety, curdling the acid inside her empty stomach.

Isabel's heart dropped.

She immediately tried to contact Alyssa with shaking hands. No answer. Just static.

She switched to Nallely—last line of hope.

But all she got was shouting, garbled curses. Then a warning:

"Do not come to the ship."

She'd hesitated—just for a second. Her hand was on her scythe. Her next move hung in the balance.

Should she complete the mission or save her family?

She didn't even reach the central facility. She didn't need to.

The laughter inside the base—taunting, inhuman, familiar—rattled through the walls like a death knell.

That was all the reason Isabel needed to run.

To run, and never stop—until she finds them.

The jungle thins.

Branches claw at Isabel's skin as she crashes through the last thicket, her boots slipping in the mire of ash, sea salt, and blood. Her lungs burn. Her heart hammers like war drums in her ears.

She smells it before she sees it—Smoke.

A column of it rises like a cursed monument against the darkening sky, curling in the shape of a question her mind isn't ready to answer.

Then she hears the first crack of cannonfire.

BOOM.

The impact rattles through the earth. Her ship—the Luna Clave—appears over the next ridge. But it isn't a ship anymore.

It's a burning corpse.

The sails are aflame, blackened, and peeling. The wood splits with the sound of screaming timber. One side of the hull is already torn apart, as if bitten by some great beast. Flame dances along the deck, devouring rope, railing, memory.

"No," Isabel breathes.

She stumbles forward, boots hitting the dock that's already splintering beneath her. Her gaze snaps to the ground—

Blood.

A trail of it. Fresh and wet. Smeared handprints. Footsteps. Drag marks. It leads from the ship's deck, across the dock, and toward the sea.

Her eyes follow it.

Out on the open water, slicing through the waves, is a departing ship—massive, unfamiliar, cloaked in black sailcloth and ominous red banners. From its stern, the faint outline of a man raises something to his lips. A Den Den Mushi, perhaps.

Then the voice comes, crackling through the air like thunder:

"Revenge toward the Sirens!"

Isabel freezes, letting out a ragged breath.

The words twist into her bones, a nail through the heart. Her fingers curl into fists, sharp nails biting into her palms until they bleed. Something primal begins to rise inside her—grief, rage, shock, purpose—all crushed together until it sharpens into something sinister.

Her vision blurs, not with tears, but with fury.

"You..." she breathes—no, seethes. The word is raw, jagged. Her voice is shaking from somewhere too deep to name. Violet eyes ignite, glowing with wrath. Not with fire or a deadly winter. But with something ancient.

Then she screams.

A sound wrenched from the marrow of her bones—long, harrowing, guttural—the kind of scream that tears through flesh and scalds the throat as it rises. A scream that reminds her every time she's lost someone and adds their names to the agony.

She screams until her voice shreds, until blood touches her tongue.

And in that madness of grief, she throws her scythe.

Her summoned weapon tears from the aether, spiraling in the air like vengeance incarnate—but it's too far.

She knows it won't land. She knows it won't matter.

She knows.

This is it.

This is where the story folds in half, where it slips through her fingers.

This is where she loses them.

And she—

She—

Collapses.

Isabel's knees hit the earth hard. Her hands don't catch her. The weight is too much. The scream dies in her mouth.

And in that moment, as the firelight flickers behind her, and blood stains the shore before her—

She is dying again.

She begins to laugh.

She laughs.

Because she is dying.

She is heading towards death, and she'll drag her enemies with her.

[x . x]

24-year-old Trafalgar D. Water Law finds the tale of the Siren Sisters liberating.

Sure, he's terrified by the little rumors he's heard of their grotesque escapades, which describe ribs being cracked open like oyster shells, hearts judged in the palm of a woman's hand, ships sinking with no cannonfire, only song—but.

He needs them for a cause.

And he will not underestimate them, regardless of how annoyed he may be by their potential hostility. He's fought monsters and surgeons of fate. He's seen what grief turns into. And he knows that these women are made of it.

There's a reason men don't ask the Siren Sisters for favors.

Because favors, to them, are debts. And blood is the currency. Because they don't bargain, they listen. Because they don't flinch, they watch. Because when they say yes, you start praying it was the right question.

Law knows this. It's exactly why he says it aloud to her.

To the Kokoro no Saiban.

To the weeping Reaper Angel, the executioner of secrets: Isabel, Leader of the Siren Sisters.

Within the haunted metal of the Polar Tang, Trafalgar D. Water Law leans forward in his chair with hands clasped before him, not from nerves, but deliberation. His posture is calculated. His tone, patient. His words, a bargain.

(Inside, his heart and mind quake for answers.

They watch impossibility come to life.)

Providence gave him this moment. Or perhaps, vengeance did.

Across from him, she sits like a storm that hasn't struck yet.

Blood is smeared across her cheek, drying in sick, rusted lines. Her face is bone-still. But her eyes—those violet echoes of violence—pulse with unnatural light. They are fixed on him. And they do not blink.

Law meets her stare with measured silence.

This is it. This is the only chance he'll get.

He'd wagered everything—timing, strategy, patience—that the Siren Sisters would go after one of Doflamingo's strongholds before him. He let them strike first, observed from the shadows, and vacantly wondered if they'd endure.

They hadn't.

Or maybe they had.

Barely.

And by sheer chance or cruel fate, Law had found her—Isabel—emerging from the wreckage of a burning world, coated in death, radiating fury.

He needs her.

Because she's after the same ghost. Because her rage is twin to his.

Because—

"Go back on your word," Isabel murmurs, voice low and soaked in the promise of blood, "and you die."

A statement, not a threat.

Law grins.

His heart beats wildly in his chest, in tandem with hers.

Because he remembers.

He remembers the moment she saved his life. Fourteen years ago. A girl with scorched hands and eyes, too old for her face. A ghost born of a massacre.

(He remembers the soul he knew and parted.)

And now she sits before him, death sheathed in flesh, fire resting just beneath the surface.

He knows this is the devil's deal.

And he intends to make it anyway.

"It's a deal, then, Isabel-ya."

Chapter Text

[x . x]

The Heart Pirates are afraid of Isabel.

Rightly so.

In the weeks following her reluctant arrival aboard the Polar Tang, she's been nothing short of a simmering furnace, her emotions bunched into a constricting, sealed chamber of bereavement fury. Though she keeps her inconsolable rage tucked behind clenched teeth and silent glares, it leaks into every corner of the submarine like a poison, bringing down the hearty atmosphere. One look is enough to freeze anyone in their tracks. No one dares approach her unless absolutely necessary.

She trusts no one.

And every time her violet eyes scan the corridors crowded with unfamiliar people, the bile rises. These are pirates, after all—just like the bastards who took her crew. Her beloved sisters. Her home.

She detests this. She loathes being here in these steel walls, breathing in filtered air instead of the relieving sea wind that bathes her sun-kissed skin with the promise of another day.

Here, she is vulnerable. Trapped. Not because they've bound her, but because she has no choice.

She should have slit his throat the moment he offered her the deal.

But it'd been a damn good one. The best she had out of nothing.

In another life—one where the sea hadn't swallowed her sisters whole, where her ship hadn't burned into screaming driftwood—she would have executed it without a moment's pause. A knife to the neck. A fraction of a heartbeat's notice. Maybe less.

He's a pirate. A man. One of the Eleven Supernovas—monsters dressed as men, chaos stitched into the seams of their long coats. They don't call him the Surgeon of Death for nothing. She's strong in her own right, and damn good at her job, but she'd be an idiot to underestimate one of the prized analytical minds whispered past the lip of every employer she's had, dead or alive.

Isabel has spent her entire life avoiding the stink of male promises, the slow poison of their grins. And yet here she is, desperate enough to listen, because Trafalgar D. Water Law offered her what she no longer has the strength to seek alone:

Revenge.

And her crew.

He promised her Doflamingo's head. Promised the reach of his submarine and the blades of his men. Promised the resurrection of what was stolen from her.

Under any other sky, she would have spat on his offer and crushed it like a diseased bone under her boot. She would've torn his spine from his body and fed it to the sea for trying to barter with her.

But grief is a cruel architect. It builds altars of desperation, and it whispers:

"Trust him."

"Just once."

"What else do you have left?"

And so, in the frozen hollows of her gut, where rage sleeps beside ruin, Isabel accepted. She contemplates it with each hour that passes, pondering, questioning, and yearning to understand whether she'd been foolish to engage in such a perilous endeavor. She had never embraced anything without meticulous scrutiny, and she had certainly never had to concern herself with the possibility of being betrayed, as she possessed both the strength and the knowledge to support her decisions.

But.

It happened. She lost everything, and because she was desperate, because she wanted her loved ones home with her, she'd accepted.

Not because she believes him, nor because she tolerates the shape he wears. But because somewhere in the carnage, her crew still breathes.

And she will tear apart the world to reach them.

That truth alone is enough to make her stomach turn in the guts of self-sacrifice and shame.

She would rather be tortured, chained to the ocean floor, than be stranded here playing damsel, waiting, watching, and powerless. She swallows the dread every day, chokes it down like poisoned salt. She keeps her face calm because she refuses to weep in front of strangers. Especially pirates. Especially men.

The same kind of people who took everything from her.

She doesn't let herself think about what her crew is going through, but the images come anyway. Burning ships. Blood on the waves. Bodies sinking beneath a moonlit tide. She feels the sting in her throat, the consequence of bile at the back of her tongue. She wants to scream. She wants to break something. She wants blood.

But nothing comes out.

Instead, she hides in the one room they gave her. Law's room. Of course, it had to be his. She'd considered gutting him for the offense of the implications it came with it—until she realized he never used it. He was always somewhere else in the ship, and since he had her staying there because of a deal they'd made, she hadn't decided to hunt him and demand why she couldn't be trusted enough to be in one of the unused storage rooms. But then she thought that it was fair, since he didn't know her. It makes sense he'd give her the room he knew like the back of his hand.

She'd take that mercy.

He hasn't spoken to her since the day he pulled her from the wreckage, bloody and broken, like some tragic fucking mongrel. She's grateful for the silence.

And yet, it makes her nervous.

He knows things. Things about her that he shouldn't. Things about her crew, her route, and her fruit.

And a part of her is starting to wonder—Did he have something to do with the attack?

She hasn't said it out loud. It'd be stupid of her to spark feuds in her position. But she watches. She waits.

So far, what she's seen is up for debate. His crew doesn't act like monsters. They're careful around her, respectful, in a way. Law himself is quiet, unreadable, though often sporting a sneaky smile that he thinks she can't see. She barely sees him, though. He's frequently occupied in his office. From what she's discovered inside his room through discreet snooping, he's only three years older than her, and if the rumors are true, he clawed his way to power around the same time she did.

And yet.

Something about him doesn't sit right.

Something about him is strange. Who lets an unknown vacate in your most personal, in your room?

She'll enjoy the solace while she can.

"...Miss?"

Isabel stops munching on a stick of meat to lift her eyes at the small voice that calls out to her. Bepo, the unusual Polar Bear mink, flinches when her gaze meets his. His bulbous eyes crinkle with something akin to fear. What does he want? Has he been sent? It's suspicious that he, out of all of them, approached her first. She doesn't reply, as her attention is acknowledgment enough for him to get on with it.

He wrings his paws together, hesitant.

"I, uh..." He fumbles, ears twitching with nervous energy. "I thought maybe... You might want something sweet after the meat."

She says nothing, only stares.

Bepo gently sets a small plate down on the table between them. A honey bun—still warm.

"I make them sometimes. For the crew. Helps when... when people are upset."

She blinks slowly.

He fidgets. "You don't have to eat it," he rushes to add. "I just. Wanted to say you're not a prisoner here. And... I know you don't trust us. But I don't think anyone blames you for that."

Isabel's fingers tighten slightly around the meat skewer. She'd say otherwise. The stares she gets are condemning. What's sad is that she understands why and can't complain about something she'd do as well.

"Law said we're supposed to give you space. So I will. But..." Bepo glances up at her again, soft and a little afraid. "I just wanted you to have something good today. Even if it's just dessert."

She stares at him for several seconds longer than necessary. He shuffles his paws, tail twitching like he's bracing for her to snap.

She doesn't.

Instead, she says, coolly, "If you poisoned this, I'll kill you."

Bepo nods rapidly, ears perked with relief. "That's fair."

Huh. Just like that? He must be used to threats, Isabel thinks. She doesn't smile, but she doesn't tell him to leave either. And after a moment of awkward silence, when he's gone and she's alone again, she glances at the honey bun.

She doesn't touch it.

But she doesn't throw it away either.

Isabel thinks.

(She concludes that poison would not be fatal to her, as she is already, in a sense, deceased. Poisons, chemicals, gas of any kind are usually of no consequence to her. She doesn't need to worry about anything.

The bun looks nice.

She wonders if Nallely would have loved it.)

[x . x]

It takes a few days for Bepo to approach her again.

Isabel expected that.

After all, the last time he'd come around, she'd stared at him long enough to make his ears twitch like a startled hare and whispered a threat that leaves most men with soiled pants. He'd left behind the honey bun like a peace offering. She hadn't touched it that night. But in the morning, when her body was aching from sleeplessness and she couldn't breathe through the returning grief clawing down her throat, she ate it in three quiet bites. Then she cleaned the plate until it looked untouched and slid it back into the mess hall without a word.

She figured he'd take the hint.

But no. He comes again.

She hears him before she sees him. The shuffle of padded feet against the iron floor and the nervous clearing of his throat are evident signs. Isabel doesn't move. She stays in her corner like a feral beast cornered beneath the ocean, the dim amber light casting her scythe's shadow like a noose across the walls.

"Miss?" he says, soft and almost guilty.

She doesn't answer. Just lifts her chin a fraction. Enough.

He takes it as permission. She doesn't know if that irritates her more than it should.

"I, um..." he begins, fidgeting with something in his paws. "I brought tea. Chamomile. It's good for nerves. And... since it's warm down here, I thought it might help." His voice is too gentle, like a child coaxing a burned animal out from the brush. She finds it a little funny.

Quietly, she watches him set the thermos down with care. He doesn't look at her, merely focuses on the placement, like if he gets it wrong, she'll lunge.

Smart of him.

Then he decides to sit across from her, cross-legged. Not close, not far. Right where her scythe could reach if she felt like it. It's oddly respectful.

Silence drapes between them, heavy and strained.

She hears herself ask, "Why are you talking to me."

The words surprise her even as they come out. They taste like smoke on her tongue. She'd meant to say nothing, to ignore him and let the silence smother them both. But she supposes she's a little more people-starved than she expected. It's embarrassing, but without the usual bickering of her beloved crew clogging her ears and heart with fond exasperation, she supposes she has the silence to drown in her thoughts.

It's a sobering thought. The grief returns, but her blank facade barely jerks.

Bepo blinks, startled, his ears twitching.

She watches him through her lashes. She blames this on loneliness, but she hopes she doesn't come off as mocking or threatening. She just. Wants to know what he has to say. She's bored.

He swallows. "Because I want to."

She raises an unimpressed brow.

He looks down. "Also because you looked lonely..."

Isabel hums. That makes sense. "So that's why," She mumbles. "No righteous type of kindness, then?"

Bepo scratches at his ears. "...Captain Law saved me. From slavery."

That makes her eyes lift, sharp. Okay. Why should she care?

"I figured," he continues, voice small, "if I could be treated like something less than a person and still be given a second chance... then I should probably be kind. So no one ever has to feel like that again. And I know what it's like to be lonely. So I..." He gestures with his paws, trailing off his sentence with an unfinished understanding.

There it is, that little note of raw honesty.

It has her thinking more than she should, about who he is. She's very aware there's depth to people. She's an example. Does this mean that she wants to know? Hell no. It takes effort to consider who someone is on the inside and she's not about to waste her time figuring shit out. That's their problem.

Still. She despises how it doesn't seem like a falsehood. Despises how it leads her to consider that maybe—maybe—Law isn't the bastard she's convinced herself he is. Maybe he's just a man trying to dig his way out of something awful, like her. Maybe she's not the only one who walks like she's being chased by ghosts. There is something familiar about him after all.

No, she suddenly thinks. No, he's planning something. This is manipulation. Strategy. He sent the bear as bait because I'd lower my guard around something soft.

She shouldn't be stupid. She's seen what men do. She's seen it. She's lived it. But even as she thinks it, her hand reaches for the thermos. Her fingers wrap around it. She pours the tea in silence.

It smells faintly of Anita's perfume and sleep.

She takes a sip even as she feels her heart contort in sadness.

She doesn't thank him.

But for the first time, she doesn't feel inclined to threaten to gut anyone for existing. It gives her pause.

She questions how long it will take for them to hurt her.

[x . x]

Isabel meets Penguin and Shachi on a sunny afternoon many days later. She thinks they're idiots.

Not the dangerous or conniving, slow-poison, backstab-you-on-a-rusted-dagger kind she's known. Just actual idiots that seem to share one brain cell and juggle it for sport.

Penguin has an annoying mouth and a worse laugh, loud enough to echo down the corridors, sounding like someone beating a seagull with a frying pan. Shachi acts like his voice is a blunt weapon and his jokes are worth more than a kingdom. The two of them are a nuisance that she, unfortunately, finds surprisingly tolerable despite the urge to punt them into the walls. (Likely because it reminds her of Anita and Alyssa too much.)

She'd met them when she went to the mess hall for her second tea—another peace offering from Bepo, who clearly thought chamomile was the solution to all war crimes. Out of courtesy, she hadn't denied the fluffy bear; instead inclined to observe what would happen if she humored the attempts to make a connection. The two idiots had burst in arguing over whether sea kings fart bubbles mid tea seassion, yapping away, only to freeze like stupid looking frogs when they saw her.

Though a passive side effect of her power, Isabel couldn't help but chill the room further with the intent of death.

They were... surprisingly unfazed. Penguin had nodded solemnly and muttered, "Oh shit, it's the Siren of Death."

"Stupidass. It's the Sad Siren. Siren of death is the Captain," Shachi argued.

Penguin swerved on him, "You're stupid too! The Captain is the Surgeon of Death."

"Ohh, yeah," Shachi had agreed, saluted, and then promptly tripped over a mop bucket.

She hadn't said a word. She simply sipped her tea and glared at them until they scattered like roaches. Well. She'd just stared at them until they left, getting lost in her own thoughts on how similar they were to two beloved members of her crew. Off the bat, she could tell they were chaotic.

So no, she doesn't want to see them again.

Which is why when Bepo asked, "Is it alright if Shachi and Penguin join us this time?" a few days later, she blinked once and flatly stated, "No."

And then, a couple of days later, they join anyway.

They arrive during one of the tea meetups she never technically agreed to. She's sitting cross-legged in the same dark corner near the auxiliary engine hum, sipping on whatever calming herb Bepo's scrounged up today. It smells like sage and regret. She hears the obnoxious shuffle of boots. She doesn't need to look to know who it is.

"Heyyyy," Shachi greets, far too enthusiastically. "Nice crypt."

"It's not a crypt," Penguin says, elbowing him. "It's a lair."

"I like crypt better."

Isabel exhales slowly through her nose and glares at Bepo. He shrinks a little under her stare, pawing nervously at the edge of his cup.

"I told them to be normal," Bepo whispers. "They said this was normal."

Bepo is too cute for her to beat him. She wonders if that's his tactic, before dismissing the thought.

Penguin plops down beside her like they're long-lost comrades. Shachi sits on her other side. The sheer audacity. She stops herself from grabbing her knife and slicing their abdomen open. That'd be extreme, she thinks.

"So," Penguin says, pouring himself some tea without asking, "you really killed a guy by ripping out his tongue and using it to write his last confession on the wall?"

Shachi leans in, eyes wide. "Did the blood really bubble?"

Isabel pauses mid-sip. The heat of the tea burns against her teeth.

She sets her cup down slowly.

With a measured look, she asks, "Do you want to find out?"

Both men straighten.

"Nope," Shachi chirps.

"Definitely not," Penguin echoes.

But they stay.

And to her surprise, they don't pester her after that. They bicker with each other, make fun of Bepo in the way siblings do, and even start talking around her rather than at her. Occasionally, they throw her a comment, as if testing to see whether she'll bite. She does. Once or twice. Usually with sarcasm sharp enough to make them flinch, but they seem to like that.

Idiots.

Still... she lets them sit.

And when Penguin mentions a dish his mother used to make, and Shachi says, "Man, I miss food that tasted like memories," Isabel doesn't interrupt them.

She doesn't leave either.

She lets them recount their stories and drowns in them with her own, though she keeps those memories to herself.

She has to be mysterious, after all.

(That night, Isabel spends it thinking, like always.

Anita and Alyssa would've liked them.)

[x . x]

Isabel is finally called with the rest of the crew for a short mission.

She thinks it's a mistake at first.

Surely they wouldn't want her. She's made it violently clear that she'll only help if it involves anything Doflamingo-related, that she's here under protest and not under allegiance. But when Shachi knocks on her door that morning with that half-grin and says, "Captain wants everyone on deck," she knows better than to pretend surprise. She's actually rather touched that they called for her, even though she's reserved as their 'ultimate weapon'.

She drags her scythe with her.

The air on the upper deck tastes of salt and motion, wind teasing the edges of her coat as she steps out into the organized chaos of the crew. The Polar Tang's engines have slowed to a dull crawl, giving the illusion of peace. She's already scanning for threats—old habit—but what she doesn't expect is...

"Morning, Reaper!"

"Hey! You're joining us? Hell yeah."

"We're definitely gonna survive now."

...they greet her.

One after another. Casually. Easily. Not a hint of irony, not a speck of fear.

Even Ikki, the girl she'd seen giving her weird side-glances, gives her a respectful nod. Bepo beams. Penguin tosses her a protein bar that she snatches out of the air like a deadly projectile. Shachi raises a mug in greeting like this is normal, like she is normal.

Isabel blinks. For a beat too long.

The greetings don't offend her. But they do... confuse her.

She covers it with a reluctant wave, a twitch of her fingers that might be mistaken for a muscle spasm if one weren't paying attention.

She catches Law watching from the helm, standing like some god of irony with his coat billowing around him like a curse. His gaze is unreadable—sharp as always, dissecting her like an autopsy—but then...

Then that grin starts.

Slow. Disbelieving. Downright feral.

This bitch...

It's that damn strategist's grin. One that says: Ah, I was right, or maybe I didn't think that would work, but look at you, little monster. You're adapting.

She narrows her eyes at him.

She's still not sure if this had been his plan all along—manipulate her into folding into the crew using kindness, tea, and two well-placed morons—or if he's just stunned that she didn't spit venom in their faces. Either way, the smug satisfaction on his face makes her want to shove him off the deck. She's much more dignified than that, though.

She stalks up to him slowly and deliberately. Her boots strike the deck with finality. The scythe sings gently behind her, trailing a breath of menace.

He doesn't look concerned in the slightest.

"Enjoying yourself?" she asks coolly. Behind her, the crew is silent.

Law's grin only widens. "You're fitting in."

She can't deny that. "I'm tolerating them."

"Mm. That's basically friendship for you."

She keeps the edge of disgust off her face. He knows nothing of what she thinks of his crew. They're placeholders. People that she admits she won't hurt, but that hardly matter to her in the grand scheme of things. But maybe that's a lie, too. Isabel doesn't know anymore. But she does blame this on her heart, who, even after death, never stopped beating.

"Try anything, and I'll still gut you," she mutters.

Law's eyes gleam like a scalpel under moonlight. "Wouldn't dream of it, Isabel-ya."

She walks past him. He follows her, keeping at her side. She side-eyes him.

Behind her, the Heart Pirates start prepping for their mission. Bepo shouts something about rations, Shachi drops his bag on Ikki's foot, and Penguin accidentally spills black tea over the map. It's chaos. Stupid, manageable chaos.

Isabel gestures with her head toward the window, revealing the surface of the glimmering sea.

"So?" She prompts, scratching under her chin. "What are we doing that you're using me for?"

Law pretends to think.

"Supply run," Is his response.

Law dodges the swipe of her fist that would've been fatal to anyone else with a snicker.

[x . x]

Over the next weeks, Isabel reluctantly bonds with the crew while exchanging passing glances with their Captain, Law.

It starts small.

She doesn't even realize when it begins. One day, Bepo invites her to tea again, and she doesn't say no. Another day, Penguin offers her a weird tool he swears helps with migraines, and instead of throwing it at his head, she pockets it. Shachi annoys her into sparring, and she bloodies his nose and breaks one of his arms by accident. He laughs through the pain anyway, like she's just proven she belongs.

They become familiar.

Dangerously so.

And all the while, Law keeps looking at her like something she can't name—like a whisper behind her ear or a shadow beneath her feet. There's no smugness in it, no obvious leer. Just that unreadable, insufferable calm. A gaze that weighs her, measures her, remembers her. He looks at her less like the blood-soaked stranger they rescued, and more like something else entirely.

She resists the urge to maul the thoughts his looks provoke. She's not one to admit shit to herself, but there's a sinister fear lurking amidst the depth of her thoughts whenever she's around him. Because the way he looks at her feels like the beginning of something. And beginnings—Isabel knows—are dangerous things.

Worse still, Law doesn't do anything to her. The most he's done is make a passing comment about being useful, of which she took it as a challenge and began cleaning thoroughly in the Polar Tang because she's been feeling rather restless anyway, and something tells her she owes him for rescuing her. He doesn't ask this of her, though. Nor does he stop her, so she continues doing the unsavory jobs that the other crew members procrastinate on to keep her thoughts busy from her ongoing grief.

Law, she finds, loves looking at her.

It makes her feel weird.

Sometimes, she catches him at it in passing: when she's brushing past him in a hallway, when she a comedic exhale escapes too freely during a late meal, when she's alone on the observation deck with wind curling through her hair. He watches her like someone memorizing a book they already know the ending to—but still wish would change.

It pisses her off.

She wants to demand what he sees. She wants to rip it out of him and crush it between her palms.

Instead, she trains.

She plots.

She keeps to her routine, sharp and predictable.

But there are nights she finds herself standing outside the medical bay, pretending she forgot something, waiting for his footsteps. There are rare mornings where she watches the way he stirs his coffee and wonders if he always does it counterclockwise. And there are moments—brief, breathless moments—where she forgets to be angry, and starts to feel something else entirely.

She doesn't know what this means.

She hates it.

She hates that his presence doesn't rattle her anymore.

She hates that she's starting to feel less like a hostage and more like... crew. She doesn't know what this means. Is she betraying her crew by bonding with others outside of them? Does she deserve to feel this safe when they're out there hurt, alone, without any protection? Does she deserve anything after failing them?

Isabel tells herself she's just waiting for him to back up the end of their deal. She's just using him and his crew to get her own back, after all.

But.

Isabel isn't cruel.

Despite her moniker, her reputation, and what she represents, Isabel is not a villain. She is just.

Some part of her—buried deep beneath scar tissue and fury—knows that if he ever stops looking at her like that, she might come undone.

And she's scared to figure out what this means when she finally has to go.

[x . x]

Soon enough, Law finally talks to her again.

She walks into the room with finality, eyeing every object she'd neglected to study the previous time she'd been here. Books are scattered about. There's a blown-out fountain pen that she itches to clean, papers that twitch her fingers to organize.

Law leans on his desk, arms crossed. He wears a neutral expression.

He gets straight to the point. "You ever hear about the Straw Hat Pirates?"

Isabel pauses mid-step, violet eyes narrowing with suspicion. The name rattles her head, another pirate crew Nallely was looking into. "Why?"

"You've been asking about your crew," Law replies simply, tone maddeningly detached. Isabel steps forward, unable to stop her eyes from widening a fraction with hopeful madness. "It might interest you to know one of them has been seen with them."

Her hands curl. She feels like she's shaking. There's no way. It can't be this easy. "Which one."

"A girl. Short. Loud. Black hair, big eyes." A small tilt of his head, a slow smirk teasing his lips. "Likes to shout about 'bomb ass pussy.'"

Isabel's breath catches. She covers it fast, but not fast enough. Her body stills, her mind screaming. Anita. Alive. And with them.

Is that the crew behind the attack? She asks herself immediately, searching Law's face frantically for any deceit. Is it them? Is Alyssa with her? Nallely? Is she safe? She can't waste any fucking time. "And what do you want for this information?" she demands, voice low and dangerous as she brandishes her scythe towards his throat, waiting to complete the transaction with blood.

Law gently pushes the tip of the blade away. "I'm not bartering. Not yet." Law pushes himself off the desk. "But you needed hope. I'm giving you that. For free." He waves his hands at her mockingly, carelessly.

Isabel sneers at him. Liar. Liar, liar liar. "You don't do anything for free."

He steps closer, slow, deliberate, watching her every twitch like she's a wild thing cornered. He taps his chin in a poor imitation of thought, pretending that he's thinking long and hard about the news just revealed to her. "I want you calm, focused. If we're going to destroy Doflamingo, I can't have you unraveling on my ship," He says, eyeing her intently.

She glares at him, breathing unevenly. "You waited all this time to tell me?"

Law scoffs. "I waited until I was sure. Until I knew it wouldn't break you worse."

There's a profound shame, suddenly. As it turns out, by that statement alone, Isabel is now made aware of how easy she's allowed her emotions to show. Or maybe Law is just that good at insight. Maybe she's not the only person who knows the language of people.

He turns back to his desk. That should've been the end of it.

She lowers her scythe, reeling with this new information.

Reeling, and unable to do nothing.

But then—

"She's okay, ya know," he tells her airily, without looking back. He gestures a careless hand in the air, "At least, from what I heard."

The silence that follows is thick and brittle. Isabel doesn't speak. She doesn't trust her voice.

But the immense relief she feels nearly buckles her knees.

She's okay.

One of her crewmembers is okay.

Just two more, Isabel thinks. Just Nallely and Alyssa, now.

Isabel swallows, blinking rapidly.

No crying. Stop crying.

She turns away.

Her hand reaches for the doorknob.

She breathes.

She has a debt to pay.

"Trafalgar," Her voice sounds dead.

He doesn't respond. She can't see if he turned around to acknowledge her call. She doesn't care.

"Use me as you see fit," She whispers, tone final, before exiting the room.

(She doesn't see it, nor realizes he does it.

But the grin on Law's face is triumphant.)

[x . x]

The carnage Isabel unleashes on the next mission is nothing short of infernal.

She enters the enemy stronghold as instructed, silent as rot, composed as death. Law's voice had echoed in her ear before departure—precise, professional. Just enough to let her know he trusted her to do what needed to be done.

What she does is not efficient.

It is biblical.

By the time the screams choke into silence, the halls are lacquered in human wreckage. Limbs lay tangled in hallways like broken branches after a storm. Entrails are strung from rafters like obscene garlands. The blood is so thick on the floor that it runs in rivulets, frothing at the seams of boots and soaking into stone. One man dies with his hands still pressed to his face, trying to hold his skull together. Another is pinned to the wall with her scythe's twin blade, his last breath long forgotten.

Isabel walks out with viscera dripping from her sleeves, her expression eerily unreadable.

Clots of blood cling to her lashes. Bone dust smears her jaw. Her body is bathed in gore—hands, throat, boots all soaked in rust-red. She does not wipe it away. She wears it like a second skin.

She approaches Law without ceremony, flicking something small from the corner of her mouth. It hits the floor with a wet tick.

A tooth. Rotten. Human.

"Cleared," she says calmly, her voice husky and low. She doesn't bother to look back at the building, still leaking smoke from its broken windows. "They screamed for a while."

Law watches her with a stillness that borders on reverent. His gaze slides down the length of her blood-slick frame, pupils dilating as if he's caught between fight or flight—or fascination. There's something ancient in his expression, something primal. It's not quite fear.

It's hunger.

Or maybe it's awe.

Isabel does not care to know which. She ignores it, steps past him, dragging the curved weight of her scythe along the cobblestone. The sound it makes is dreadful—metal against stone, like the tolling of a funeral bell drawn out forever.

"Good work, Isabel-ya," Law finally murmurs, his voice softer than usual. He steps around the puddle of blood gathering at her feet, lifting his blade with one hand, careful not to let it touch the gore. "Let's go, shall we?"

She nods once, her breath steady, her eyes empty. No comment. No pride.

Just purpose.

They leave behind no survivors. Only the message, scrawled across the wall in a shade darker than crimson:

"The Siren Sisters Remember."

And below it, the symbol of a flamingo split in two.

Doflamingo is next.

[x . x]

The next day, when the Polar Tang has long vanished into the belly of the sea with its hull heavier with stolen resources, bloodstained plans, and the phantom weight of what they'd done, Law finds her in his quarters.

She doesn't flinch when he enters, as she's already heard him coming. His steps are deliberately loud this time around and she wonders what he needs her for this time that's so damn important for him to come to her. She's perched by the desk, sharpening her scythe with a rhythmic scrape that fills the silence like distant thunder. The room still smells faintly of iron from the blood she hadn't entirely washed off.

He stands across from her, holding a folded uniform.

White. Marked with the Jolly Roger of his crew.

A Heart Pirate suit.

She eyes it with disdain, as if he's offered her a leash. "I'm not wearing that."

Law snorts through his nose. "It's either this or you go naked. You can't keep washing those same rags forever."

"I can," she deadpans, her voice cold as steel.

He shrugs, as if it doesn't matter, and tosses the uniform onto the bed without ceremony. "Suit yourself. Don't come crawling to me when the threads give out mid-mission."

"I won't," she snaps, ignoring his dumb pun.

There's a beat of quiet.

Law's mouth twitches. "Whatever you say, Isabel-ya."

The simple use of her first name in his mouth burns more than she wants it to. There's something about the way he says it, like he's carving a space for her, name-first. She can't explain the sensation she gets out of it, only that she wants it gone before it infests the rest of her psyche.

"Get out," she hisses.

"This is my room," he replies without missing a beat.

She scowls, tongue behind teeth, fury riding the edge of her breath. But there's no comeback.

Law lingers at the doorway, watching her a moment longer than necessary. His gaze flickers once to the untouched uniform, then back to her, amused and unreadable.

Then he leaves, the door clicking shut behind him like a slow, smug goodbye.

Left alone, Isabel doesn't move. The scythe glints in her lap, and her reflection stares back at her from its polished blade. Her eyes look dead.

Eventually, her eyes slide to the uniform on the bed.

Her body itches to slice it up and throw the torn parts in Law's face.

She doesn't.

Instead, she gets up, grabs the suit, and places it on the edge of the bed where she won't touch it, but also where she'll see it.

She's not going to wear that. She prefers black.

Maybe she'll make some other clothes out of that.

Chapter Text

[x . x]

Isabel doesn't know what trick Law thinks he's playing at, but she refuses to be so foolish as to believe that simply because he's taken to hauling her along on every mission—somehow always just the two of them, like some silent, blasphemous secret club—it means he now considers them friends.

She's noted the pattern. For over a month now, mission after grueling mission, she's found herself shadowing his steps, moving through blood-soaked hallways or sunlit clearings where the carnage is almost beautiful. A grim duet, each a precise instrument in this orchestrated ruin. Normally, she's the one leading. But if she wants to keep herself on Law's good side, she'll play the obedient dog if it means getting any sort of information or updates on her beloved friends.

Regardless.

Law's behavior is weird.

It all began the day Law had been charitable enough to divulge the whereabouts of one of her lost Sirens. His words had been measured, tactical, but they struck something savage and loyal within her ribcage that she could neither quiet nor kill.

Since then, he's become a near-constant phantom at the edge of her senses. Always near, yet rarely engaging. If he speaks, it's to issue curt directives that taste more like challenges on her tongue. More often than not, he simply watches her, standing there with those hungry, knowing eyes, wearing one of his slow, serpentine grins that makes her want to carve it off his face.

Or worse, he'll pass by without a word at all. Just a deliberate sweep of his coat and the subtle tilt of his gaze, like he's savoring how aware of him she is. How tuned her body has become to his presence, even when she tells herself it's only caution.

It's childish of him, unbearably so.

So she ignores him with a ritualistic fervor, clinging to her solitude like it's the last pure thing she possesses. She has Bepo with his earnest chatter, Penguin with his brash concern, and Shachi, who tries (and fails) to mask his warmth in crude humor. They are already too much. Too close.

She does not need another trespasser in the hollow chambers of her quiet. Especially not someone as cunning, as profoundly irritating, as Law.

He's dangerous. There's a damn good reason why she doesn't meddle with the likes of pirates, never mind that the World Government considers her as such. But she doesn't boast about her bounty like it's something to be proud of. It's childish, is what she means.

She prefers not to associate with low-life parties. Not in this way, at least.

Yet despite every oath she's made to the contrary, Isabel can feel the slow creep of something delicate and dangerous. A ghostly thread twining around her spine, drawing her ever so slightly toward him. Toward this irritating captain whose steps she has memorized by necessity, whose silence speaks in riddles she almost wishes to solve.

She tells herself it is mere strategy, the wary dance of predator and predator.

But even the night sea bends under the pull of the moon, and Isabel—though she will never admit it, not even beneath torture—has begun to find something almost sacred in the rituals of their reluctant orbit.

When the Polar Tang surfaces and settles quietly during the vacant nights in the middle of a vast, dark blue ocean, Isabel takes some time to breathe outside of the filtered air.

Where the moon shines brightest, full and beloved, lathering her in its ethereal richness.

And in its bask, she feels his attention, too.

Intense and longing.

She wonders, really, who, out of the two of them, is pulling the tides?

[x . x]

It does not go unnoticed.

This game between Law and Isabel begins to leak past the short fuses of the Heart Pirates, like a perfumed stink of something that should probably resemble interest, but feels unnaturally predatory instead.

Shachi nudges Penguin with an elbow one evening when Law pauses at the threshold of the galley, dark eyes trailing Isabel as she methodically sharpens her scythe under the hanging lanterns. The wayward heart pirate can tell Isabel is pretending not to notice, and he knows his captain well enough to tell that he's also pretending not to notice that she's noticing him.

Penguin's brows furrow, and he mutters, "The hell's up with the Captain? He's been starin' at her like that for days."

"Dunno," Shachi whispers back. "But it's weird, right? He doesn't even look at his patients like that. Thought he'd be pissed someone that violent's on board."

Bepo, who's pretending not to eavesdrop, wrings his paws. "I think Captain likes having her around," he ventures. "Not... like likes, but... he trusts her. Or something."

"That's even stranger," Penguin mutters, wrinkling his nose at the audacity of Bepo's assumption. "Trusts her more than us?"

"As if," Shachi scoffs.

They all turn their eyes toward Law. He stands silent at the doorway, expression inscrutable, coat draping like a shroud. There is a peculiar tension about him, like he's on the verge of either delivering an order or confessing to a crime. It makes his face look a little funny.

And then his eyes flick to them, cold and sharp.

"Is there a reason you're all gawking?" He snaps.

"Nope!" Shachi snaps upright, nearly saluting. Penguin shuffles away. Bepo flinches and nearly knocks over a crate.

Law rolls his eyes and steps inside, his gaze magnetized back to Isabel as though drawn by iron filings to blood.

They do not understand. They never will.

Because they did not see Flevance rot from the inside. They did not hear the coughing children. They did not smell the funerals stacked in alleys.

Only Law and Isabel know that ghost song.

And Law—whether he will ever admit it or not—clings to it.

Which brings their next phase of questioning along.

They try to be subtle about it at first.

A few days pass after Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo first notice how strangely Law behaves around Isabel. The Captain, who usually barely acknowledges anyone unless it's to bark an order or to cut them open for stitches, keeps drifting into rooms she occupies, saying nothing, lingering with that eerie quiet that makes grown men sweat.

And so one evening, after Isabel storms off in her usual swirl of vexed silence (having rebuffed yet another of Bepo's well-meaning attempts to offer her snacks), Penguin elbows Shachi with a conspiratorial grin.

"Oi, Captain."

Law looks up from the charts he's revising, dark eyes narrowed in automatic suspicion.

"You, uh... keep watchin' her a lot, don't ya?" Shachi hazards, rubbing the back of his neck with forced casualness.

Penguin jumps in, smirking. "Yeah. Never seen you keep tabs on someone that close. Not even us. Could it be—" he singsongs, "—someone's caught your eye~?"

Bepo lets out a scandalized squeak. "P-Penguin! Shachi! Don't tease the Captain like that!"

Shachi's grin only broadens. "Aww, Bepo, it's fine. The Captain's got a soft spot. Who knew? Our own Trafalgar Law, stuck on the scary lady with the scythe—"

"That's enough," Law cuts in, voice soft. Too soft.

It's the kind of softness that drops the room temperature by ten degrees. Shachi and Penguin freeze. Even Bepo shrinks down, paws pressed nervously together. Law's eyes bore into them, so cold they could slice through bone. "Unless you'd like to volunteer for the next autopsy demonstration, I suggest you shut your mouths."

"Y-yes, Captain!" they bark in unison, all three saluting with terrified precision.

Law clicks his tongue and returns to his charts, rolling his shoulders as if trying to shrug off the moment.

But that's when Isabel walks by. She slows, one hand idly gripping the haft of her scythe as she watches them all with narrowed violet eyes. She catches Law's glower, the way Shachi and Penguin are still stiff with panic, and the bizarre silence hanging like a guillotine in the air. She arches a dark, skeptical brow at Law. "What the hell did you do now?"

Law's lips twitch—somewhere between a grimace and a smirk—as if tempted to answer. But all he says is, "Nothing that concerns you, Isabel-ya."

She eyes him a heartbeat longer, clearly unconvinced, before clicking her tongue and continuing down the hall.

Shachi and Penguin simultaneously exhale in relief. Bepo slumps with his paws on his knees.

Penguin mutters under his breath, "Scariest couple of almost-somethings I've ever seen..."

Law pretends not to hear them.

His eyes follow Isabel until she's gone, lingering on empty air like he's tracing a ghost only he recognizes.

[x . x]

"Humor me."

Isabel stops reading. The spine of the book cracks a little under her fingers as she lowers it just enough to fix Law with a wary glare.

It's currently month three of Isabel's stay, about to be month four. There has been little progress with her crew, besides the discovery of Anita's whereabouts. Both she and Law are currently in Law's room, with Isabel seeking refuge from the external influences on the submarine, while Law had entered quietly without much acknowledgment of her presence.

Until now.

He stands across from her, one hip propped lazily against a table strewn with anatomy charts, pretending to skim through a medical journal far more intently than he actually is. There's a flicker of mischief in his slate eyes that puts her immediately on guard.

"Do you know which part of the body goes... in certain somewheres?" he drawls, tapping the side of the book with exaggerated thoughtfulness. He makes no fucking sense.

Isabel isn't stupid. "Doesn't it go there?" Isabel answers dryly, pointing at an open diagram with breezy confidence, humoring him. It's a test, and she knows it, so she matches his insolence with cool nonchalance.

Law's grin stretches slow and wolfish. He cocks his head, dark bangs sliding across one sharp eye. "My, my, Isabel-ya. You sure you aren't a doctor?"

Isabel sniffs disdainfully, turning her page with regal precision. "If you count individually scalping each and every layered section of the body during my execution runs, then sure."

For a moment, Law merely studies her, silent. Something shifts behind his eyes, not quite respect, not quite concern—something sharper. Like he's filing that information away in a locked cabinet labeled Use with Caution.

Then he hums, almost approving. "Huh."

They lapse into a brittle quiet, punctuated only by the whisper of turned pages. It would almost be comfortable, if not for how tightly wound Isabel's fingers still curl around her book.

Law breaks it first, the corner of his mouth quirking. "And would it be terribly bold of me to ask you to be the nurse to my doctor?"

Isabel stares at him, utterly unamused. "It would be insulting, actually. I'm no sidekick."

He laughs, low and bright. "I'm only kidding, Isabel-ya. You're so serious all the time."

Isabel harrumphs, snapping her book shut with more force than necessary, and fixes him with a look so dry it could start a brushfire. But there's a faint, reluctant tug at the edge of her lips, gone before it ever fully forms.

Law catches it anyway, smug satisfaction flickering across his face like a cat who's just seen a mouse flinch.

He goes back to his reading, deceptively casual. Isabel returns to hers after much mental debate on whether she should just get up and get out, eyes narrowed, but the corner of her mind remains irritatingly aware of him: his slow, deliberate page turns, the tiny amused sighs, the way he occasionally glances at her over the edge of his book as if confirming she's still there.

She tells herself it's only because he's an opportunist. Watching for weakness. Testing lines.

And she decides she'll let him think he's won—for now.

[x . x]

It's the start of month four.

And Isabel finds herself staring up at the moon, just as she did that very fateful, blood-slicked night she lost her crew.

She stands perched atop the Polar Tang's outer hull, boots anchored against the cold metal plating that hums softly beneath her. Even now, she finds it unnerving, lingering in this strange ship that breathes like some colossal, slumbering creature under the waves. Its engines murmur in the bones of her feet, exhaling bursts of sea air that billow in cloudy sighs across the moonlit deck.

The sea around her is eerily calm tonight. A blackened glass that only shatters when the submarine shifts or when currents sigh against its flanks. Above her, the sky yawns wide and empty, hung with scattered stars like the aftermath of shattered crystal. And there, reigning over it all in luminous cruelty, is the moon. Full and heavy. Watching her with its cold, indifferent eye.

It makes her feel small. It makes her feel seen.

It makes her remember.

Her scythe rests across her lap, stained handle cradled by restless fingers. She absently turns it over, again and again, as though the ritual will keep her from falling apart. Her breaths draw thin and shallow, each inhale scratching like glass through her chest. The Polar Tang's curved deck offers little comfort, even less so under the ghostly sheen of lunar light that makes every rivet and cord seem awash in pale blood.

It's always under the moon that her thoughts rot the most.

That night plays on an endless loop. Her crew's perfected quiet dissolving into screams, the wet sound of bodies hitting the deck, the vile copper sting of blood splashed across her lips. The scent of burning wood and cordite. The awful silence that followed.

It haunts her now more than ever. As if the sea itself remembers. As if the Polar Tang's hull carries the echo of her old ship's dying cries.

She swallows thickly, tasting iron. Her eyes blur and sting, but she clenches her jaw so hard it clicks.

No tears. Not again.

Because if she starts, she might never stop.

The moon catches the wet shine in her eyes anyway, exposing her. Mocking her.

She asks herself, over and over, eternal.

Is this how it will be, always?

Am I always meant to grieve?

The moon has never answered.

But she likes to think it has seen the worst parts of her, and still shone despite it all.

"Is there a reason you're so obsessed with the moon, Isabel-ya?"

Law's sudden, inquisitive voice tears through the fragile quiet. It jars her bones, making her blink hard as her eyes dart down to the ocean in panic. The tears spill regardless, hot and traitorous, before she can scrub them away on the back of her hand.

He stands a few paces behind her on the lonely deck, shadow long and half-swallowed by the railings. The sea murmurs beneath them, dark velvet under a bleeding silver moon, and the air clings damp and salt-heavy to her lungs. Of course, he'd pick now to show up. The one moment her chest finally broke open with crawling grief, raw and honest to the surface.

She doesn't answer him.

He stays there. Watching. Waiting. His silhouette cuts against the moonlight, coat whispering faintly in the cold sea breeze. For an instant, she imagines the night might swallow him up. That he'd disappear like a ghost, like so many before him. Like her crew.

But then he shifts forward. His presence looms almost cautiously, as though he's approaching a wounded animal.

"So? You're going to ignore your captain now, Isabel-ya?"

His voice tries for teasing, tries for that idle taunt he always gives her. But it slips somewhere on the way out and lands rough, lands uncertain, like he's not sure how to be gentle.

"Not my captain," Isabel bites out automatically. But it's a whisper, cracked and husky, the words crumbling under the weight of her raw throat.

She hates it.

There's silence, a stretched and delicate thing. It aches something deep in her ears, like clogged seawater. Shame needles through her chest, cold and splintering, because he had to appear now of all times. When she was finally alone enough to hurt. When her eyes were finally open to weep. She's bracing for him to turn away. To leave her dignity half-shattered on the deck and return to the confines of his sterile ship.

Instead, Law shifts closer, just enough for the edge of his coat to ghost against her arm. When he speaks again, it's lower, cautious. Almost... tender.

"You know," he drawls, a poor disguise for something gentler, "I meant to ask about that. The moon. You look at it like it owes you something. Or like it remembers things for you that no one else does."

Her shoulders tense. Her breath fogs the air. She says nothing. Because otherwise the words would get stuck in her throat anyway. Because she doesn't know how to confess the ache of seeing that white, solemn witness in the sky, how it feels like it carries her sorrow for her when she can't.

Law keeps going, perhaps sensing this. His voice dips further, grows strangely contemplative, as though he's thinking aloud.

"It suits you," he finally murmurs. "The moon. All that cold light and quiet distance." He takes a second, and the moment is incredibly awkward. But he keeps talking, and she can't tell whether it's just bullshit he's pulling out of his ass or if he really means it. "It's like it was cut out of the sea just to follow you. To remind you..." He scratches at his beard, she can hear his nails against the bristles, "That some things don't belong here among the living."

A laugh, dry and self-directed, stirs from his chest. "Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it just wanted to give me a way to name you. Lunabel-ya."

What.

Everything goes still.

Her breath catches. Her forming, hateful glower trying to mask her sorrow falters.

He says it so matter-of-factly, as though bestowing a scientific label on a new species he's fascinated by. But there's something almost reverent there, too. Something like a softness he'd never admit to wearing.

When she doesn't immediately spit venom at him, he quirks his lips into that slight, irreverent grin. She can see it out of the corner of her eye. Almost nothing escapes her notice, especially if it involves Law. It's the one—the one that normally earns her disdain, but tonight seems fragile. As if even he's not sure why he's standing here, offering her this peculiar olive branch.

If she wasn't so terrified of her voice coming out weak, she might've told him he sounds ridiculous.

"Get it? Because Isabel, Luna, combined. A nice hit, yeah?"

She says nothing.

"You can scowl all you want," he adds, amusement threading carefully around some deeper note, "but it fits. Think of it like this," He thrusts his arms out of the railing, spreading his hands and forming a square theatrically. "You're the moon, Isabel-ya. Cold, faraway, and a little cruel. But also," He takes a breath, thinking, thinking, thinking a lot, "even then... the star of the show."

Not a star, she thinks.

He seems to read her mind. "Technically a rock. I'm not into astronomy."

Certainly not.

"One thing's for sure, though, Lunabel-ya. The moon is impossible to stop staring at."

Her heart drops.

What the fuck is this man saying.

She looks at him fully, trying to understand the subtle undertone his words carry. It's a nuanced meaning, she thinks, an aspersion she doesn't dare think aloud because maybe she's just being stupid. Maybe Law isn't trying to say what she thinks he's trying to say, comparing her to the moon, confirming what she's been seeing since she came to be here.

But it's no use.

The implications are obvious.

Isabel wants to retort that she knows. He hasn't stopped staring at her. And she doesn't want to know why. She wants to disappear. To wound him with something sharp and scathing, to drive him away and protect this jagged little grief she's been nursing. But the words die behind her teeth. Her pulse drums painfully in her ears, torn between fury and some terrible, humiliating warmth.

So she just turns back to the sea, eyes finding the moon again as if to punish it for conspiring with him. Her heart is still a cage of sorrow, but for the first time tonight, it beats a little slower.

Behind her, Law's breath fogs out with a satisfied hush. He lingers a moment longer, then steps back, leaving only the ghost of his words and that cursed nickname hanging in the cold, perspiring air.

[x . x]

Since that accursed evening beneath the unconcerned eye of the moon, Law has chosen to christen her with a new name.

No longer is she simply "Isabel-ya."

Now every command, every dry observation, every careful utterance is wrapped around the syllables of "Lunabel-ya," as if he has laid claim to some piece of her shadow, shaped it tenderly in his mouth, and sent it back to haunt her.

She doesn't hate it. No, hatred is too rich an emotion for this hollow cavern in her chest.

She's indifferent. That's the lie she clings to. But indifference is a brittle thing, easy to shatter under the weight of memory.

Because the way he looks at her has changed. Less of that hungry, flaying intensity she once found so easy to bristle against. More softness. More ruin.

And she doesn't understand. She doesn't wish to. Because Law is insufferable, cunning, the very embodiment of everything sharp and shrewd that she had vowed to keep at a blade's length. He unsettles her peace, frays her edges, and invites old wounds to peel open.

And yet.

In her coldest, clearest moments, stripped of grief's fever and rage's molten din, she remembers the deck under moonlight. Remembers how his voice cracked against the solemn hush of the sea as he tried, stupidly, to lift her from her own abyss. Tried, for no reason at all, to pull her back into something that resembled the living. Tried, and left her with that wretched, lingering name that curls like smoke in her lungs.

She tries to pay the debt.

She reorganizes his labyrinth of ship ledgers, polishes steel and glass until her hands crack, ensures each resupply is checked, rechecked, and delivered with ghostlike efficiency. She labors like some penitent spirit bound to her own unspoken guilt, hoping that if she does enough, if she becomes indispensable enough, it will settle the clawing need inside her to balance the scales.

But nothing is ever enough. It doesn't quell the gnawing horror in her gut, this nauseous realization that she's changing.

Because Law was kind to her when cruelty would have been simpler. Every monstrous tale she ever heard about him, the stories that painted him with the same shades of villainy as Doflamingo, as the slavers who built her nightmares, have withered under the gentle reality of his actions. The perception she had of him had been dissipated completely, left to float far out into the sea's void.

He is not that man.

He is not.

And it leaves her adrift, battered by dark tides she is too proud to name.

Would she have the heart to sever this fragile tether if it came to it? Could she truly abandon him now, with all she knows? With all he has done? With the painful, blasphemous knowledge that he has never harmed her, not once, and that he only ever waited, patient as the grave, for her to come undone on her own? Had this been his tactic all along? To wait it out? To get her to change her mind about him in the little things he does? For what he has done, as a whole?

She does not trust him.

No. She clings to that truth like a dagger in her palm, cutting, cutting deep to stitch the welts left behind. She's been through too much just to give it away for a small kindness.

But.

She's terrified, utterly, ruinously terrified, that she's beginning to.

Because.

Because it seems—

"Seems the Straw Hats found another one of your strays," Law breaks the news apart nonchalantly on a burdensome day, reading a medical textbook just by the door to his room. He turns a page mindlessly, eyes held still. He's already read the book twice over, now. It's all for show.

Isabel keeps staring at the ceiling, sprawled on Law's bed carelessly.

She fails to rise to the bait.

Her throat bobs with a rough swallow, trying to stop herself from crying. From sadness. From happiness. From relief, she doesn't know. But she can't look at Law. Not when her heart feels so full that she may burst. Everything is rushing in at an inappropriate moment, and she can't seem to—can't seem to—can't seem to acknowledge that maybe—

She closes her eyes.

She breathes.

"...Thank you."

That maybe she is grateful.

[x . x]

Isabel places a bowl of red-tinted soup over the worn oak table with a quiet care that feels almost foreign to her hands.

The broth ripples gently as she sets it down, delicate oils glistening like blood clots caught on the surface. She doesn't look at Law. Instead, she occupies her restless hands with the mess he's left behind. Scattered notes, scribbled diagrams that mean little to her, the stale scent of ink steeped too long on parchment, all get accommodated for. She gathers each paper and lines them into a neat stack, tapping the edges twice to make them flush. It's a habit of compulsion, of controlling something small when everything else is chaos.

She collects the discarded quills and pens, wiping their nibs with the edge of her sleeve even though she'll set them aside to clean later. Each motion hides the way her chest thrums with a dumb sort of anticipation.

"What are you doing?"

The question slices through her little ritual.

Isabel stops mid-motion, her hand still clutching a rolling pen she'd caught just before it tumbled to the floor. She lifts her gaze to Law.

He sits back in his chair, one brow arched, a pen dangling idly between his fingers, staring at her with a look she can't quite pin down. It's too focused, too direct, like he's dissecting her without ever moving.

She refuses to shrink beneath it. But oddly, it feels less like he's scrutinizing her for faults and more like he's... puzzled. Almost wrong-footed by her.

"I made you food," she says, gesturing vaguely at the bowl. The words feel small. "It's pozole. I was just putting your things away so nothing spilled on them."

Law blinks at her, slow and reptilian, as though processing a foreign dialect. Then, with maddening composure, he drawls, "...I'm working."

The bluntness is a blade.

She stands there a moment longer, too long, and then clears her throat, nodding stiffly. "Okay. I'll... throw this out, then."

Her fingers curl more tightly around the warm glass of the bowl as she lifts it, careful not to tip the broth. The heat bites into her palms, searing through skin in a familiar way that she welcomes. Because the burn is easy to understand. The burn makes sense. Unlike whatever small, pathetic stitch pulls in her chest at his indifference.

Of course. Why did she assume? Why did she think he'd want anything she made, simply because she did it for him, simply because they were... what? Allies? Less hostile than before? It was foolish. Childish. Isabel has survived on never expecting gentleness, and yet here she is, bruised by a single offhand dismissal.

She scolds herself silently. At least now she knows. Law doesn't eat when he works. Simple. Should've thought it through, shouldn't she? How embarrassing to forget her place.

But then—

"Wait."

His voice stops her more than his hand, though she jerks slightly when his calloused fingers graze her wrist. The soup rocks in its bowl, but does not spill. She has always been good at balancing burning things.

Law drops his hand just as quickly, as though second-guessing the impulse. His eyes flick to her face, searching for something. Then a sly smile cuts across his lips, his tone dropping into something teasing, too careful. "You trying to poison me, Lunabel-ya?"

It's meant to be a joke. She knows it is. She can hear the playful lilt, see the arch of his brow that might, in some other world, be considered charming.

But it lands wrong and sinks like rot into a soft place she didn't realize was exposed.

Her throat tightens, the words catching on a raw edge that feels too close to humiliation. "No," she mutters, almost inaudible, and turns from him so abruptly that the hem of her jacket snaps at her thighs.

She doesn't look back.

Law calls after her again. Her name twists off his tongue in that insufferable lilt, like he might say something else, something that would lessen this ugly flush in her chest. But she keeps walking.

It's fine.

She tells herself it's fine.

She won't make food for him again.

[x . x]

Days later, Isabel is still chewing on that moment.

Not obsessively. She would never admit it as such. But it flickers up in the quiet stretches of the Polar Tang, that strange echo of his voice, his touch on her wrist, the casual knife-twist of his joke that somehow left her raw.

She's careful not to linger too long on it.

Instead, she takes comfort in routines that have, despite herself, become small sanctuaries: sitting with Bepo in the kitchen or engine room over delicate clay cups of steeped herbal tea, listening to him ramble about favorite honey pairings or little towns they've passed through. Isabel lets him chatter. It's easy, soft background noise that requires little of her heart.

Which is why, when Law appears in the doorway one such afternoon, it upends her balance more than she'd like.

He doesn't announce himself. Just stands there for a beat, watching them with that inscrutable stare, before stepping inside and settling right across from her.

Bepo, bless him, lights up with a sunny sort of confusion. "Captain? You're... joining us?"

"Got a problem with that, Bepo?" Law drawls, picking up an extra cup and swirling the leftover tea in it like he's measuring something more than liquid.

"No! I just... didn't know you liked tea time," Bepo laughs awkwardly, his fluffy ears twitching.

Isabel says nothing. So Bepo hadn't planned this. She supposes that after the last time, when Shachi and Penguin showed up despite her wishes, he'd realized his mistake and listened to her. This is confirmation, then. Law does not do this. But he has.

She watches Law with hooded eyes, suspicious in spite of herself.

He doesn't meet her gaze. Instead, he takes the kettle from her without asking and pours her another cup. The steam billows between them, fragrant and gentle, a delicate contradiction to the odd tautness settling in her chest.

She lets him, mostly because she hadn't expected him to be so bold as to swipe the cup and offer her some of the steaming liquid himself. Or maybe it's because Bepo looks so happy with his claws patting her shoulder in simple delight at the rare, strange scene, and she doesn't want to make a mess of things by letting her annoyance get the best of her.

Or it could also be because she's tired of being angry all the time.

She drinks the tea he's poured for her. It tastes no different. But it feels heavier somehow, like swallowing an apology he doesn't quite know how to form.

He needs to try harder than that if he's trying to get her to do something.

They sip in near silence until Law, pretending to be casual, taps his fingers on the side of his cup and mutters, "Shachi was asking what that soup was the other day. Said he liked it. Pozole, right?"

A pause.

She studies the way his dark lashes flicker over his eyes, as if to mask some twitch of discomfort, and the almost careless shrug of his shoulders that's too practiced to be genuine. It's a small, absurd thing that he'd come here, sit with them like he belonged, just to relay something so offhand. Or maybe, she realizes with a strange lurch, it's not offhand at all.

Isabel buries her scowl behind her cup.

"So he liked it," she says, voice level. "Good for him."

"Yeah," Law grunts. He looks a bit awkward. He doesn't look like he belongs here at all. But who is she to judge? She looks even worse, though at least the suit she swore she wouldn't wear is black now. It makes her body look very shapely, thank you. And her favored cloak makes her look even more elusive. Which is a nice touch.

Anyway.

Bepo blinks between them, blissfully unaware, and sighs, "I'm glad we're all getting along."

Isabel doesn't answer. She just takes another slow sip, eyes drifting shut.

Maybe she's still hurt. Maybe she's still confused. Maybe this is just one more strange game between them.

But for now, she lets him pour her tea.

[x . x]

Isabel meets the fated Straw Hats not even a handful of days later.

It starts with a hush across the decks of the Polar Tang, the sort of stillness that feels like a breath sucked in before a scream. Law doesn't so much walk into the control room as cut through it, the door slamming back hard enough to startle even Ikki. His voice is cold steel when he begins barking out coordinates, depth levels, trajectories, with the same exacting sharpness she's come to know too well.

"Full steam. Now."

The Polar Tang lurches. Metal groans and water splits in its wake as the submarine carves through the depths with such brutal urgency that Isabel nearly stumbles. Her hand snaps out to the wall for balance, feeling the throb of the engines, the way the entire vessel seems to pulse like a hunted heart.

And suddenly, that old, festering tension she'd been living with these past months—the same brittle dread that had been corroding quietly beneath her ribs—bursts open like a blister. Her blood burns. Her thoughts twist themselves into frantic knots:

Finally. Finally. Finally. I knew it. I knew it.

Her claws dig into her palms. Isabel breathes through her teeth, eyes wide, jaw taut, every inch of her bristling with the poisonous cocktail of hope and terror. Her mind races through possibilities: a lead on the bastards who took her sisters, the monstrous grin of that flamingo bastard at the end of her blade, maybe even...

But it's not in any way that she expected.

It seems Law has been communicating with one of the Straw Hat crew members in secret. At that, she is unsurprised—she suspected they were allied, after all. How else would he have gleaned the information that led her to the scattered whispers of her crew's whereabouts? So what. It's just another maneuver in the endless chessboard of pirates.

What is a big deal, it seems—a monstrous, universe-rending deal—is when Isabel catches only a fractured glimpse of the Straw Hats on that blood-slick battlefield after following Law's plans as he ventures ahead, and in the chaos beyond sanity, she sees them.

Anita. Alyssa.

Her sisters.

Alive.

There they stand, huddled together by their backs, fighting away enemies, battered and breathless, but so heartbreakingly perfect that for a brief moment, Isabel's entire body forgets how to hold itself upright. The shock of it is a spear through the ribs. The relief is a grotesque thing that claws up her throat, tangled in sobs she cannot afford to release.

And then the world detonates again. Cannon fire screams overhead, enemy pirate ships crash against one another in a brutal ballet of death. She barely registers the slaughter, the flailing limbs and torn faces, so consumed is she by the sight of her sisters.

Then Law is there, slicing through space itself with that cursed blade of his, stepping into the storm with the same eerie calm he always carries like a second skin. Beside him is a boy she recognizes only by bounty posters and rumor—Monkey D. Luffy, limp and streaked in blood, eyes rolled back as if death is mere heartbeats away.

Somewhere in the haze, it clicks. Law has been orchestrating this. Law, with his cold calculus and secrets. Saving the Straw Hat's Leader from the jaws of Hell.

Isabel's fists clench so tightly her nails pierce skin.

Because even now, in this moment when she should only care for her own, her eyes keep sliding back to Law—to the way his jaw grinds, to the near-maniacal glint in his eyes as he thinks about hauling Luffy's ruined body toward the Polar Tang, as if cradling some vital keystone of the world's undoing.

And amidst it all, Anita seems to understand. Of course she does. Because even over the chorus of agony and gunpowder, Anita finds Isabel's eyes with a clarity that shatters her.

"GO!" she screams, voice splintering. Isabel can barely hear it, but it's heard. "WE ARE SAFE!"

It's permission. It's an absolution. It's everything Isabel needs and nothing she wants.

She doesn't have the luxury to argue, to beg, to reach out for what might be lost again. The moment fractures.

And Isabel bursts through it, cutting after Law like a streak of hungry shadow, her form robed in that reverent hue of violence.

Her eyes glow with an awful, enthralling promise—pupils swallowed whole by violet light that seems less of this world than something carved from the hollow between stars. That light trails her, bleeds off her in languid tendrils of smothering silence, so thick it suffocates every desperate sound around her. Even the clash of blades, the crack of cannon fire, dims.

Law chances a look over his shoulder. Just one startled, helpless look. His eyes catch on her and widen, because what follows Isabel is not merely power, but the ghost of a cathedral, something sanctified in rot. Her expression is cold, beatific, horrifying: a stoicism that teeters on the cusp of rapture, the tender lips of a maniac whispering psalms of obliteration.

She reaches for Death's hand.

And Death does not flinch.

Isabel lifts her scythe high, the curve of its blade a dark crescent yearning for the moon. Murmurs drip from her mouth, a susurration so hushed that the world must hold its breath to hear.

"Onto me," she intones. The words taste like soil.
"Death knocks." A tremor crawls across the ocean's spine.
"I summon Mother's Moonlight —" her voice cracks, dread and devotion intertwined.
"Decompose. Decay. Rebirth."

Her eyes close, lashes trembling, as if she is praying.

"Recompense."

The word bruises the air.

"Freedom," she breathes, raggedly, like someone aching for mercy. "Rise, ye drowned."

The last whisper slips from her tongue, almost childlike:

"Nightmare Night."

The sea obeys.

The waters churn as if vomiting their secrets. Waves twist and shatter, bursting into grotesque shapes. From beneath that glassy coffin, limbs claw forth, gray and bloated, skeletal hands scrabbling. Corpses tear free from the depths, hundreds of them, choking the surface with a wail that sounds like every death rattle ever swallowed by the ocean. Their mouths gape, frothing with salt and memory, moaning the agony of their last moments.

Isabel feels it all. Feels their anguish etch itself into her marrow, siphoning every drop of energy she has left. Her knees nearly buckle. Her heart stutters, bruised by the weight of so many borrowed lives. It's too much—it's always too much—and yet she bares her teeth and staggers after Law, refusing to collapse.

Because through the thousand whispering eyes of her risen dead, she sees her.

Nallely.

Small against the punishing swells, arms raised in desperate mastery of currents she was never meant to command. A devil fruit user, risking the one law they cannot outrun. She'll drown if the ocean so chooses. Yet Nallely stands there, defiant, because she's seen Isabel's corpse army and knows—knows in her terrified, elated heart that she's home.

And Isabel is within reach.

A broken sound tears from her throat, half a laugh, half a plea. She glances at Law, who grips Kikoku with murderous calm. He needs time.

So with the last vile shred of power festering inside her, Isabel tears her scythe downward, splitting the air. A circle of skeletal remains, swollen and gory, wrapped in weeds and barnacles, erupts around Law's flank, snarling in spectral vigilance. They stand between him and death, clawing at any enemy who dares approach. Law at first must think this is a betrayal, because he nearly whips around to do what, Isabel doesn't know, but Isabel sends him a thumbs up, arm flailing. So Law continues.

Isabel exhales shakily, blood trickling from her nose, her smile nothing more than a cracked, grateful thing. She staggers toward Nallely, hands outstretched toward the corpses carrying the crying woman rambling her name.

It's her.

And Isabel will bleed out every nightmare inside her to keep that scrap of love alive.

The next instant, time blurs, and she finds herself shoving a trembling Nallely into the Polar Tang's open hatch—but her mind is already fracturing, splintering around a single jagged thought that cuts deeper than any blade:

Of all her beloved sisters, it is Nallely she's found. Not Alyssa. Not Anita.

She aches for them, her family, her friends, her sisters—her veins throb with it, her bones grind with it, the taste of loss fouling her tongue. But Nallely... sweet, secretive Nallely, the sea's own child, the one she hadn't heard a whisper of in all these cursed months: she's here.

Alive.

Not good enough. It's never good enough. She should've done more. She should've asked more people if they'd seen her, if they'd caught a glimpse, because Isabel fears the worst, fears that it's too late, because Nallely had been in an enemy ship for too much time.

But it's something. She is something. She's someone she loves so terribly much that it nearly drives her to madness right there on the gore-clotted deck.

She clutches Nallely's face for a fleeting second, digging her nails into salt-wet skin as if to brand the reality of her sister's living warmth into her palms forever. Nallely stares back, not dead, not dead, not dead at all.

Then, with a desperate shove, she sends her into the safety of the waiting submarine, even as her own heart shatters like glass.

Nallely's tears spill unbidden, but there is relief there, too. Relief that cracks something deep inside Isabel's spine.

With a single desperate nod, Isabel pivots back into the fray with her teeth bared and blood dripping from her nose. She carves through the writhing masses to reach Law, who can't pass after her corpses are pivoted back into the sea by the carnage, falling into step beside him without a word, their movements horrifically synchronized once he realizes he's gotten the backup he expects of her.

He looks at her, analyzing her, searching her.

Isabel barks at him to go.

Because perhaps she has time. She can't see them, can't see Anita or Alyssa anymore, but maybe Isabel has time. She'll fulfill Law's promise. And then she'll take her crew back. All of it.

Together, they drag the unconscious Luffy and a large blue whale shark fish-man toward salvation, leaving trails of gore and ghostlight behind them, cutting through the tangents of combat like twin harbingers of dusk.

And though her mind screams for her other sisters, though her heart shrieks in a grief so profound it borders on religious, she fights. She fights because Law has given her this terrible new duty. Because somewhere in his dark, haunted gaze is the same understanding, the same vow:

This is not the end. This is only the turning of the tide.

[x . x]

Isabel lets herself cry.

She clings to Nallely's weeping form in the aftermath, hours after Law forced them from the chaos and the Polar Tang carried them far from the screams. They sit huddled together on the mattress Isabel herself has defiled countless nights before. Pillows and blankets soaked with shameful sobs, nights spent gnawing on grief's friable bones in utter solitude.

But this time it's different. This time she's not alone.

She buries her face into Nallely's freshly washed hair and inhales deep, greedy breaths, as if trying to consume her, to devour the proof that she's here, real, alive. Ocean and sweat and tears cling to her skin, grounding Isabel even as something deep inside her continues to howl.

And she grieves.

She grieves so violently it feels as though a living creature has nested inside her chest, clawing and chewing at her heart with untamed starvation. She grieves for Anita's warm, reckless laughter. For Alyssa's smirking irreverence. For the thousand small futures she's been robbed of, for the sunlit afternoons of lazy chatter, shared conspiracies over stolen rum, the quiet certainty that they would all grow old together.

Her stomach revolts. Bile scalds her throat. She turns her face away from Nallely just in time to vomit onto the bucket Bepo had been kind enough to get for her. Her body convulses, shoulders locking tight, breath tearing ragged from her lungs in great heaving sobs while Nallely tenderly rubs her back.

And in the foul cradle of her mind, a monstrous, traitorous thought unfurls.

Why Nallely?

Why only her?

Why was this sister spared when the rest were left behind in that churning maw of blood and devastation? Why must Isabel live with this half-salvation, this cruel mockery of deliverance that only deepens the wound? Would it not have been cleaner to have lost them all, to grieve whole, rather than carry this fractured agony?

The thought is vile. It wedges itself like a rusted hook between her ribs, tearing each time she draws breath.

So she clutches Nallely tighter, until her nails bite crescent moons into tender flesh. Until they draw tiny wells of blood. Nallely makes no sound of protest; she only sobs harder, her own arms banded around Isabel's waist in desperate reciprocation, as though she fears Isabel might vanish instead.

Together they rock on that battered mattress, swaying in a private purgatory of salt-stung tears and shaking limbs, anchored only by each other.

Beyond the thin walls of her despair, life moves on in ragged fragments. Isabel barely registers it at first. But through the haze of tears and retching grief, she catches muted voices from somewhere else in the submarine. Law's voice, low and harsh with urgency, layered over another's guttural groans of pain. The shuffle of boots, the soft clang of metal trays, drenched with the sounds of triage.

She knows what it means. Law had torn her from that hellish ship, had ripped her claws from the wood when she tried to claw her way back to her sisters, because he needed to save someone else, too. The great Monkey D. Luffy lies somewhere on this vessel, half-alive after failing to save his own brother. Beside him, the fishman Jinbe, equally battered.

Law's commands ripple through the bulkheads, punctuated by the clink of surgical tools, by the distant groans of two men who, like her, survived when they shouldn't have.

Isabel buries her face deeper into Nallely's neck, her tears soaking them both.

Because she remembers. She remembers how Law's hands had clamped onto her shoulders, so tight it felt like he might drive his bones through hers, dragging her back from the edge. She remembers shrieking at him, spitting curses and pleas alike—no, no, my sisters are still there, I can still reach them, I can still—

But he hadn't given her the chance.

He'd shoved her bodily into the Polar Tang, slammed the hatch shut on her frantic claws, sealing her screams inside cold iron.

And when she'd slumped to the floor, every joint locked up in animal terror, she'd curled her arms around her ribs as if trying to keep her heart from hemorrhaging right out of her chest. Blood and seawater clung to her skin, her tears ran unchecked, and her body trembled so violently it felt like her bones might splinter beneath the strain.

She doesn't know how long she sat there. Hours, days—it blurs together. Anita's final shout, Alyssa's grin fading into black water, replaying again and again behind her eyes, scratching grooves into her skull. It'd been Nallely who lifted her with Bepo's frantic help, and from there Isabel had never let her go.

Even now, with Nallely warm and sobbing in her lap, Isabel feels only half-whole. The rest of her is hollowed out by guilt. A filthy corner of her soul is sullied with what ifs, wondering why she got this much at all.

Why Nallely? Why not all of them? Why couldn't she have saved them all?

And so she sobs until her voice fractures into useless gasps, mourning not just her sisters, but the monstrous, selfish wretch she's become—a woman who dares to clutch one fragile joy close, even as it leaves the rest to drown.

Oh, don't get her wrong.

There is a cynical relief in having Nallely.

She is so, so happy she is home.

But her other sisters are missing.

They could even be dead.

And who is she, to know?

Meanwhile, outside their dim refuge, Law works tirelessly over Luffy and Jinbe, his movements sharp, precise, gloved hands stained with someone else's survival. The captain of the Heart Pirates, who ripped her from her agony and into this uncertain after, who binds them all together on this ghost ship of second chances.

She tries to hate him for it.

But the grief in her heart is too monstrous, too vast, swallowing every simpler feeling whole.

[x . x]

The Polar Tang feels strangely hollow once Luffy and Jinbe stabilize.

It's not quiet, as the ship hums with the ever-present churn of engines, echoing the low murmur of his crew moving about on necessary tasks. But for Law, the sharp edge of crisis has dulled. The urgency that kept his mind ruthlessly clear for days has ebbed, leaving in its wake a fatigue so deep it scratches at the marrow of his bones.

He's spent countless hours over the past week bent over battered bodies, hands deft, mind locked in calculating clarity, guiding lives back from the brink with the same precision he might guide a scalpel along a jugular. Luffy had been a particular agony, though his resilience had been almost monstrous, defying even Law's cautious expectations. Jinbe nearly tore out of his hands more than once.

Now that both linger in uneasy but undeniable safety, there's nothing left to busy his mind with. Which means there's nothing to distract him from everything else.

Isabel.

He thinks of her far too often. Of the way her voice cracked when she screamed at him, eyes wild and wretched, hands clawing at his shoulders. Of the way her mouth twisted around pleas and threats in the same breath—my sisters, I have to, don't you dare, please—before he forced her under the metal jaws of the Polar Tang.

He can still feel the phantom bruises and cuts she left on his arms and neck.

She's been quieter since. That's saying something, because Isabel was never especially loud. There was this... this rage that lived in her eyes, her bearing, in the threat coiled under her tongue. But now she's gone still in a way that even Law's medic's eye knows is dangerous. Like something vital in her has turned to rot.

It's nearly a week later when he finds her again, alone on the deck.

The moon hangs low and pregnant with cold light, scattering silver across the gentle waves. Isabel stands rigid by the railing, her hair shivering around her shoulders in the salt wind. Her head is tilted back, eyes fixed skyward with an expression that might have been reverence or might have been accusation.

Law's steps falter. For a moment, he considers retreating. It would be easy. She's half-lost to the vast hush of ocean and moonlight, so he could slip away and pretend he never saw her. He's almost surprised she's there, really. Last he heard, she hasn't let go of one of her old crew members. It's a miracle she's even out as of now. But he supposes even she needs a break once in a while.

Something stubborn inside him, something as tired as it is resolute, pushes him forward.

He doesn't speak or say her name. He simply steps up beside her, folding his arms over the railing and matching her posture almost exactly. It's not an exact mimic, though he doesn't know what he's trying to pull from her. Maybe a tease at how she's posed, maybe to let her know in his own way that she's... pretty. It's a dangerous thought.

Together they stare out at the moon, two silhouettes braced against the dark.

The silence between them is immense, swollen with every unsaid apology, every clawed-back scream.

Law can feel exhaustion in every joint. His shoulders ache with remembered strain, and his mind is blessedly slow here, lulled by the rhythmic slap of waves against steel.

For the first time in days, he isn't a surgeon or a captain or a strategist. Just a man, standing beside a woman who carries her grief like an open wound.

He dares a glance at her profile. In the moonlight, Isabel looks almost spectral, hollowed eyes, parted lips that taste salt from tears he pretends not to see. The wind plays with her hair, tangles it across her face, and she doesn't bother picking at it.

Law's throat tightens with something he refuses to name.

So he stays. Silent. Present.

He lets the quiet stretch between them until it's no longer a chasm, but a fragile bridge.

For one small eternity, they share the moon.

Just two ruins side by side, stealing the smallest measure of solace from simply continuing to exist.

Chapter Text

[x . x]

"Bitch, I think he has a thing for you."

Nallely's conspiratorial whisper punctures through Isabel's concentration like a spoon probing at fudge.

It's been three weeks since they pulled a half-starved, half-drowned Nallely back into Isabel's arms, a week since Luffy and Jinbe recuperated under Law's watchful negotiations, and three weeks since the Polar Tang resumed its steady crawl through safer waters.

And in that time, Isabel's best friend has taken to the Heart Pirates with a grace Isabel can't help but envy somewhat.

Nallely is just like that. Extroverted, kind, and gorgeous. Isabel doesn't hate her at all; she just wishes she'd been born with Nallely's natural ability for socializing with different groups.

She knows Nallely, though: she needed to anchor herself to something after everything she'd endured. In fractured, raw confessions late at night, Nallely had told her of the men who tried to make merchandise of her voice, who gagged her to keep her from using it, who laughed when she screamed for them. She spoke of hands that bruised, of salt water forced down her throat, of days spent tied to a rotting mast where seagulls circled like hungry ghosts.

It'd made Isabel so furious that she nearly broke the Polar Tang in two. Nallely had to repair the damages so that nobody noticed, and doing so used up her energy, so Isabel felt guilty enough to try to rein it all in.

(Law had noticed. He'd asked her about it, but Isabel vehemently played dumb. He had no evidence.)

Isabel was happy to know that Nallely wasn't entirely helpless, though. She'd fought back and hurt just as much as they hurt her. But still.

Isabel can tell that the experience changed something inside Nallely.

Isabel doesn't want to bring in sad memories, so she hasn't asked why her friend keeps losing her train of thought, why she dissociates. Isabel understands. She'll let Nallely reveal what she wants to, in time. Isabel only hopes to cheer her up, though she can only do so much.

In any case. Nallely makes friends through her sorrow, and in doing so, makes very articulate observations that sometimes sound like conspiratorial nonsense to Isabel.

It all began when Luffy and Jinbe finally roused from their medically induced state.

The ship was quiet that evening, bathed in a hush of anxious anticipation. The Heart Pirates were well-trained, but even they couldn't quite keep their curious, wary eyes from darting toward the infirmary. Isabel stood there too, arms crossed tight over her chest. The hard line of her shoulders betrayed a vigilance that no one dared question. After all, if Isabel was protecting their Captain, then perhaps it was wise that they all stayed put. This was a job for the two strongest crew members.

When the sound of thrashing filled the air, Isabel immediately stepped forward, shoulder brushing against Law's as she took position ahead of him without even thinking. Her scythe rested against the wall, but her nails dug into her palms, ready to tear instead if needed.

She didn't know Luffy. For all she knew, this rubber-limbed brat could have been some new weapon sent by the World Government to tear down everything Law had so meticulously built. It wouldn't be the first time the Navy twisted the natural order with monstrous experiments.

But as it turns out, Isabel would be wrong a second time in her life.

Monkey D. Luffy sat up with a sharp gasp, his face red and sweaty, mouth gaping like a fish. He glanced around wildly, blinking past certain delirium, mumbling about a brother, his nakama, or something else. Several stages of grief left her on edge: alarm, confusion, anger, sadness, and then realization when he looked straight at her.

Without a second thought, he promptly shoved his finger into his nose, eyes crossing a bit as he blinked at Isabel standing guard like a murderous gargoyle over Law.

"Oh," Luffy said simply, blinking at her with wide, bright eyes—too bright, almost painful to look at on a face that still carried grief-like bruises. "You're not Jinbe."

Isabel narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't answer, didn't move, only stood there like a carved blade, eyes flickering over every inch of him. She was measuring the tension in his shoulders, the slackness of his hands, searching for that slight coiling that betrayed a threat. Government pawn? Cipher Pol agent in disguise? She wouldn't put it past them to craft someone so disarmingly stupid on the surface. Her mouth drew into a thin line.

Luffy angled his head innocently, then leaned forward so close she almost slammed her palm into his chest. He sniffed exaggeratedly. "Huh. You're one of those... uh. Fish girls? Nah. Wait! The siren-y ones! You smell like that nasty leaf stuff she drinks."

She knew exactly who he was referring to. He was talking about tea. Tea. "What did you just say?" Isabel's voice was low, dangerous, breath a thread pulled taut. Her pulse spiked, dread and desperate hope colliding in her chest so hard it almost hurt.

"Oh!" Luffy's grin split his face wide. "You're... um..." He snapped his fingers repeatedly, tongue poking out, eyes squinting as he tried to remember. "Izzy-bell! Yeah! Sanji's girlfriend was talking about you!"

Isabel blinked once, twice, with every protective instinct in her body roaring to life like something enormous and skeletal unfurling behind her. Her hands seized Luffy by the front of his vest so abruptly his hat nearly toppled off. "What. Did. You. Just. Say."

Luffy just stared at her with dopey calm. "That Sanji's girlfriend said your name. The really loud one. Uh... Anita, right? She kept saying your name and waving her hands a lot."

A strangled sound tore out of Isabel's throat. She shook him once, not violently, more like a trembling plea. "Are they—are they safe? Who's with them?!"

"Oh? Zoro's protecting them," Luffy said, like it's the most natural thing in the world. "He's pretty good at not letting people die." Then he wiggled his nose, looking past her shoulder. "Anyway. Got any meat? Or maybe like, a whole chicken? I'm hungry."

Isabel's grip went slack—but only just. Her fists still clutched the fabric of Luffy's vest, trembling faintly as her mind raced. Her gaze bore into him, searching every careless inch of his sun-warm face. She watched the unbothered slump of his shoulders, the guileless curve of his grin, the total lack of cunning in those bright eyes.

It could all be a ruse. The World Government had sunk lower than this. She thinks of Anita's laugh, of Alyssa's shameless cackling, thinks of them gagged or worse on some execution platform while this boy spun idle fairy tales to keep her tame.

Her heart clenched painfully. Her nails pressed deeper, enough to nearly pierce the skin.

"You're sure?" she declared at last, her voice low and guttural, every syllable pulled from the pit of her gut. "You swear they're safe? That your swordsman isn't some planted hound? That they're not already dead somewhere on your ship?"

Luffy stared at her. For a long moment, Isabel was certain he would say something careless, something cruel in its oblivion. Instead, he furrowed his brows, confused. "Why would I lie about Nakama?" he said simply, like it was the dumbest question he'd ever heard. "Zoro's with them. Sanji's girlfriend was making faces at him a lot. It was funny."

There was no artifice there or subtle twitch of manipulation. Only baffled earnestness, profoundly pure, unadorned honesty that glinted in his eyes like clear seawater.

Isabel swallowed. Her throat felt scraped raw. Slowly, with stiff, mechanical motions, she let go of his vest. Her hands hovered uselessly between them for a moment before she forced them to her sides.

She didn't look at him right away. Her gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder, her breaths coming shallow and uneven. Amidst this, Luffy seemed to brighten when he saw Law, already moving, but before he could, Isabel intercepted with a bow.

It wasn't a deep bow—her pride was too tangled for that—but it was respectful, angled in a warrior's measured gratitude. Her eyes slid shut as she murmured, quiet as drifting ash: "Thank you. For protecting them. When I... couldn't."

When she straightened, her face was once again carefully composed, her jaw locked tight to keep it from trembling. She stepped back, granting Luffy his space. Her fingers itched, her body curved with the leftover urge to crumple. But she stood straight.

Luffy just scratched his head, blank as ever. Then his stomach let out a horrendous roar that echoed through the submarine walls.

Luffy took a second, tilted his head again, then stuck his finger back up his nose. "Uh. Sure." He peeked around her at Law, sulking darkly in the corner. "So, meat?"

In said corner, Law, who had been half-hidden by the shadows of a dangling medical chart, watched all this unfold with a dark little twitch of his lips. His fingers drummed along the handle of Kikoku. It wasn't that he didn't want her to thank Luffy—hell, Luffy had kept her precious sisters alive, so fine, fine—but still. It burned in a low, ridiculous way to see her so undone by gratitude. When had she ever bowed to him like that? When had she said thank you without it dripping with reluctant disdain?

The answer was: never.

It was irrational. He knew that. He also didn't care. Some small, childish pride in him bristled that Monkey D. Luffy, who couldn't keep his fingers out of his damn nostrils, had earned something from her he hadn't.

Meanwhile, Nallely, ever the eager observer of human absurdity, stood nearby with Bepo, who was fussing over blankets for Jinbe. Nallely leaned close, whispering in that sly voice of hers that always seemed on the edge of a dangerous secret. "You see how he looked at her? The pirate boy. Like he was trying to get at her or something."

Bepo tilted his head, confused. "Captain Luffy just wanted meat."

"Exactly," Nallely nodded sagely. "The best kind of man. The ones too stupid to hurt you." She was only half-watching her friend fuss; the rest of her attention flickered toward Law next, who stood propped against the opposite wall.

Nallely squinted.

Law was glaring.

Not just the usual sour glower he wore in the common areas, too. This was sharper, more twisted, with his mouth drawn into a flat, displeased line and his eyes narrowed with something dark that clung to his expression-like pitch.

"Bepo..." Nallely whispered, elbowing the bewildered mink. "Does he always look like that? Law?"

Bepo blinks. "That's just how Captain is. He's always mad about something."

"Yeah, but..." Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush as she leaned closer. "He's not looking at me. Or Isabel. He's looking at... him." She nodded meaningfully toward Luffy, who was now scratching his stomach and asking Isabel for more food like nothing earth-shattering had just happened. Isabel still seemed a touch shell-shocked, awkwardly fumbling for something to give him.

Bepo's eyes widened, then darted to Law. Indeed, Law's gaze was pinned on Luffy, specifically on the way Luffy grinned toothily at Isabel, oblivious to any tension.

"Ohhhh..." Bepo's ears twitched, drooping slightly. "Maybe Captain's... jealous?"

"No," Nallely gasped, "You think? Shut up, no way." She peeked over, checking, before she snapped her fingers, delight flashing across her face. "That man does look jealous! I knew it. He's pissed because Straw Hat Luffy got the thanks and not him!"

Bepo wrung his paws together anxiously. "Should we... do something? Talk to Captain?"

Nallely considered it for half a second before waving him off with a mischievous grin. "Nah. Let him think on it. It'll make him easier to read next time."

Bepo gave a strangled little whimper, looking between Law's dagger-eyed stare, Luffy's clueless beam, and Isabel's lingering, unspoken guilt.

"...You humans are scary," he muttered.

Nallely just patted his shoulder fondly. "You'll get used to it, Bepo."

Isabel, who'd been listening with half an ear the entire time, had ignored their tomfoolery. Her cheeks were damp, but her eyes burned fiercely. Luffy hadn't made any more comments and instead jumped on Jinbe the first chance he got. Isabel had left him be, not entirely satisfied with her answers, but not drowning in them either.

She turned to Law then, as if only now remembering he was there. He tried to school his face into bored neutrality, but the sharp clench of his jaw betrayed him.

She didn't offer him a thank you. It made her guilty, but she needed some time to process what was told to her before she was in a better state of mind to do it. The words were still tangled, raw, and ugly in her throat, though, yearning to come out from somewhere deep where her pride refused to pry them loose.

So instead she simply looked at him. A long, lingering look, too heavy, too vulnerable—and that was somehow worse than if she'd spoken.

Law looked away first.

Nallely had noticed this all, of course. She was still in the process of grieving because things weren't the same without Anita and Alyssa, but she was managing marginally better than Isabel was. She preferred the innocent gossip to being on her own, and Bepo was to blame for that. When Bepo had shyly offered her a mug of steaming herbal tea on her first night on the Tang, in an act of desperation to soothe her friend, Isabel allowed it.

Nallely nearly cried and was unable to choke out her thanks because Bepo had panicked and left, thinking Isabel was going to hurt him for causing her friend distress. Later, the brave mink tried to apologize, thinking he'd upset her, and was met by Nallely throwing her arms around his broad white neck in a weepy hug that startled him so badly he squeaked.

From there, a friendship bloomed strangely, and beautifully.

Seeing as Nallely wasn't violent like Isabel and Bepo made it out alive, the Heart Pirates began to surround her like bees to honey.

Penguin taught her card games, his clumsy attempts to keep her distracted drawing tentative giggles that soon became genuine laughs. Shachi—who Nallely admitted she first found stupid with all his loudness—won her over by proudly declaring she was "the best new audience" for his dumb sea shanties, even though half the time she teased him by making up dirtier lyrics.

Ikki was the most surprising: she quietly mended one of Nallely's torn skirts with neat, deft stitches, and after that, Nallely hovered around her like a little shadow, content to keep her company during long maintenance checks or gossip in hushed tones about the public news of the sea.

Through all of it, Isabel watched with a sour, complicated fondness. It was good. It was safe. It was also a reminder of how easily Nallely could open her heart, when Isabel herself felt like hers was still stuffed full of brambles and shards of bone.

Which is why right now, she doesn't dignify Nallely's breathless observation with more than a flinty scowl.

"He does not," Isabel mutters under her breath, though her tone wavers as her eyes dart—traitorously—toward the far corner of the room.

Where, sure enough, Trafalgar D. Water Law stands with a book held conspicuously upside-down. Stupid ass bitch.

He is not reading.

He's watching her. The way he always does. That unfathomable, dissecting gaze slides over her every twitch and breath like it's both a map and a riddle he's determined to solve.

Nallely sighs, dramatically resting her cheek on her palm. "That man has been making goo-goo eyes at you since I was fished out of the sea, Isabel. It's kinda sweet. And gross. But mostly sweet."

"Gross," Isabel corrects, scowling deeper. "And he's not making goo-goo anything. That's his default serial killer expression."

Nallely's lips curl. "Sure. But the way you let him pour your tea yesterday... You know damn well you wouldn't let anyone else besides us Sirens do it. And let alone a man."

Isabel bristles, heat creeping unbidden into her neck. Shit. She clocked her. "That was because Bepo usually does it, and he was busy—"

"And when he complimented the braids I did in your hair? You were smilinggg, biiitch."

Isabel knows she wasn't. And if she was, it was because she was trying not to beat the hell out of him. "He said I looked like my little snail."

"And your snail is cute! C'mon. You were smiling."

"I was not—"

"Almost."

Isabel huffs, crossing her arms. Her eyes drift again to Law.

He's still staring. When he catches her gaze, he tilts his head the tiniest fraction, like he's pondering some private, deeply irritating hypothesis.

She wants to snap at him to mind his own goddamn business. But for reasons she can't quite stomach, she only tears her gaze back to Nallely, heart stuttering. "Focus on your own love life," she grumbles.

Nallely's grin is wicked, but her hand slips over Isabel's under the table, squeezing once. "Not until you admit he's already living in that chest of yours rent-free."

Isabel doesn't reply.

So Nallely sighs. "He likes you, dude. It's so obvious!"

Isabel lifts her eyes from the book, her brow wrinkling in open disdain. "No. Ew."

Nallely levels her with a flat stare. "Really," she drawls, clearly unimpressed. "You're telling me you haven't noticed him—what's the word Ana used? oh—gawking at you like you're some new type of poison?"

Isabel makes an offended sound in her throat, snapping her book shut with a little more force than necessary. "He does not gawk. And anyway, he stares at everyone. That's just his creepy warlord thing."

"Girl," Nallely deadpans. "He's never stared at me like that."

Isabel feels something uncomfortable twist low in her belly. She pointedly doesn't glance over at Law, even though she can sense him across the room the same way you sense an electric storm building on the horizon. "He will eventually," she mumbles, flicking her wrist as if dismissing a trivial nuisance. "He stares at everything that moves. He's like a fat cat that hasn't decided whether to kill the mouse or keep it."

Nallely sighs, sounding far older and wiser than her years. "He hasn't, and won't, and you know it."

Isabel scowls deeper, cracking open the book again. The borrowed novel—a dog-eared, slightly water-stained romance about two doomed lovers from opposing sea clans—was something Nallely insisted she try, after filching it from Ikki's sparse shelf of battered paperbacks. Isabel finds it overly sentimental, but lately, she's been reading anything to keep from thinking too much.

About her lost friends.

About... Law.

Meanwhile, Nallely, infuriatingly persistent, pops a sweet treat Bepo made this morning with carefully powdered sugar into her mouth. The mink had shyly offered it to Nallely like a bear presenting a prized fish, eyes sparkling with hopeful excitement. Of course, Nallely had squealed and hugged him, and now Bepo follows her like a giant, overgrown puppy. Honestly, it would be cute if half the crew weren't also visibly infatuated. Shachi and Penguin make absolutely no attempt to hide their blatant flirting, whispering scandalous jokes and winking when they think Nallely isn't paying attention.

Isabel's protective instincts twitch in annoyance. Nallely deserves the whole damn sea, not... these idiots. But she says nothing, only watches them out of the corner of her eye with a private, simmering promise to gut anyone who steps out of line.

"Anyway," Nallely presses on, ignoring Isabel's silence with the tenacity of barnacles, "I really think you should talk to him."

Isabel's nose wrinkles. "No. Absolutely not."

"Girl."

Something in Nallely's tone makes Isabel pause, glancing up warily, just in time to meet Law's unwavering stare.

Their eyes lock across the room, and the impact is immediate. It's that same infuriating look—sharp, searching, tinged with an emotion she refuses to name. Her skin prickles, heat pooling embarrassingly low in her belly. Law's lips tilt in a small, knowing smirk that sends a spike of irritation—and something else—straight through her. That's it.

Isabel sneers, jerking her chin up in a silent what? Her fingers twitch in a rude little flick of her hand, the universal sign for que putas quieres.

Law only shrugs lazily, then has the audacity to look amused before he finally drags his eyes away.

Nallely is silent for a beat too long. Then she exhales, like she's been holding in a laugh. "It's kinda creepy, I'm not gonna lie," she murmurs, voice syrup-thick with mirth. "But bitch... I'm calling it now. He definitely likes you."

Isabel lets out a strangled noise. "No. Stop being weird, Nallely."

Nallely just beams, teeth flashing. "You owe me a million Beli when I'm right."

Isabel groans dramatically, throwing her head back against the wall. "Ugh. No."

But she doesn't open her book again. Instead, she sits there far too aware of every shift of weight in the room, every scrape of Law's boots on the metal floor, every subtle drag of his eyes across her skin.

It's like he's memorizing new constellations.

Nallely only smirks knowingly, popping another pastry between her lips, smug as sin.

[x . x]

He should be relieved.

In fact, Trafalgar D. Water Law tries very hard to be. The Straw Hat boy is finally off his ship, along with that hulking fish man who bled all over his pristine floor. It was a miracle the two even survived under his knife, let alone stumbled upright and thanked him with half-slurred words before staggering off to whatever new chaos awaited them.

It's cleaner now. Quieter. Less cluttered by the unpredictable storm that was Monkey D. Luffy's mere presence.

So yes. Law should be relieved. Keyword, should. Because Luffy is loud and impulsive, with a smile too bright for the graveyard the world had become after Marineford. A pirate captain who, by all accounts, is reckless, soft in the head, and doomed to die young. He'd be a liability to anyone who dared align with him too closely, but a sure investment that'll bring Law's acidic goals into fruition.

And more importantly: a boy who had drawn Isabel's eyes again and again.

He tells himself it was irritating purely because it was dangerous. Because she, with her monstrous loyalty and haunted eyes, oughtn't to get tangled up in another reckless pirate's wake when Law had already risked enough to keep her aboard his ship. She was supposed to be watching the horizon for Doflamingo, not craning her neck to see if the Straw Hat captain was still breathing.

Or bowing to him with that small, aching gratitude Law has not once received. Not even after all he's done.

(Law tells himself it doesn't matter. He saved her crew because it furthered his own vendetta, not because he owed her anything deeper, or because of what she'd done for him a decade ago. The sting in his chest is merely a quiet vexation at her lack of caution, not... something else.)

And yet.

And yet, ever since Straw Hat and his fish-man knight departed, Isabel's sharp eyes have drifted back to Law, back to the path they were meant to be walking. And though she remains prickly and elusive as she always does with her gratitude toward him, awkward at best—offered in the form of reorganized charts, cleaned instruments, or silent vigilance on missions—it's focused solely on him once more.

So perhaps it is a petty thing, but Law finds he doesn't miss the Straw Hat captain's company at all. Not his loud proclamations, not his ravenous appetite, not his thoughtless courage that somehow drew out pieces of Isabel Law had yet to see for himself.

No—it's better this way. Now her eyes are on him, where they belong. Where they have always, in some twisted, inevitable current of fate, been destined to land again.

And if that makes Trafalgar Law a possessive bastard, well... so be it. He's already stained his hands too deeply with blood to flinch at darker urges.

One more selfish claim will hardly damn him further.

Law sits slouched in his chair, one leg kicked over the other, idly flipping through patient notes he's already memorized twice over. The dull lamplight throws long shadows across the cabin, pooling under his eyes like bruises. He tells himself he's just planning, merely calculating the next angle to strike at Doflamingo, weighing how best to exploit Kaido's resources, estimating how long until the next supply run.

He's totally not thinking about how the Polar Tang feels emptier without the Straw Hat's laughter echoing through the hull.

Or about how Isabel seems less watchful now, less bristling. Her shoulders are no longer in that constant, combat-ready tension.

She's more... settled. If only by a hair.

No, he's not thinking about any of that, really. Really.

Maybe.

Law can't deny to himself that she's turned out to be a spectacular investment.

Not just for the obvious reasons, like how she carved a path through enemy lines without blinking, or how her Fright Knight powers make short work of obstacles that would take his entire crew hours to dismantle.

But because she stands by him.

Even if it's a grudging, reluctant thing, Isabel has shown immense professionalism. She's not immature, even if she hisses at him for getting too close, or snaps insults under her breath that would have lesser men flushing scarlet. That's just who she is. There's a steadiness in her presence in the way she organizes his maps without being asked, sharpens his scalpels, or simply looks at him with that same unflinching gaze that once promised to flay him alive if he dared betray her trust.

And Law realizes, begrudgingly, that he may like that.

He likes the tension in her coiled muscles when she steps between him and a threat, or the way her eyes catch the lamplight like violet onyx. They promise assessing, dexterous violence, always thinking three moves ahead.

And.

Law can't hide, can't refuse, in some low, private part of himself, that he may like the way she sees him. As someone worth standing beside. Worth killing for.

How ridiculous. How utterly, painfully stupid.

"Trafalgar."

Law jerks upright at the muffled call of his name, his head snapping up from the spread of smuggling route maps, expression smoothing into a pensive casualness by the time the door clicks fully open.

Isabel stands on the threshold, framed by the dim corridor light. Her long, ankle-length wavy hair is damp, clinging to her shoulders in uneven strands that darken the thin cotton of her shirt. There's a hint of seawater salt lingering in the air around her, a scent mingled with her natural, sweet citrus he finds traces of everywhere within the Polar Tang. Her arms are folded tight over her chest, blankness etched across her features so deeply it's practically regal.

For a split second, Law's brain stutters over itself.

There's truly no one else like her.

It's an unbidden thought. It hits him, suddenly. No one else would dare look at him with that careful balance of contempt, expectation, and reluctant allegiance, all woven up into one unwavering stare.

It's dangerous.

She's dangerous.

"Are you busy?" Isabel mutters, face so impassive it's as though he's inconvenienced her by existing.

Law's grin curls slowly and sharply, tongue clicking against his teeth. "What is it, Lunabel-ya? Unlike you, I have reasons to be occupied."

She stares at him monotonously, shifting her weight with a restless little tilt of her shoulders. Under usual circumstances, his comments would cause a tick on her otherwise mundane expressions. He finds none, this time. Instead, her mouth opens, then closes again, jaw flexing like she's thinking about what to say. Which—with her—is very rare. She says what she needs to. No tricks. No bullshit.

Curious.

"So?" Law drawls, leaning back further in his chair, his long fingers drumming over the edge of the desk. "You don't seek me out unless you're forced. What do you want?"

Isabel exhales, almost like it pains her. "We're stopping at the next port, right?"

"That was the plan. Need to slip the Navy's scent. Why?"

Isabel's arms drop. Her hands flex at her sides. "I'm heading down to buy something for Nallely," She says, not asks. Law doesn't correct her. After all, she's not exactly an official crew member. He respects her decisions and leadership because, unlike his crew, she's not an idiot. Which is terrifying in itself, and has cost many sleepless nights for one distrusting Law. "So don't be surprised if you don't see me in your submarine."

Law gives her an easy grin. "Not trying to run away, are you Lunabel-ya?"

Isabel levels him with a tired look. "No."

For a moment, Law only stares. Then, he clears his throat, gaze sharpening so it doesn't drift too obviously over the tense lines of her shoulders or the wet strands clinging to her throat. "Fine. But don't come to me for reimbursement. It's your own altruism."

Isabel shrugs. "I've got enough money."

She turns to leave, long, glistening legs taunting. "Good," Law says, dropping his chair back onto all fours with a quiet thunk. He can't look away. "Now get out. I have work."

Isabel gives a little scoff, but she leaves.

And Law watches her go, jaw tight, unable to stop that half-formed thought that's been gnawing at him for weeks now:

That she is the best investment he's made, not just for her monstrous power, but for the way she moves through his ship like a living tempest, carving out a place neither of them are quite willing to name.

[x . x]

The Polar Tang anchors just off the coast of a small island that's all sun-bleached dunes, jewel-toned jungles, and shallow turquoise waters lapping lazily at the shore a few days later.

It's almost offensively idyllic—warm, wind-sweet, full of tropical scents Isabel can't quite name.

She and Nallely walk the narrow dirt paths of the nearest little market square, half-shaded by colorful canopies that flap in the ocean breeze. Traders call out prices over baskets brimming with glistening fruits, bright silks, handmade trinkets, and rare shells. Isabel trails a step behind, ever the wary shadow, eyes scanning every unfamiliar face, while Nallely soaks it all in with eager wonder, breathless at each pretty woven cloth or flower-wrapped pastry.

Law and Bepo tag along behind them.

It's a mild surprise. Isabel would've wagered good money that Law would stay holed up inside the Polar Tang, scowling over charts and medical records like the antisocial bastard he is. For a moment, she even entertains the thought that maybe he's here to finally get some sun. But no, that would be far too normal for him. She catches the weight of his gaze now and then, sliding across her back with an easy, assessing familiarity. It needles under her skin.

He's here to keep an eye on her for sure. The joke he'd made about her sneaking away days ago comes to mind, and she frowns to herself.

She honors her word. It's his problem if he still doesn't trust her.

(Is she one to talk, though?)

Bepo sticks close to Nallely, happily shouldering a small satchel she's already begun to stuff with local sweets and ribbon-wrapped confections. Law walks beside Isabel, hands casually tucked into his pockets, letting the scene play out in front of him with an inscrutable look.

Isabel sighs to herself.

She's overthinking, again.

At a vendor stand stacked high with sugar-dusted fritters, Nallely spins around, clutching Bepo's furry paw with both hands. "Bepo! Do you think they'll let us buy some of these ingredients? You can teach me to make your little coconut rolls!"

Bepo's ears wiggle in delight, his entire posture brightening. "Of course! Let's go ask."

Nallely throws Isabel a quick, conspiratorial wink. Isabel resists groaning. "We'll be back. Try not to kill anyone while I'm gone!"

Isabel nods, tired. She should've expected this. Nallely is so convinced that Law is in love with her, or something. It was only a matter of time before she tried to leave them alone together. "Can't promise."

Nallely snorts before she and Bepo disappear into the crush of sunlit bodies, leaving Isabel and Law standing awkwardly at the edge of a random stall, surrounded by baskets of glossy fruit. A saline wind teases stray strands of hair across Isabel's face, and she flicks them aside with a quick, irritable huff.

They watch the busy stretch of the marketplace for a while in relative quiet. Law stands with his hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, bracing for a breeze that doesn't come. Isabel picks at a loose thread on her sleeve, stealing sidelong glances at him, unsettled by how aware she is of his nearness. She doesn't like silences.

She might as well go get what she was planning to.

She begins to walk, and mindlessly, Law follows.

At last, it's Law who breaks the silence, though his voice is low, almost hesitant. "...We'll need to keep our ears open while we're here," he murmurs. "This island's a decent stop for trade, and places like that are always crawling with petty informants. Might pick up something on Doflamingo's movements. Or your sisters."

That last part slips out softer than he means it to, almost under his breath. Isabel doesn't want to think about them today, so she nods silently.

She continues ahead, feeling both comforted and discomfited by his presence. He's behind her, kind of. His hands keep touching the edges of her hair by accident, and she feels it. But he doesn't say sorry, so she keeps herself from making him aware he's doing it.

A lot of people pass them by without much thought, which is unexpected. She would've thought Law's hat would be memorable, at least. Isabel has an excuse since she's always shrouded by her Nocturne Cloak of Midnight, a magically embedded item that hides any and every distinguishable feature of hers. It's why a lot of the populace thinks she's a man.

But Law has a hefty bounty. Maybe this island is pirate-friendly? Law wouldn't stop somewhere that'd risk them.

She's surprised at herself, honestly, for letting him trail after her so easily. After everything he's done, tearing her from her chance to reach her friends, forcing her hand in that brutal, irreversible way, it feels almost absurd to tolerate his company.

And yet here they are, moving through sun-dappled market streets, the ambiance dense with exotic condiments and roasting plantains. Bright stalls cram every side of the winding path, heavy with bolts of dyed cloth and baskets overflowing with citrus and strange, speckled fruits. Isabel adjusts the strap of the heart satchel Nallely had bargained off Ikki, platform boots scuffing over cobblestone worn smooth by countless feet.

She hates to admit it, but Law probably saved her life that day. As much as fury still simmers in her gut over how he stopped her, there's a quiet, miserable part of her that understands. If she'd hesitated and tried to reach Anita and Alyssa in that chaos, it would've been a death sentence for them all. Law knows it. And deep down, so does she.

She rubs a hand over her face, trying to scrub away the heaviness that clings to her thoughts.

She's so tired of circling the same affliction.

It's question after torturous question, always grasping at what can't be changed: Could I have done more? Should I have fought harder? What could I have changed? Why did it end up like this?

On and on the loop spins, a cruel little carousel of guilt that never stops.

Maybe Law's decision was one of mutual interest, as she's still his most dangerous weapon against Doflamingo. But it was also a choice that spared her, saved her to fight another day. The knowledge tastes bitter.

Nallely is safe with her now, but the wound of missing Anita and Alyssa is still raw, throbbing with every breath. What good is having half her heart returned when the other half bleeds out somewhere she can't reach?

She doesn't know.

It's hard to find happiness under so much ruin. It feels like this torment might never end.

It's illogical, of course.

There are good and bad days.

But she's been having bad days since she was born. It's a hard habit to break, to stop thinking about when the other shoe will drop.

"So, a bed?"

Law's voice cuts through the hum of bartering merchants and the laughter of children running past with dripping mango slices in their fists. Isabel startles, dragged from the hypnotic rhythm of her footsteps and the soft hiss of her black, newly dyed jumpsuit brushing between her thighs with every motion.

She blinks at him blankly. "What?"

Law lifts an eyebrow, his mouth quirking into that infuriating little smirk. "Is that where we're going? Or are you leading me into some alley to murder me, Lunabel-ya?"

It's almost funny, how often he seems to believe she might turn on him. Maybe it's just his usual paranoia, which is understandable, because it's something she has in common with him. But maybe, a darker voice in her head suggests, he actually wants it. Death, she means. Or torture. Who knows at this point. Isabel is starting to suspect it may be some secret kink of his.

She gives him a flat stare. "I mean, if you want."

Law lifts his hands in exaggerated surrender, wearing an almost comical look of wounded surprise. "Harsh, Lunabel-ya. No mercy for your loyal murder buddy?"

She doesn't bother answering. Instead, she pushes past him and keeps moving toward the far end of the market, where colorful woven signs promise mattresses and bedding. Law sighs, but falls into step beside her anyway, as if he hasn't been brushed off at all. He seems perfectly content to keep trailing in her wake, no matter how many times she tries to pull ahead.

She'll let him do what he wants.

There's already too much going on. It's starting to get overstimulating, the din of bartering voices and clamor of pottery clashing on carts prickling over her skin.

It takes a bit to walk there, even at her brisk pace. She's impatient, shoving past people who dawdle in front of her for no other reason than to be obstructions on a busy path. Some whirl around, faces twisted, mouths parting for a biting insult, but they catch sight of Law's shadow looming close behind her, his face carved into that effortless glower, and their outrage dissolves into wary silence.

She appreciates it, secretly.

"Too many people," she mutters, eyes darting up to a cluttered row of hanging signs advertising mattress sizes in bright, cartoonish lettering. They better be of good quality, or else she's digging deep into their business to figure out who the hell is manufacturing faulty and/or dangerous products. She'll force Law to steer the Polar Tang where she's needed, if need be.

"Not a fan of joy and whimsy?" Law drawls.

Isabel makes a face. "It's not that. I just don't like huge crowds like this."

He nods, an acknowledging little hum that comes with a lazy flick of his eyes around them.

She looks at him, tongue moving before her mind can catch up, "My senses are sensitive. My sense of smell and hearing is acute, and I feel things more intensely than regular people. So. It's bad."

There's a faint change to Law's face, something keen and assessing in the lines around his eyes. "...And taste?"

"That too," She adds dismissively.

"I see. Being here must be shit. Why come outside at all?" He asks, sounding genuinely confused.

"I told you," She says, jutting her chin toward the stall ahead where a vendor perks up under his sun-bleached awning. "To buy Nallely something."

Law stares. "You could've just let me do it."

Isabel side-eyes him. "...Okay?" She says, because she doesn't know how to answer that. She doesn't trust him enough to ask. It hadn't even popped into her head, that option. He doesn't owe her anything. If anything, she owes him. Why pile up on more favors than necessary? It sounds stupid and selfish. That's not how she works.

"Okay, what?" Law Law prods, eyebrows lifting, amused in his goading way.

She frowns at him. "I just said okay. There's nothing else."

Law looks unconvinced, a smirk threatening

She turns away. "You can go if you want. I found what I needed."

"It's fine," He grumbles, scratching at the dark stubble on his jaw, eyes drifting lazily over the street. "I don't have anything in particular I'm looking for, besides the informants."

"Yeah," She nods. "We can look around after we get Nallely's thing." Isabel pauses, finally at the foot of the stall.

The vendor chatters at them in a breezy, rehearsed voice, rattling off prices and options. Isabel barely spares him a glance, cutting right to her order. She wants one of those specialty cloud mattresses, condensed into small vials that fluff out when soaked. It's the best they have and the one thing Nallely wanted for her birthday last year that they couldn't find. It's something that'll help with Nallely's back problems.

The vendor's smile slips a little at her directness, but he ducks back into the tiny shack behind the stall, rummaging through shelves. Isabel steps away to wait, tipping her head back. The sun pours over her face, bright and heavy, warming the black fabric of her jumpsuit. She closes her eyes for a second, just to breathe.

When she opens them, Law is still there.

She shifts her weight, feeling slightly bad that Law stayed out of her accord. "...What do you usually look for?"

Law blinks like she's thrown a pebble at his head. "I buy medical supplies," he says, the dryness in his tone almost making it funny. "Books. Bandages, syringes. That type of thing."

"Ah." She considers it, eyes roaming over the pressed line of his mouth, the slight slump of his shoulders that always seems deceptively at ease. He always looks like he's lazy, but is wound tight underneath with stress. It reminds him a little of her, in a way. "That makes sense. You're the type to enjoy books."

Law gives her a narrowed look, almost suspicious. "And what does that mean, exactly, Lunabel-ya?"

She studies him. "It just means what it means. You read a lot. You like long explanations and facts, and things that are clean and ordered."

There's a little pause.

Then, to her surprise, Law laughs. It's not loud or bright, but quiet. It sounds like a breathy thing that stumbles innocently out of his chest. His eyes crease slightly at the corners, and he lifts a hand to hide the smile threatening there. "You callin' me a nerd, Lunabel-ya?" He teases, smirking.

"I mean, you said it, not me." She looks at him weirdly.

He wipes a fake tear from his face. "Wow," He says. "Can't deny it," he admits. "Though I'm guessing you're not far off yourself. Considering how you ramble about decomposition techniques and ship classifications when you're bored with Nallely-ya."

Shr shrugs. "That's different."

"Is it?" Law drawls, leaning closer, his shadow cutting the sun off her shoulders.

She scowls up at him, muttering, "Shut up, Trafalgar."

But he just grins, looking unbothered and—annoyingly—a little pleased.

When the vendor comes back with the vial, Isabel takes it and reaches into her pouch to count out the beli. Her fingers close around the cool coins, already pulling them free—only for Law to step forward and press the payment into the vendor's waiting hand before she can even blink. The merchant, eager to be done, gives them both a little bow before scuttling back into his shop with a relieved smile, causing her to snap her head at him in offended alarm. "Wait," She steps forward, but the vendor disappears before she can tell him that she was paying, not Law.

Isabel stands there, momentarily frozen. Then she whips around to glare at Law, offense flaring hot across her face. "Why."

Law barely glances at her, instead flicking imaginary dust from his nails, expression infuriatingly idle. "No reason."

"That's not an answer."

He finally lifts his head to look at her, dark eyes half-lidded. "What? Can't your captain buy something out of the goodness of his heart?"

Her face twists, a flash of indignation warping her mouth. She very nearly grabs him by the front of his shirt to slam him into the dusty street, just to remind him that he's not her captain, never was, never will be. But he just bought her something, which complicates it, brewing a roiling disgust that stirs right alongside something uncomfortably warm.

Law notices. His gaze sharpens a fraction, growing oddly pensive the longer they stare at each other.

Isabel's shoulders stiffen. "Thank you," She grunts, forcing the words out of her mouth. "But don't buy me anything. I can afford it," She tells him, before walking away.

Law follows after her, again, like a wolf circling its favorite territory.

It's quiet for a stretch. The clatter of wooden wind chimes and the hawking calls of nearby merchants play at a constant, loud steps skidding against the grainy asphalt. Then Law clears his throat, his hands sliding into his pockets. "You don't owe me for that," he says.

Isabel doesn't look at him. Her eyes stay locked ahead on the bobbing sea of shoppers.

He tries again, tone dropping, oddly patient. "You've been doing a good job. Don't think anything of it."

"It's fine," she lies, tightening her grip around the vial. "I'm not bothered by it. I already said thank you."

A low, skeptical hum is all he gives in reply.

They pass a stall draped with weatherworn comics, their sun-faded covers pinned beneath smooth river stones so they don't flutter away. Isabel's steps slow. Her scowl slips for a heartbeat, replaced by a hesitant, searching interest. She's suddenly wondering if maybe, by some miracle, there's a new installment of Nana tucked in there. Last she heard, the author had fallen ill, the story left in painful limbo. But after all these years... maybe?

Law notices the slight shift in her shoulders and the way her head tilts almost shyly toward the stacks.

His mouth twitches, the smallest smirk threatening.

Isabel catches him looking, immediately bristling. "What?"

"Nothing," Law says, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Just didn't figure you for a comic girl, Lunabel-ya."

She stares at him, thinking of what to say, but ultimately decides on nothing. She turns back and steps closer to the table, tentatively nudging through the piles of old comics. Law stays right there with her, hands back in his pockets, with his shoulders brushing hers. She makes no comment on that, too engrossed in the titles popping out to her from every cover.

Law's eyes flick to her, then away quickly like he hadn't meant to be caught looking. "You..." He begins, and she turns fully to him expectantly, "You ever read Interview With a Vampire?"

Isabel's heart leaps. There's no way he's ever read that. "...Might have when I was younger," She replies nonchalantly, watching for his reaction.

Law perks up. "Really?" He grins conspiratively, "And what do you think about it?"

Isabel makes a note in her mind that the comic must be something Law likes. It seems impossible, that realization, so she does her best to squish the giddiness she feels the need to express. Or the mindless fangirling. "...It's really good," She allows, eyeing him. "Louie and Lestat are tragic and complicated people, and stuff. I like that, even if they're vampires, they resemble the flaws of humanity. And the um, the whole thing with Armand, and the yearning, and the regret, and just the constant suffering realism is so—" She cuts herself off, deflating. "It's good, is what I mean."

Law watches her, quietly taking in every stammered word. Then, with an awkward little shift of weight, he mumbles, "I thought it was pretty good too. It was almost hard to read, the death scene of Claudia and Madeleine under the sun, I mean."

Their eyes meet. Something raw and delicate flickers there, startling them both. Isabel looks away first, scowling hard at nothing. "Yeah it was... yeah."

Another beat passes. Law scratches behind his ear. "There's a place on Swallowtail Island that sometimes carries first editions. We might be stopping there eventually for—logistical reasons. If you wanted, I could..." His voice trails off, and he gestures vaguely, as if hoping she'll finish the thought for him.

Isabel fidgets, the knot in her chest tightening painfully. "Sure," she breathes.

Law's mouth quirks up, small and crooked.

They lapse into a quieter sort of hush, but this time it isn't uncomfortable. It sits between them warm and cautious, like something still deciding whether it wants to live.

Isabel digs the toe of her boot into the dirt. "...Is there anything else you've read...?"

Law huffs, the faintest ghost of relief flickering across his face. "Sure. Lots. Not that it's any of your business though," He hums, looking away with a snicker when she regards him with a scowl.

Her lips twitch despite herself. "Okay. You're embarrassed, I get it."

Law looks back at her, grinning. "Projecting, Lunabel-ya?"

Isabel doesn't say anything. Their gazes linger, suspended over something neither of them can name yet. Then Law jerks his chin toward the other side of the market. "Come on. Let's make sure Bepo hasn't gotten suckered into buying a whole cart of pineapple cakes."

Isabel exhales, long and slow, letting something in her shoulders relax.

She falls into step beside him, the sunlight tangling between them, warm and bright and strangely bearable.

[x . x]

After scouring the island for informants—and after far too many casual moments that left Isabel's heart doing dangerous things—she and Law finally return to the Polar Tang.

By then, night has settled deep and thick around them. The path back is quiet, lanterns bobbing in the harbor's dark water like watchful eyes. Beside her, Law's hand drifts close enough to brush her knuckles once or twice, each accidental graze like a tiny electric sting that probably feels like nothing to him, but something else for her. They don't say much after their rambling debates on comics and old novels, but it's not awkward. If anything, it simmers with something that feels unbearably hopeful, a gentle surprise that she hadn't expected to come about after today.

She tries not to think too hard about why. It's probably because it's nighttime. She always thrives under the moon.

When they finally push through the hatch into the cafeteria of the Polar Tang, the warm, familiar scent of spices and sea salt hits her. So does the sudden burst of sound.

All heads swing toward them immediately.

Penguin and Shachi sit at a nearby table, halfway through a raucous card game, and both freeze mid-move. Their eyes bug out in cartoonish delight before they erupt into loud, childish "Ooooooooh!"s, pointing with exaggerated, wagging fingers.

Ikkaku, seated beside Bepo and Nallely, tries—and fails—to stifle a snort of laughter behind her hand. Bepo just tilts his head, blinking in earnest confusion, but Nallely... Nallely has the audacity to look smug.

She leans an elbow on the table, chin propped on her palm, and offers Isabel a sly, too-innocent smile. "Have fun?" she singsongs, bright eyes dancing.

Isabel stiffens, heat rushing hot and traitorous up her neck. Her glare could peel paint.

Nallely just beams, teeth flashing, wiggling her eyebrows.

Law clears his throat, one hand slipping into his pocket as if to look aloof, though Isabel can see the faint tick in his jaw, and the way he subtly shifts closer to her like a shield.

"Sure," Isabel drawls monotonously, trying to sound unaffected. Her voice comes out low and strangled instead.

Penguin just grins wider. "Really!? We've been waiting hours to see how your hot date went!"

"It wasn't a date," Isabel states factually. Her hands are fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms.

Shachi elbows Penguin, stage-whispering, "Totally was. Look at the way she's blushing."

Isabel whips around to Law, hoping, or praying, for backup. But he only meets her gaze with a faint, crooked smirk, eyes dark and far too amused, as if quietly relishing her mortification.

This fucking bitch.

Bepo tries to save her with a soft, concerned rumble. "Captain, did you and Isabel-san at least eat? Nallely saved you some of the curry she made with Ikki."

Nallely gives a little, pleased shrug. "You always forget to eat, girl. I thought you two might come back starving after your very long walk."

Isabel mutters curses under her breath. But under all the embarrassment, something almost... pleasant unfurls. The familiarity of the banter, the safe glow of being teased by people who, despite everything, feel painfully close to a home she thought she'd never have again.

Law rolls his eyes, but his voice is mild when he says, "We'll take the curry. And then both of you can keep your speculation to yourselves, or I'll assign latrine duty for a month."

Ikkaku barks a laugh. "Yes, Captain," She teases, much more open with her, now with Nallely making friends.

As they move to take seats—still side by side, though Isabel won't think too hard on that—she lets herself breathe out slowly. Her shoulders ease, tension melting into a cautious warmth.

It isn't perfect. Her heart still trips over old guilt, over ugly questions that refuse to die. But right now, with Nallely's conspiratorial grin, Bepo's gentle attentiveness, and Law's dark eyes occasionally flicking to her like he can't help himself—it feels, for a moment, like she can stand to exist in her own skin.

Like it can mean something more like home.

Chapter Text

[x . x]

Eight-year-old Trafalgar D. Water Law thinks the girl in front of him has the weirdest eyes he's ever seen.

He stands amid a busy cafeteria chittering with various vocalized conversations between kids, pure white walls meshed with the regal azure of sapphire webbed tables and umbrella fabrics. He has just got his portion of lunch per his father's paid stamps, turning to return to the empty seat one of his friends saved for him nearby, when he runs into something—or more so someone—unexpected.

The first thing he sees is the violent color of a raging plum.

Followed by the shape of eyes, a face, and finally a person.

A girl.

Law's first thought is: her eyes are weird.

Not ugly. Just... weird. Like they were made to see through people. Like amethysts that glared instead of sparkled. Like a dying pig, or something.

She's maybe a little shorter than him, but only barely. Her hair is wild and curly, a tangled mess held back by a crooked pink clip, and she smells vaguely like clean laundry and cheap cafeteria rice. She crashes into him at the edge of the lunch queue, and Law's tray nearly goes airborne.

He shoots her a sharp glare. "Watch where you're going," he grounds out, wobbling tray lifted slightly to avoid another collision at the twist she makes of her big head that nearly touches the sharp edge with her forehead.

She bares her teeth at him in response—a full, exaggerated grimace—and stalks away like he's not worth her time.

Law blinks. What the hell?

It should've ended there.

After grumbling some insults at her audacity, Law finds his saved seat and eats in silence, dismissively keeping an open ear to the meaningless drivel spitting out of the boys around him. He's only vaguely aware that the clumsy girl has taken the spot across the cafeteria, talking to some kid with a bowl cut and a snotty nose. He tries not to glance her way again. (And it's hard not to. Look, he means. He's buzzed with irritation, more than usual, to the extent that he is contemplating fabricated scenarios to demonstrate his authority over her. This frustration is likely connected to one of his uncles becoming ill, which has consumed all of his father's family time, leaving Law with no opportunity to engage in the essential bonding he requires with his father.)

But then it happens.

The bully—a taller, older boy with a chip on his shoulder and fists twice the size of his brain—shoves the snotty-nosed kid off the bench for no reason. The little guy squeaks and falls, noodles everywhere, spilling on the girl who stares intensely down at her soiled attire.

Law pauses, mid-bite. Everyone around them freezes.

The girl stands slowly. Her passive expression catches Law's interest. There's no hesitation. The stupidass bully (who Law has also had trouble with in the past, but was thankfully left alone when Law beat the hell out of him) mocks the crying noodle boy, and even gestures vaguely in her direction, making a nasty comment about her skin. Law scowls, questioning what kind of upbringing could breed such consistent stupidity.

To the clumsy girl's credit, she doesn't cry, or scream, or call for a teacher. Instead, (and maybe Law's imagining it) as the quiet suspense levels a cold ground, the girl does something.

She grabs the bully by the collar and slams her tray over his head. Rice and fried egg go flying.

The room erupts. Cheers, calls, etc. It all grates on Law's ears. And yet he can't look away.

The bully tries to push her off, but she's already swinging again—this time with her fist. She punches like someone who means it, like someone who isn't afraid to hit a bigger kid just for existing wrong. Law sees the flash of her strange violet eyes, fierce and wild and alive, and he realizes something dangerous is happening in his chest.

He's impressed.

A teacher finally arrives to break it up. The girl is dragged out of the room, fists balled with a smudge of red and a silent, terrifying glower at the bully, whose nose is bleeding and pride is shattered. The big dumb idiot is crying profusely, like he hadn't just tried to do the same to bowl-head over there, who is thankfully getting help by one of the other TAS on standby.

Law doesn't realize he's still staring until Rimu, the boy who saved his seat, bumps his arm and mutters, "Law, your rice."

He looks down. He hasn't touched it. His hand still holds the dipped spoon left with contents uneaten.

Law finally moves to take a bite, keen ears listening in on the demands of the teacher of who started what, and of the boys around him whispering about the girl's eerie strength.

He doesn't know her name. Doesn't know where she's from, or what her deal is. But the heat in her glare and the unrepentance of her presence are a nice change around here. The way she didn't flinch, the way she acted like pain was an inconvenience, not a deterrent, all of it, are signs of someone who knows what justice is.

He files that moment away—somewhere deep, somewhere safe.

Later, he'll tell himself it was nothing. He scribbles all over her sudden and unexpected memory with barbarity. That she's an idiot for lashing out and getting herself in trouble, rather than taking the analytical, tactically obscure approach Law had taken. He tells himself she went a bit too overboard on school grounds. That now she'll be expelled, and there will be no more fights left to see, because the bully has parents with unfair, unruly connections that get rid of people.

A shame.

But in the back of his mind, a quiet, traitorous thought takes root.

That she may very well be the coolest person he's ever seen.

[x . x]

After that encounter, it's like he starts seeing her everywhere.

Not right away. For two full weeks, she disappears from his radar entirely, and Law assumes it's over. A random kid crashes into him, fights a bully, and probably gets expelled—end of story. Things like that don't happen often at this school, and when they do, they're usually snuffed out quickly. Besides, Law has better things to think about.

He has school. He has his family. His father finally has time to spend with them again, though it comes at the quiet cost of grief. Law hears his uncle's name mentioned in hushed tones, always with a weight behind it. A man he never met, but whose absence hangs heavy in the house like mist. His sister cries at night sometimes, muffled into her pillow. His mother smiles less. His father is always tired now.

Law doesn't understand all of it and initially hadn't cared. He never knew the man, and neither had his sister. But he understands that something's shifted. That loss can steal even the brightest parts of people. It unsettles him more than he wants to admit.

So no. He doesn't spare that girl from the cafeteria much thought. Not consciously.

But then, things change.

It starts subtly—glimpses, more than anything. The back of a frizzy ponytail at recess. A flash of her muddy sneakers turning a corner down the hall. Once, he swears he hears her laugh during an emergency drill. He doesn't even know how he recognizes it, but it makes his chest feel funny.

He doesn't go looking for her. That would be ridiculous. But she's there, skimming the edges of his awareness like a bug buzzing just out of reach. Sometimes she's whispering something to another kid near the library shelves. Other times, she's in the cafeteria again, sitting alone with a tray that's barely touched, watching people like she's waiting for a test to start.

And then one day, in the middle of class, it clicks.

She's sitting two rows in front of him, tucked in the far corner near the window. Her hair is pulled back in two messy braids now. She's chewing the end of her pencil while the teacher drones on about ecosystems. Law blinks at her, as if her presence alone has broken some unspoken rule.

How long has she been in his class?

Had she been there since the start of the year? Did she transfer in, and he just didn't care to notice?

It irritates him, not knowing.

It irritates him more that she doesn't even glance his way.

He tells himself it's not important. That she's not important.

And yet...

He sees her again later that day.

He's outside, in the little dirt clearing between the school's practice field and the older utility shed, where he sometimes goes when he doesn't feel like being around other kids. He drags a stick through the dry soil, carving shapes he doesn't care to name. It's quiet, which he likes. Quiet means control. Stillness. A moment to think.

Then he sees her.

She's crouched a short distance away, halfway hidden behind a low bush, scribbling something into the dirt with a stick of her own. In her other arm is a bundle of crooked twigs and sun-dried grass, all bunched together with string. A makeshift doll. Or maybe a weapon. With her, he's not sure.

Law frowns and speaks without meaning to. "You again?"

She glances up, eyes narrowing like she's deciding whether he's worth acknowledging. "I was here first," she mutters.

He rolls his eyes and sits on a rock nearby. He doesn't really know why.

He expects her to say something else, but she doesn't.

So Law minds his business.

They don't talk for a while. She keeps drawing. A circle here, an X there. Her brow furrows as she works, tongue peeking out from the corner of her mouth in concentration. Law watches her just to pass the time, sometimes lost in thought, sometimes genuinely curious as to what she's doing. The breeze tugs at her curls. There's a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Her arms are scratched up, like she climbs trees or fights cats or both. She doesn't flinch when a bee passes near her ear.

Eventually, she pauses and looks over at him.

"What?"

Law shrugs. "Didn't think you'd come back."

"Huh?" She just stares at him.

Law thinks. "You beat up the stupidass."

"...Okay."

Law shrugs again, feeling a tad embarrassed at not knowing what to say. "I'm saying you didn't get expelled."

"Oh," she says. She looks like she doesn't care. "The bully did."

Law wonders how she did it. Does she also have influential parents? He's kind of jealous. He's been trying to expel that idiot for weeks, now. Maybe he hasn't been turning in the papers in the right section?

She tilts her head. "Why do you always look like you smelled something bad?"

Law realizes he's been making angry faces at her and quickly regards a glare her way. "Why do you always talk like you're smarter than you are?" He retorts, because frankly, there's no way she's as smart as he, to be in the same class. He doesn't know why he's so mad about that, either. It's just unfair. He also just threw that insult out of nowhere because it sounded like she'd been insulting him, and Law didn't have a ready quip to challenge that. But that last statement is dismissed by embarrassment.

She scowls back. "Maybe I am."

He doesn't respond. Doesn't know how to. His ears feel hot.

They go quiet again. It's taut with tension, and he half-wonders if he should prepare for a fight. But she never does anything, and the discomfort passes when Law realizes she's back to her unbothered activity, scribbling away. Something about the moment feels different. Like it's already been written into some long, invisible book neither of them can read yet.

Law doesn't realize it right away, but something small and stupid begins to form in him that day.

It's not something he knows what to call, because he's never felt it before. It feels pretty stupid, though.

That girl—whatever her name is—might be someone worth remembering.

And it bothers him more than he can explain.

[x . x]

Law never really gets her name.

It's strange, considering how often they talk. Or argue. Or sit in near-silence beside each other, separated only by the space where his book ends and her secrets begin.

During that next year, they see each other almost daily. Always in the same places—before class, during recess, sometimes after school if they're both too slow to pack up. The familiarity creeps in, not like a thunderclap, but like fog curling around his ankles. He finds himself looking for her and wondering if she'll say something weird today. Or if he'll get a rise out of her. (She can always tell, somehow. And somehow, it ends with him upset.)

They never really introduce themselves. He just starts showing up by her cubby, book in hand, already halfway through some complicated text most kids their age would scoff at. She listens more than she talks, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed like she's afraid to give away too much. When he tells her the tragic ending of a novel—how the main character dies alone—she blinks slowly and just says, "That's not a tragedy. That's just what happens."

She says odd things like that sometimes. Philosophical things. Dark, too. It intrigues him.

She says she reads a lot too, but she never tells him what. Just gives this knowing look, like she's keeping a secret he hasn't earned the right to know.

It bothers him.

He asks once—just once—what her favorite book is. She shrugs and says, "I don't remember the title," and that's the end of it. No amount of pushing, teasing, or glaring gets her to open up more than she wants to. She's like a locked room, and for all his intelligence, Law can't seem to find the key.

Sometimes he walks home, turning their conversations over in his head, trying to understand her. Sometimes he tries to forget her altogether.

But then the year ends.

They move up a grade. New classrooms. New teachers. New routines.

And just like that, they drift.

He doesn't mean for it to happen. At first, he thinks it's temporary. Maybe they'll have lunch together again tomorrow. Maybe they'll both get library duty on Wednesdays like before. But days pass, and she's not there. He catches only flickers of her now—at the edge of the hallway, at the tail end of recess. Like a memory being erased in real time.

Sometimes he tries to seek her out.

Just to say something. Anything.

But their schedules are different now. Her cubby's been moved. He doesn't even know what class she's in anymore. And it feels stupid—too desperate—to ask around for a girl whose name he doesn't even know.

Still, there's a quiet longing that rises in his chest from time to time. A weightless ache, like something important has been misplaced. And when it gets too heavy, he stalks the halls a little longer before going home, hoping to catch a glimpse of her again. Sometimes he does. But never for long.

Law is practical, though. At least, that's what he tells himself.

There's school to focus on. Exams to pass. Books to read. More months go by. His father is quiet but attentive. His mother seems more tired by the week. And his sister Lami...

Lami has grown ill.

It started as a rash—a strange discoloration that turned patches of her skin snow-pale. She tried to hide it at first, wearing long sleeves and sweaters in the heat. But eventually, even Law couldn't ignore the fever, the weakness in her limbs, the shaking in her fingers when she held her cup of tea.

The doctors say it's something rare. Serious. They speak in circles, using big words like chronic, progressive, terminal. Law listens from behind the door, fists clenched, teeth gritted so tightly it gives him headaches. He hates not knowing. Hates not being able to do anything. Even his parents are stumped, and Law can't help the feeling of visceral dread that pools in his contorting guts.

If the best doctors in the world don't know what to do, then what?

So he studies harder. Learns faster. Reads medical texts long before other kids even know what anatomy is. He memorizes symptoms. Maps out organs. Wonders if there's something—anything—he can learn in time to help her.

Because he's going to cure her. Whatever it takes, no matter what.

Except there isn't a life to save anymore.

Months later, Law is ten.

Ten, and thinner than he was before, with eyes too large for his face and a silence in him that used to be strength. Around him, the world is burning slowly. Flevance is dying, and Law is its ghost.

He stands in the chapel basement with a fast heart, hidden beneath floorboards that creak with every breath, every footstep. The air smells of sweat, fear, and the faint perfume of blood. Candles flicker on crates of medical supplies. Children cling to each other like frightened mice, and Sister Milly—hands trembling but her voice steady—kneels beside him.

"The ship's here," she whispers, brushing hair from his soot-smeared forehead. "The navy says they won't hurt anyone. They're evacuating the children."

Law doesn't move.

She tries again. "You can come with us. We can get you to safety, sweetheart."

But Law only looks at her with those hollow, fever-bright eyes. "I can't leave. I have to find my sister," He tells her, desperate, trying to articulate his anguish to her with imploring eyes.

He's been whispering to get his sister in his head like a mantra, a prayer. Like the only thing tethering him to this world. His voice cracks at the edges, but he doesn't cry. "She's still out there," he says. "I need to get her!"

Sister Milly's lips tighten. "Law... your sister—"

"She's alive," he interrupts, and there's a finality in it that even the nun can't challenge. "I need to—" He stops, throat raw, feeling like he's dying.

Sister Milly doesn't stop him.

To his surprise, she lowers her head in defeat, wringing her hands and letting him know that she'll stay and wait for him, after she takes the children—schoolmates he's grown up with at school—into the first evacuation ship. Law nods, determined, and leaves through the creaky floorboards in a hurry, unsure of why he feels a little better that he has the confirmation of a trusted adult.

She doesn't say goodbye. She doesn't say please come back. She just watches as this little boy, too wise and too broken, slips into the smoke of the dying city.

(Sister Milly counts seventeen children. Seventeen, aching and bloody, children in her care. She leaves to go find more, to see, to know. She won't leave any behind.)

Law just keeps running through alleys slick with soot and blood. Past homes that no longer have roofs. Past people who no longer speak. And with every street he crosses, his voice grows louder, hoarser, as he calls his sister's name.

But the only answer is silence.

And the sky burns red above him.

Law cries amid the fire, his voice raw, shrieking his sister's name until it burns his throat. His knees buckle in the ash-strewn dirt. His white school shirt is stained red. Not just with blood—but with everything. Smoke. Soot. Shattered pieces of a childhood already too brief. His family is dead.

His mother, who'd been killed along with his father, who worked into the late hours for expensive medicine that never came. And Lami—sweet, bright-eyed Lami—who used to beg him to draw her picture books out of anatomy texts, and laughed even when she was too weak to stand, who he'd told to hide in one of the closets of the hospital to escape a similar fate.

Gone.

Everyone in Flevance is dying. Or running. Or already dead.

The fire spreads like a plague in the building. No amount of burns on his fingertips trying to part the debris to retrieve his sister's burning corpse gives way. It mimics a slow, choking funeral pyre consuming the city built on lies.

Amber Lead.

That's what did it. That's what rotted her bones. What turned white the skin beneath her arms. What carved holes into her lungs and made her cry at night from pain she couldn't describe.

They knew. The government. The nobles. The merchants who mined the soil and sold the town its beauty as if it wasn't poison.

They knew.

And they let it happen anyway.

They let the people suffer, then locked down the borders when the truth slipped free—called them contaminated, cursed, dangerous. Sealed them inside the town like animals. Like pests.

The people rioted. Fled. Burned. Screamed.

Law goes to seek out the nun again.

Not because he thinks he'll find her or because he thinks there's anything left.

But because he doesn't know where else to go.

He runs on instinct now, half-feral, legs shaking and lungs burning with the tragedy of fire. His breath comes in shallow gasps as he stumbles through the alleys, familiar paths now twisted in blood and smoke and silence. The cobblestones beneath his feet are greased with gore, the air heavy with the copper tang of death. Ash clings to his skin like it belongs there.

He runs past houses that once held laughter, where windows are shattered and curtains flutter like ghosts. He runs past the bakery, where Mrs. Leroux once gave him warm rolls in exchange for riddles. Her body lies sprawled on the doorstep now, her eyes dull and open, flies already settling in.

He runs past children. Classmates. Boys who used to race him down the hill and saved him seats, girls who used to braid daisy chains and make fun of him. Simple things that he never gave a thought to, because he thought he hated them for being annoying. Their faces are waxy. Their mouths closed in eternal silence or frozen open mid-scream. The smell makes him gag.

But still, he runs.

He doesn't even know what he's chasing anymore. Help for his sister? A miracle? Something—anything—to make the images stop playing behind his eyes. The gunshots. The blood. The way his mother clutched his father's body like she could shield him, like she could fix it, and then collapsed on top of him, too still. Too quiet.

"Help," Law croaks, not sure who he's asking. "Help me..."

He turns the final corner.

And he stops breathing.

The chapel—what remains of it—is blackened and broken, the windows shattered, the door torn from its hinges. Smoke rises in sluggish tendrils. The scent hits him first—charred flesh and scorched wood and copper—and then comes the silence. That awful silence, like the world holding its breath.

Law's knees hit the ground before he realizes he's fallen.

Sister Milly lies at the center, slumped forward as if in prayer. There's blood in her hair, on her hands, pooled around her skirts. Her rosary is broken. Her throat is open.

Around her, his classmates are strewn like dolls. Piled, mangled, faceless.

Law stares.

And then his body revolts.

He vomits violently into the dirt, retching until nothing comes out but bile and air and sound. His cries shake him apart—sobbing, heaving, clawing at the ground like it might give him back what's been taken.

He crawls to Sister Milly's body, fingers fumbling at her arm, her sleeve, as if he can still wake her. His bloody knees drag against the asphalt. His voice breaks.

"No. No. NO!"

And then—

A noise.

"...We need to go," someone rasps.

Law jolts. His head snaps toward the voice, pupils blown wide. For a second, he doesn't understand. It sounds wrong—hoarse, broken, human. Like something out of a nightmare.

He sees her, then, finally. After all this time.

His friend. The girl who had bumped into him, who had stood up to the bully, whom he'd thought he had become friends with, and lost contact with.

The girl he thought he forgot.

She crawls toward him with one bloodied hand pressed to a mangled leg. Her mouth is smeared with iron. Her hair is wilder than before, stuck to her face with sweat, damp in some places with a dark tar that smells like rot. Her shirt is torn, her ribs showing, her eyes glassy and bright and full of something he doesn't have anymore: life.

He stares. And something moves. A pull. A thread.

An invisible connection surges between them.

It's not soft or healing, but sharp. Unyielding, as if commanding a darker presence he hadn't felt before. Briefly, her eyes create a ring of green flames that embed deep into the glow of her violet hue, and Law thinks he hears something, but he can't focus on the vivid sight of the girl who'd spent ages running from him without even knowing he'd been chasing after her.

Law watches as her sights fall on the nun's body, attention tracing the broken rosary, the disfigured jaw, and the peace that Sister Milly died with despite the chaos.

Brief grief contorts her expression, and Law instantly pleads with himself to hold her through this tragedy—

Gunfire erupts behind her.

The girl flinches at the sound of the air splitting, slicing her cheek. Law can't even scream at the blood that spatters on his face, because her body reacts before anything happens.

She lunges at him.

They go tumbling toward a myriad of corpses, and Law's labored breathing sounds normal compared to the rattling, wet lungfuls she takes. Her very blood covers him now, essence of the dead seeping through his back crunching the dead, and Law can only helplessly stare up at her pained face. A drop of her blood lands just under his eye and rolls down.

She wheezes again, and the gunshots continue.

She stands despite this, and Law, frozen, lets her grab him by the collar and yank him hard. His limbs are stiff, frozen in place, his hand still wrapped around Sister Milly's robe—but he doesn't fight her. She cut off a scream as her leg gives way beneath her, but she drags him anyway.

Staggering.

Bleeding.

Moving.

"Get up," she pleads, her voice nearly lost beneath the thunder of artillery. Shells scream through the air above them, and the earth shakes with every impact. Dirt and cement splinter around them, flinging debris in chaotic sprays that sting their skin. "Get up," she hisses again, more forcefully this time. Her strength catches him off guard as she hauls him back to his unsteady feet. Her grip is firm, urgent. "We have to go."

Law is trying.

His limbs feel disconnected, leaden, slow to respond. But her voice cuts through the fog. It's the only thing that does.

They flee through the corpse of the city. Two shadows bumble in the blood-colored smoke, slipping past collapsed buildings and the fume of incineration and corruption. The heat of burning homes presses against them from every side, while behind them, the chaos doesn't stop—soldiers barking orders, boots crashing across stone, gunfire echoing like thunder rolling down the alleyways.

Law doesn't think—he reacts—grabbing her and yanking her toward him just as part of the building begins to collapse. Stone crumbles, and they dive together into the mouth of a broken drainage tunnel. He swallows past the acrid pain, tasting the dust and agony of it all, listening for any approaching steps through her wet breathing that lies the closest they've ever been—with her pressed next to him, soaking his shirt further.

The floor shakes as the only light left is blocked by the finalizing debris.

Darkness closes in.

They collapse in the dark.

Law curls up beside her, arms clutched around his knees, eyes wild. His mouth trembles like he might cry again—but he's already cried everything out. His eyes are wide, dry, and fixed on the girl lying next to him. His thoughts are numb, distant, the way they get when something terrible is happening and your mind won't let you feel it just yet.

This is the girl he searched for.

The girl he refused to leave behind.

She's here now, pressed against him, her shallow breaths barely audible over the pounding in his ears. Her blood has soaked through his shirt. He feels it cooling fast.

Her grip is weakening.

Law doesn't dare think.

But he knows.

He knows, he knows.

She's dying.

She is dying.

Law can't feel anything.

"You're..." He feels numb, "that girl," he whispers, voice brittle.

She doesn't respond.

Her eyes are lidded, coated in the powder of fallen buildings. Her breathing is shallow and uneven. Each inhale sounds harder to take than the last. Law shifts, trying to hold her upright, cradling her against his chest. Something warm slides down his face and falls onto her slathered cheek—cutting a trail through the grime and dried blood. He doesn't wipe it away. Her hand gripping his arm and shirt are starting to go slack. Law doesn't care for the blurry lines of salt in his vision. He can't look away from her.

"I'm Law," he says after a pause.

Her eyelids lift. They move so slowly in this darkness.

For a moment, her gaze finds his.

She sees him.

Law clutches her tighter. Please, he thinks.

"...Isabel," She says, hoarse.

A name.

He finally has a name for her.

After all this time, he can put a name to the girl he'd thought of as a true friend.

Isabel.

Isabel, Isabel, Isabel.

Law begins to weep. He holds her, shoulders shaking. What's it matter now? He thinks, hopeless and dead. She's dying. She won't be here anymore for you to say her name. Isabel, who saved him. Isabel, always strong, always mysterious. Isabel, whose mouth is now slack, whose body is growing colder in his arms.

"No," Law gasps, voice strangled. "No, no, no...!"

Her head lolls.

She stops breathing.

He stares at her, frozen in disbelief.

"Isabel," he whispers, shaking her gently. Her body sways, unresponsive. Something in her is already gone.

"Isabel—!" His voice breaks again, louder, sharp with panic. He shakes her harder. Nothing.

"No, no, please—" He leans over her, desperate. "Don't die. Please. Please don't die—!"

He clutches her against him like he can hold her soul in place.

The silence that answers him is worse than any sound.

She's gone.

Law breaks.

He sobs, quiet and cracked noises that escape without permission, stripped of dignity. He remains as nothing, just a boy begging for a miracle, whispering her name over and over again like a prayer, as if he has any power to undo this.

But her body won't wake.

She's gone.

And Law realizes, hollow and shaking, that he never got to tell her how much she meant to him.

[x . x]

25-year-old Trafalgar D. Water Law stares down at the birthday cake.

Twenty-five candles flicker before him, tiny flames dancing atop white frosting marbled with berries. The cake smells faintly of cinnamon and vanilla. Someone—probably Bepo—made sure it didn't look store-bought. Someone else—definitely Shachi—snuck in a candy scalpel sticking out of the side.

His crew surrounds him, all grins and energy and off-key singing, slung with lopsided party hats and paper streamers. Shachi and Penguin are nearly yelling the song, arms slung around Ikki, who drums the table in rhythm. Nallely has managed to balance a party hat on Bepo's head, and the bear claps dutifully, slightly off-beat. There's too much noise, too much movement, and too much glitter.

The moment should feel absurd. Loud. Grating.

But it doesn't.

It just feels... He doesn't feel much at all, really. Just a quiet hum beneath his chest. Detached, but not unpleasant.

Because standing across from him—quiet, still, and haloed by candlelight—is Isabel.

The soft golden glow lathers her face, catching in her lashes, curling in her dark hair, touching her skin like a benediction. She looks like she isn't real, resembling a ghost half-caught between planes. Her entirety preserves the haunting aura of a withered rose conserved by time, unchanged since the moment he last saw her, before Flevance burned.

Before everything went to hell.

She doesn't smile. She rarely does.

She watches.

It had been a year since she joined them.

The official story—one he tells himself often enough to almost believe—goes like this: a mission spiraled out of control on the southern shore of Lvneel, a chaotic collision between her crew and his. By then, she was already infamous: Weeping Reaper of the Siren Sisters, the field leader known for slipping through government fingers like smoke, whispered about in the undercurrents of New World intel. A tactician. A phantom. A blade in the dark.

She had lost everything that day. Her crew—gone. Her command—compromised. Her future—uncertain.

And he'd found her like that. Bleeding. Cornered. Angry.

He doesn't tell anyone about the trap that was waiting for her. He doesn't admit he knew it was there before it sprung. That truth stays buried, pressed deep into the seams of his coat like bloodstains scrubbed raw but never quite gone.

But somehow, even after all that, they'd escaped. A fragile thread of cooperation emerged aboard the Polar Tang. One of those tenuous deals made in cold corridors beneath the sea—her cooperation for her lost nakama, her skill for survival. A mutual disinterest in betrayal. And eventually, that alliance solidified into something more tangible. She stayed.

She stayed.

He repeats that part most often, like a pulse in his memory. As if it'll mean more the more times he tells it.

But the truth—the jagged, unseemly truth—is this: he hadn't saved Isabel out of mercy. He hadn't pulled her from the wreckage because of some noble streak or blind faith in redemption. It wasn't sentiment.

It was debt.

He owed her.

And Trafalgar Law always pays what he owes.

The moment he'd seen her on that cursed island—face streaked with dirt and blood, violet eyes burning like fractured amethysts—he'd known. Even beneath the grime and battle-worn fury, there was no mistaking her. The recognition had hit him like a blade to the sternum. The Siren Sister? Yes. But also—her. Her.

The girl from Flevance.

The one who had done something senselessly kind. The one who had defied the terror of their crumbling city to offer him a scrap of peace, a fleeting moment of decency, back when everything else was rotting from the inside out. She hadn't known what it would mean. She hadn't asked anything in return.

And she had died.

Or—so he'd thought.

He'd mourned her. Quietly. Privately. Deeply. He hadn't let himself dwell on it long, but it had carved itself into him all the same. One more loss in the litany of what the Amber Lead claimed. He even has a tattoo about her somewhere on his body, because that's just who he is. Someone who can't seem to let shit go.

And yet there she was. Alive. Glaring at him with rage that could crack bone. A living contradiction. A memory turned real.

It had felt like watching a ghost walk out of his childhood nightmares—except this ghost bled, screamed, fought like hell.

And she was there. Somehow, impossibly.

So he'd taken her in. It worked, two birds with one stone: he'd wanted to recruit the Siren Sisters for an alliance against Doflamingo, and he'd sent purposeful intel to lure them into that mission and make it seem like he'd be their lifeline. He'd been subtle and honest, too, so there wasn't any trickery. He'd actually thought the Siren Sisters would succeed, and he'd introduce himself to them then, to form something and reveal that he'd been the one slipping them information. So that they could owe him.

But it'd worked in his favor too perfectly.

He'd seen her face, her skin, her hair, her eyes, and thought: this isn't how we were supposed to meet.

And he had her. A memory in his palm, shards of glass bleeding through. He had her. He has her, still, even a year later.

In that time, she's fought beside them. Trained with them. Helped in ways that are efficient, if sometimes dispassionately. She speaks little, keeps to herself, but has learned the rhythms of the crew in that quiet, observant way of hers. She isn't warm. She doesn't try to be. And something about her company, even now, steady and unbothered by the chaos, reminds him of another time.

A year later, here she is, ethereal amid the dark.

She doesn't remember him.

She doesn't remember a burning chapel, the ash, the silence, the strength of a little girl dragging him through sanguinous rubble and gaping corpses with a broken leg and a voice like smashed stone. She doesn't remember that, he knows. He'd long since suspected that her Devil Fruit made sure of sealing entire chapters of her life behind locked doors. His extensive research behind her back had proven enough of it is powering through her mind, trying to keep her safe from memories.

But he remembers.

He remembers the way her fingers curled around his collar. The way she didn't flinch when the bullets came. The way she never once looked back.

It isn't something he dwells on. He has too much discipline for that.

Still, tonight, with her standing there like a shadow the world never erased, something in him flickers.

And Law—he lives with the memory of a girl who no longer exists.

She's here. That should be enough.

But tonight, on this ridiculous excuse for a birthday he never intended to celebrate, something tears open in his chest.

Because she remembered.

She remembered his birthday.

He didn't tell her. No one did. He knows because he'd subtly asked around who the hell told her. And thing is, none of them knew his birthday. He doesn't like celebrating it for a damn reason. But Isabel—she brought it up first, mentioning it off-handedly the day before. "Tomorrow's the sixth, isn't it?" Like she was confirming weather conditions.

Law hadn't answered.

He doesn't know how she knows. He doubts she does either.

He glances at her now. She meets his gaze briefly, impassively, and then looks away.

Somehow—through whatever haze and hole the fruit left in her head—she remembered his birthday. Not hers. Never hers. She doesn't even know the year she was born. But his? It's carved somewhere in her. And she remembered. He knows because he remembers telling her about his birthday so damn long ago, and it's so long ago that he's surprised even he remembers.

She stands in front of him now, wordless and strange and beautiful in the flickering light, and Law wants to ask her: How? Why?

But he doesn't.

Instead, he lets himself watch her, quiet and still as the others sing. He memorizes the angle of her shoulders, the way her hands clasp in front of her, the way her eyes linger on the candle flames—not on him. Never on him long enough.

He wonders, briefly, if something in her does remember. Not consciously, or in images, or names, not even in dreams consumed in fire. But maybe in instinct. Maybe it's in the way her fingers twitched toward him once when she thought he was wounded, or when her voice softened the night they landed on that winter island and she found him awake, staring at the stars.

Maybe she remembers the feeling of him.

Maybe that's all he'll ever get.

And that should be enough.

But it's not.

He hates how selfish it makes him feel, this gnawing want to ask her who she was. To ask if she's ever dreamed of a burning city. Of a little boy. Of him. It's so stupid. He'd thought about this for a long time, though only during his most damning moments. He'd thought of her, of her innocence, of her strength back then. The minuscule skull tattoo on his back, glinting purple stars, is enough of an explanation in itself.

But. He'd never truly thought about her. He just... remembered her as someone that could've been. And now... now she's real again, and everything he thought buried or couldn't understand is a constant, aching thing.

But he says nothing.

Because if he asks and she doesn't remember, he's not sure he can take it.

So he just watches her. He lets her stand across from him in silence, lets the candlelight cast her as some delicate, untouchable thing.

His chest aches.

He knows it's foolish, this hope. She's weird, yes—she always was. Elusive. Wild-eyed. Intense. Even when they were kids, she was a mystery wrapped in fire and fear. And even now, with her wounds healing and her walls half-lowered, she is no less a mystery.

He wants to keep her safe. Wants to lock her in a room and never let the world get to her again. He knows that's selfish. Knows she'd hate it.

So he won't tell her.

He'll let her stay with him. As long as she wants. As long as she'll have them.

Even if she never remembers.

Even if he does.

Because there are some memories too cruel to carry alone.

So he exhales softly, then turns back to the cake. An approaching Shachi nudges his shoulder with a grin.

"Well, Captain?" he says. "Make a wish or blow 'em out and give us cake. Preferably both."

Law issues him a dry glare that he meets with a pleased grin, and when Shachi stands aside again, looking hopeful, Law thinks. He doesn't believe in wishes. Never has.

But.

He wishes for safety.

Of his crew. Of the loved ones watching over him.

He wishes for her.

He wishes for her to stay forever.

And, shamefully, he wishes—just once—that she'll remember the boy who cried into her chest in a burning city.

He leans forward and lets the breath leave him in one smooth motion.

The flames die. The room erupts into cheers. Nallely makes the first move for a slice, and Bepo is all too eager to join her. Shachi and Penguin fight over who's next while Ikki huddles them all, even Isabel, to gather around Law for a quick picture. Law can't muster a smile before the camera flashes and everyone quickly separates to continue their dessert digging, with Ikki kindly voicing that she'll take more pictures before the night ends.

Law straightens with his hands in his pockets and his eyes sharp again.

Consciously, he looks at Isabel. Even now, he seeks her, but no longer in the halls of school.

Maybe in the halls of his submarine.

Maybe in his heart, too.

Like always, however, she's leaving.

She's already turning away, back into the half-shadowed corner of the ship's deck, as if the candlelight had only briefly pulled her into the world of the living.

[x . x]

Later, when the revelry has faded into yawns and quiet goodnights, Law finds himself alone on the Polar Tang's upper deck.

The sea is calm tonight. It's a sheet of rippling black silk with moonlight melting across its surface like porcelain oil. The wind bites less cruelly here, but it still sweeps through his coat and hums in his ears like an echo of something lost.

In his hands, he cradles the photograph taken earlier on a whim. The crew—ridiculous in their party hats, mid-laughter, arms slung over one another, as if they were born into this life rather than clawed their way to it stare back at him. His fingertip lingers over their faces, one by one, tracing each imperfect smile. He doesn't know what to call this feeling. It's not joy. That word feels too shallow for the depth in his chest.

But it's something.

Stillness, maybe. Peace, in a way that doesn't feel borrowed or artificial. Something rare.

But.

There's an ache, subtle and buried. A thread of melancholy runs through the calm like ink dropped into water. He doesn't understand where it comes from. He hasn't thought of Corazon all day. Not once. But he does now. And his name leaves Law's mouth in a breath too quiet to be called a whisper—just a prayer, or a wish, or maybe guilt.

He doesn't cry anymore for these things. He's learned not to. But sometimes, in the quiet, it gets close.

He closes his eyes, forehead bowed, and he aches for a boy who no longer exists. A boy who once knew how to laugh with his whole body. A boy who had parents. A sister. Hope. Corazon.

He aches because even though Isabel is here—against all odds, after all these years—he can't seem to say what he means.

Can't seem to tell her that she was one of the last pieces of light in that dying world. That even now, she's one of the only pieces of it that's survived. That her face, long forgotten by her but branded into his soul, saved him once.

And maybe still is.

He can't tell her that he doesn't understand—

That he knows he—

That he might lo—

"Move."

The voice cuts through the silence like a dagger—quiet, unimpressed, but undeniably her.

Law looks up, startled from the edges of memory, and finds her standing there in the dark. Isabel. Moonlit and loose-haired, eyes narrowed in her usual deadpan way. There's a faint flush across her cheeks, the glaze of alcohol softening her expression, though her steps are as solid as ever. She's in her usual black jumpsuit, unzipped just enough to make something primal in him stir.

Beautiful. Familiar. Foreign.

He smirks on reflex, the tension easing from his shoulders. "Have fun, Lunabel-ya?"

She doesn't answer right away. She merely plants herself down beside him with a heavy grunt, her body close enough that he can feel the warmth radiating off her. She smells like tropical fruit punch and faint vanilla. He idly admires the peek of her chest and tattoos he questions he'll ever see. The ardor of her being so close, touching his thighs, his arms, his sides with her own, feels like lava dripping on ice. Law is caught unawares, for once. She never initiates talks with him, and if she does, it's for the sake of her crew.

Maybe she's too drunk.

"Did you like the cake?" she asks instead, staring out at the waves.

Law blinks. That... wasn't what he expected.

"I made it," she adds, offhanded, like it doesn't matter.

What?

His heart thuds a little too loudly in his ears.

"You... made it?" he echoes, looking away too quickly.

She nods, unbothered.

He's quiet for a beat.

That simple sentence undoes him more than it should. It makes no sense, and it makes something horrific and funny leap in his chest so hard that he thinks he may have contracted the lead disease again somehow. But that's not how it works.

He hadn't known. That she...

He's in shock.

He hadn't thought she made the damn cake.

He thought one of the others had ordered it from a nearby island. Or that Bepo made it, because he loves making sweet shit all the time. Hell, maybe Nallely could've, but Law thought it was a stretch. But Isabel?

No, no. That's just not possible.

It's not. How?

Suddenly, the memory of its taste takes on weight—how rich the chocolate had been, how the cream had lingered, not overly sweet, but smooth and deliberate. It had been wet too, something he'd never tasted before. Kind of like eating dipped sweet bread with a cup of milk. It'd been something so novel and new that he had to ask what it'd been called to see if he could look out for it next time on a port, and Nallely had happily answered: Tres Leches Cake.

He wants to say all this, but the words fail.

"It was... decent," he murmurs instead.

Isabel raises an eyebrow. "Decent?"

Law's lips twitch. He's reeling from the discovery of it all. "That's high praise coming from me."

"And?" she presses, tone unreadable.

He shrugs again, his throat dry. What is he supposed to say? That he could taste the care in every bite? That he hasn't felt this kind of warmth in years? That he hadn't realized how much it would mean to him, just knowing she thought about him enough to make something? Christ. His face is getting too hot. His tongue is in knots. This can't be real. Isabel can bake. And she baked him a cake.

It means nothing, he denies.

It really doesn't.

"I liked the frosting," he admits quietly, as if that's the most he can offer.

Isabel curls a strand of her hair on her finger. "I made it with dark chocolate and honey. You like that."

Law stills.

He's never told anyone that. Anyone, but her. A long time ago.

He looks at her intently, trying to figure her out and see if she catches what she's just said. But she just stares back at him with a dopey look, no recognition whatsoever.

Something ancient in him curls toward that tiny flame of recognition. Starved for it.

"I do," he says, softer this time.

They fall into silence again. A comfortable one, at least on the surface.

But Law finds his eyes drifting to her—drawn, despite himself. The moonlight spills across her skin like paint across a canvas, turning every edge of her lashes silver. Her chest rises and falls in a rhythm that doesn't match the crashing tide below, steady and slow. There's quiet strength in the set of her shoulders, honed and guarded, even as the sea breeze plays gently with the loose strands of her hair.

She's beautiful like this. Soft in a way few ever get to see.

And he doesn't say a word.

He won't tell her what she means to him. He wants to. God, he wants to. So badly it aches.

She knows by now. Right? That he cares for her? She has to know. Except—no. She probably doesn't.

Isabel is just like that.

Hell.

He doesn't even understand this shit himself. It's not... that, is it? He knows what that is. What... love is. This isn't that. No, hell no. Love is for a reason. For a purpose. He has reasons to keep her close, really. But keeping her alive means... it means...

Law is in deep distress.

She doesn't catch the weight in his glances or the sharp twitches of his body. She doesn't notice how often he checks the space between them, or how tightly he reins in his heartbeat when she leans too close.

And that's fine. He's fine.

So what if she made him a cake? People bake things. It's a thing people do. Even if it was purple, his favorite color. Even if she'd added poppy seeds, and only she knew that he liked those.

She owes him. It was probably repayment. That's all.

And so what if she's relaxed with him now, touch lingering just a little longer than usual, elbow brushing his? So what if she keeps looking at him like she's going to do something, like she's imploring him with her electric, half-lidded gaze about things that only pass for a thrill in the nights when he thinks about her sensuality like the unprofessional ass he is? Or if her body leans into his without flinching?

She's drunk.

He can smell the tequila on her clothes. The warmth of it clings to her skin like fire. She's probably not even aware of it. It's completely fine.

It's always been fine.

She is fine as she is. And he—

He's fine too.

Law looks down at the picture in his hands. His fingers are clenched around the edges, crinkling the corners. He loosens them before she notices. It's just a photo. Just one memory out of so many. It shouldn't burn the way it does.

"Oh, by the way."

Her voice cuts through the quiet like a wave slapping the side of the ship. He stiffens, startled—not because of her tone, but because of the sudden movement beside him. Her warmth draws away for just a second as she shifts, rummaging through something out of his line of sight.

Then—

"Here."

A bright flash of red floods his vision, shoved directly into his lap. Law blinks at it. A box—no, a present—wrapped clumsily but colorfully, with way too much tape and a ribbon barely hanging on. It's obnoxiously big, spilling over his thighs.

He looks up slowly, eyes darting over the edge of the box to her.

Isabel's watching him dazedly, lips slightly parted in thought, as if debating whether she's said too much or not enough. Her gaze is sharp, though, even in her stupor. Her cheeks are flushed—probably from the alcohol, but also maybe from something else.

Law stares, heartbeat stuttering. She can hold her liquor. He knows that. He's seen her drink entire crews under the table, bottles deep with nothing but a raised brow to show for it. Nallely is a near contender for her resilience.

She doesn't look drunk now. Maybe? Is Law overthinking? His eyes narrow.

She looks... soft. Intentional. Mildly flushed. Like she's choosing to be here. To give this.

His fingers brush the edge of the gift. The paper crinkles under his touch. "...What is this?"

She shrugs, looking out toward the ocean like it doesn't matter. "A present."

"I can see that."

She smirks faintly. It's a new look on her face that he realizes he really, really likes. "Then open it."

Law exhales sharply through his nose. A scoff and a breath all at once, something between a laugh and a sigh.

He turns the box over once in his lap, as if it'll explain itself. It doesn't.

He looks back at her again. She's not watching him this time. Her arms are crossed over her chest, pronouncing the bit of cleavage he sees, eyes half-lidded as she gazes at the stars like they might offer answers she'll never say aloud.

Law suddenly doesn't want to open it. He wants to keep it closed. Keep it unknown. Because once he sees what's inside, he'll have to accept that this is real. That she thought of him. That she did something just for him. Again.

And that—that isn't fine.

Not even a little.

He owes her after this. This might be a tactic to pay off every debt she owes him, even if he doesn't really care about those anymore. He... Yeah. Yeah, she's just giving him this just because she feels the need to pay what's due. That's understandable. That's okay. Law relaxes significantly. He'll just give her some money next time, for port. To get something for herself, since he doesn't know what she likes.

Law blinks down at the box again.

His hands move on autopilot as he sets the photo aside and tears through the wrapping, slower than usual. It's wrapped with an almost obsessive care, the folds tucked like hospital corners, the ribbon a deep shade of indigo. His fingers tremble a little. He tells himself it's from the cold. Or maybe it's from how close Isabel still is, legs folded beside him, radiating a quiet warmth that anchors him.

When he opens the box and peels back the tissue paper, his heart stutters.

It's the latest volume of Steel Sea Slasher—the rare overseas print, the one with the limited-edition cover, gilded edges, and annotated extras. The one he'd quietly lamented missing out on when they were sailing between islands. He hadn't told anyone. Just Bepo. She must've asked him, somehow. When? Law thinks back, trying to turn the timeline over, but he comes up empty. Empty is almost always around him. So when had he...?

Unless Isabel snooped.

But no. She's not the type.

Her friend Nallely, however...

He swallows hard and stares at the vivid cover art like it might vanish if he blinks too long.

"You kept bringing it up in your sleep," Isabel says softly.

Law turns toward her, slowly. What the hell does that mean? Had she been stalking him in his office without his consent? How hadn't he heard her?

She's not looking at him. Her gaze is on the moon, dreamy. He almost forgives her for dropping a grenade into his ribcage.

"I did?" he says, voice low. He doubts. He doesn't talk in his sleep. That's the stupidest reason.

"You talk more than you think you do," she replies cryptically. He furrows his brows. "Especially after surgeries." She pauses, "I only caught you doing that once. Bepo tells me a lot of it."

Right. Yeah. Bepo and his loose tongue. Law briefly scowls at the ensuing annoyance and relief, before coiling in on himself and softening at the comic book in his hands. This feels so fucking embarrassing. Now she knows things about him. What if she uses his love for comics as a weakness? Law can think up several scenarios she could take advantage of with this knowledge. She's not slick. He's going to open the first page and be laced with her Death Powder or something.

Law can't decide if his pulse is skipping or sprinting.

"You... tracked this down?" He asks carefully. He needs every detail. He has to know where she got this from, exactly. If she reveals it or not, there's no say, but Law knows lies.

But she could be good at lying, too.

Law is frustrated.

She shrugs, but it's not dismissive. Law is on edge. He'll need to reject this gift. It's too convenient, now that he thinks about it. Her acting drunk, catching him alone, seeming to bud in on a soft moment-this has to be planned. She's going to kill him, isn't she? This is what he gets for—

But Law can't... believe that.

She...

Isabel isn't like that.

Isabel is...

Are you confusing her for the girl in your memories, or for the blood she's made out of?

Law shakes his head.

He doesn't know.

He doesn't know and he's freaking the fuck out.

"It took a while. I had to threaten a few people. Trade some favors. I may owe a weapons dealer a drink."

Law lowers his gaze, the corners of his mouth tugging upward—but it's not a smirk. It's not even a smile, really. It's something softer, heavier. Dangerous, almost. Something like hope.

Just.

Why?

Why go through this effort?

To kill him?

To make him owe her?

For, for what?

Why?

Why, why, why?

"You didn't have to."

"I know."

A silence stretches between them, but it's not the same as before. This one hums with the beat of his heart, the quiet awe of being seen.

It's terrifying.

Law wants to puke.

He might.

He doesn't.

"Thank you," Law manages out, and it doesn't feel like enough. Not nearly.

Isabel looks deeply into his eyes. Law can't look away. Her head angles slightly, and the fall of her curled hair tickles his hands gripping her gift while the wind blows cold against the burn of his skin. She's overwhelming. She is too overwhelming. He wants. He wants, and doesn't, but does, because she's so—so...! He almost— "Happy birthday, Law."

She uses his first name. It punches the air from his lungs.

He glances down at the comic, then back at her. He wants to say You remembered. You always remember. You always do the impossible for me. He wants to say Stay here with me, forever. He wants to say I lo—

"Yeah," He says instead, defeated.

What a lovely gift from a lovely girl.

And still.

He doesn't believe.

Why should he?

There is always a reason.

He'll find a reason for this.

He will.

And he will keep the ache of wonder, to yearn for the very thing he lost as a child.

Love.

[x . x]

Isabel leaves again, bidding him a soft goodnight.

Law goes to sleep, eventually.

With her in mind.

[x . x]

"I love you, Law."

Law's dreaming again.

But this time, no screaming nor any flames are licking at the corners of memory. There's no gunfire reverberating through the cavity of his bruised chest, or the rancid tang of blood that comes in the aftermath. There's no loss. No Corazon collapsing in his arms with a smile that still haunts him, saying the very same thing, giving him the very same purpose he intends to collect.

Just warmth.

Just her.

Isabel.

She says it with her voice low and hushed, as if they're alone in some hidden place the world can't touch. The words curl into him like smoke, familiar and dangerous. Her hands are on his face, cradling it gently, reverent in their entirety, like she's afraid he'll vanish.

He doesn't flinch. He doesn't run.

He just... is.

They're pressed close together, bodies flush in a way they never are when he's awake. Her fingers skim his jaw, his throat, down the lines of his chest like she's memorizing him, and Law hurts with the fervor of her skin on his. His heart stutters. Her breath is soft against his lips. She says it like a secret—soft, breathless, like she's afraid it'll break if she speaks too loud. The words slip into him like a slow-dripping poison, sweet and devastating. "I love you, Law." And when she repeats it, her lips are brushing his throat. He shivers in his sleep.

He doesn't brace himself for the ending this time. He's denied her time and time again.

This is wrong.

For so long, his memory of her had been one of death and hopelessness. A friend lost to the cruelty of the world. It isn't right that he's thinking of her like this. Tarnishing her, using her, something. He shouldn't...

Her hand grips his throat hard, pushing his head back. He gapes at her boldness, and the look of her nearly makes him whine.

Without a second thought, her mouth slides scorching with his.

He doesn't push her away.

Without previous hesitancy, in this ethereal vastness of mind and liminality, he can't help but reach for her back.

He's never kissed anyone. So the true feeling isn't there. It's a ghost. She's a ghost and she wants him.

They're entangled, suddenly bare skin against bare skin, pressed tight in a darkness that glows purple and gold, with dreamlight melting along her shoulders and collarbone. Her fingers splay across his chest like she's grounding herself there. Her touch is reverent. Possessive. Hungry.

And he lets her take. He lets her touch.

Her mouth melds and separates, and he mourns the loss before erotic pulses shoot from his groin at the sight of her open mouthed in pleasure. It's so unreal that he thinks this false, and it is, but—her breath is hot against his ear as she shifts, slow and fluid, over him. Her thigh hooks around his hip, her palm drags down his ribs, and her lips find the hollow beneath his jaw. She kisses him like she means it. Like she's never going to stop. His hands slide into her hair, fisting gently, breathing her name like a confession.

She moves with the tide—slow, rhythmic, hypnotic—and every roll of her body draws a low sound from the back of his throat he doesn't recognize. He feels himself drowning, not in pain, but in the sweetness of being wanted. Of being seen.

Of being loved.

"You don't have to say it back," she murmurs, voice rough with desire and something more fragile beneath. "I just wanted you to know."

But he does want to. God, he wants to.

He wants to tell her she's the only thing that makes sense anymore. That her voice is the only thing that cuts through the static. That he sees her in the sterile lights of the infirmary, in the ocean spray off the bow, in every goddamn quiet moment where grief once lived.

So instead of words, he gives her everything else—hands trembling down her spine, mouth parting to take her in, heart pounding like he's still alive.

In the dream, she rides the edge of sunrise with him, violet eyes half-lidded and fierce, like she'd burn down the world just to touch him again.

And in the dream, Law lets her.

He lets her.

He lets—

On the brink—

At the edge—

He wakes.

Gasping.

Sweating.

Hard.

Unreal.

The office is dark except for the faint glow of the den-den mushi lamp, casting strange shadows over charts and open books. His chair creaks as he lurches forward, hand to his face, breath catching in his throat. His pulse hammers against his ribs. Every nerve is alight, as if she were still touching him—fingertips ghosting down his stomach, lips pressed to his skin like a promise.

His pants are tight, unbearably so. He hisses through clenched teeth, dragging his palm down his face and then over his mouth like he could somehow scrub the heat from it. His heart is still beating too loudly.

"Shit..." he mutters, voice raw.

The crick in his neck protests as he tries to stand. He winces, rolls his shoulder, pops the tension back into place with a habitual flick—but the discomfort between his legs doesn't ease. The dream lingers there, thick and cruel. He's never been the type to indulge in these kinds of thoughts. But he does, in secret, when he can't stand the presence of her.

And now it's made its way into his dreams.

She had said it. Said it like she meant it. Like it was true.

"I love you, Law."

The echo coils in his stomach and twists.

He sinks back down into the chair, jaw clenched, forcing himself to stare at the pile of medical reports in front of him as if they could distract him. They don't. His body still aches from the dream. He can almost smell her, like vanilla and whatever strange lotion she always insists on wearing.

His hands grip the armrests. His breathing refuses to steady.

He's fucked.

He's absolutely—

No.

No, no, no.

But the words crawl up the back of his mind like a sickness he can't cure. They won't leave him alone.

He's in love with Isabel.

He stares down at his desk, vision unfocused, jaw locked.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks: This is going to ruin everything.

Because he can't afford this. He doesn't do this.

He has a mission to complete. Isabel is one of the vital sources of it that'll get him what he wants. He doesn't need this going on for him. Whatever this means. Whatever mind games this—

But his body tells a different story.

And his heart—traitorous thing—has already decided.

I'm in love with Isabel.

Chapter Text

[x . x]

Law is avoiding her.

Isabel isn't stupid enough not to notice.

Since that fleetingly tender moment on the night of his birthday, she's caught on to his scarce presence like a thread unraveling from a garment. It's not obvious at first—he's always been a man of few words, prone to slipping in and out of rooms without a sound. But the difference lies in when. It stings when she realizes, about a week later, that it's only when she enters a room that he seems to be just on his way out.

Before, he'd linger. He'd sit there, silent but steadfast, watching her with that dark, unblinking intensity that seemed to strip her bare, something that curled low in her stomach and drew out a raw, primal sensation. It was as if he could see the parts of her that even she kept hidden.

Now, that gaze is gone.

It's both a relief and a wound.

Relief, in the sense that she's no longer being perceived. She doesn't like to be looked at.

Wound, because whatever camaraderie they had going on is suddenly void.

Isabel doesn't know what she did wrong. Had her sincerity been too forward? All she'd wanted was for him to have a good birthday, something small but meaningful.

She's always been that way—she loves to give, and she has the means, so why not make his day something memorable? She'd even been careful, waiting until the party thinned out before she approached him. No crowd, no eyes, just him. She knew he'd hate being the center of attention. She thought she'd done right by him. She thought—

She doesn't understand what went wrong.

The ache in her chest is one thing, but admitting it to herself sharpens it into something else. A quiet humiliation, maybe, one she vehemently tries her best not to acknowledge.

Because if she's honest, it hurts.

So she tells herself she's learned her lesson. Next time, she won't make that mistake again. Next time, she won't try so hard. She won't reach out at all.

She made him uncomfortable. The thought bites, unfair in its cruelty, and sparks a flicker of anger she can't extinguish. She doesn't think she did anything to warrant such deliberate avoidance. But then again—

She understands. Although she doesn't remember her birthday, she isn't fond of the idea. There isn't anything worth celebrating about her. And it's that bitter understanding that keeps her still, keeps her from storming into his path and demanding an answer. Instead, she hides.

Ironically, in his room.

It's not much of a sanctuary anymore, not with Nallely's spare bed shoved into the corner, the air thick with the scent of too many lives overlapping. But Isabel doesn't mind Nallely's presence. It's the fact that it's Law's room that's the problem.

Isabel sits on the edge of her mattress, knee bouncing, eyes scanning the cramped walls, searching for a solution. She's already considered asking Nallely if she could carve out another room because the thought of using Law's room this entire time is too much to bear.

Besides, she's been meaning to sleep somewhere else. A place that's small and separate. It makes her feel like shit, knowing that she's been sleeping comfortably in a plush mattress and Law has been—

She shakes her head.

He'd been stubborn about the room.

And now she's stubborn about finding a new one.

But that would mean going through Law and facing him, because the last thing Isabel is, is disrespectful. It's his submarine. His ship, his rules.

But Isabel sure as hell doesn't want to talk to him.

Maybe it's just her, she tries to reason. Maybe she's being negative. Maybe she's imagining it all. But Isabel has lived long enough to know the shape of avoidance. She can read it like a map etched into the air between them.

His scarcity is intentional.

So she makes a decision. She won't linger in doorways hoping he'll talk. She won't seek him out only to be pushed away. She won't skulk after someone who so clearly doesn't want her near.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't recount the tidbits she'd experienced over and over in her head.

The first time, it's the kitchen. Isabel pushes through the swinging door, sleeves rolled up, intending to grab a cup of tea. Law is there, half-turned, mug in hand. For the briefest second, their eyes almost meet—his widen, as if caught. Then he's gone, brushing past her shoulder without a word, with the door flapping in his wake. The steam from his abandoned kettle curls into the air like a ghost.

The second time, it's the library alcove. Nallely is curled up with a batch of strawberries in hand, chattering idly with Penguin, when Isabel drifts in. She doesn't even register Law at first, tucked in the far corner with a stack of medical texts. But the moment she crosses the threshold, he's closing the book, sliding it under his arm, and making for the exit. She feels it then, the sharp absence he leaves behind, the echo of his presence disappearing into silence.

The third time is the cruelest. She manages a small laugh at something Nallely says, her voice unguarded. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches him at the far end of the hall, lingering as if he'd been listening. But when she turns to look (because when someone stares, she stares back harder), he pivots on his heel, the line of his shoulders stiff, and disappears around the bend before she can think his name.

By the fourth time, Isabel has stopped counting.

Every departure is a pinprick, and though she tries to steel herself with logic—that it's not personal, that he's busy, that he's simply being Law—the ache coils tighter in her chest. The walls of his room feel smaller now, suffocating, and every creak of the floorboards outside makes her pulse quicken with the hope it might be him. It never is.

So she buries herself in the cramped sanctuary, swallowing her hurt like bitter tea, and tells herself again what she already knows:

If Law doesn't want her near, then she'll vanish from his path entirely.

[x . x]

"Bitch, do you want me to call him out?" Nallely asks, her voice sharp enough to cut through the metallic echo of their footsteps.

The two women walk side by side through the empty hull of the Polar Tang. The submarine is unusually silent now that the crew has gone ashore. The ship always has its hum, nonetheless—the faint pulse of engines, the whisper of water pressing against steel—but without voices, without laughter or footsteps above deck, the quiet feels oppressive.

They've docked for supplies today. The port city waits beyond, sun spilling across the harbor in golden heat, a stark contrast to the dim interior Isabel is dragging herself through. She should feel relief at the promise of fresh air, of solid ground beneath her feet. Instead, she feels heavy, bound by a grief she's tried and failed to drown for weeks now.

The heavy sensation sharpens into something raw every time Law turns away from her, every time his shadow recedes down a corridor just as she enters.

She shakes her head, keeping her eyes low. "It's fine," she murmurs. The lie tastes bitter. She's not going to push. Law doesn't want her around. That's all there is to it.

But a thought slides through her mind, cruel and cold as a blade:

He's probably done with you.

Maybe she's served her purpose. A tool for his revenge, nothing more. Maybe he's realized what a burden she is, how little she contributes compared to his loyal crew. Maybe he's seen how much energy it costs her to keep moving, to keep fighting, and decided she isn't worth the drain.

The thoughts sting.

They hurt more than she'll ever admit, and the pain lodges deep in her chest.

Isabel swallows hard and forces herself to look ahead, past Nallely, toward the faint strip of daylight at the end of the passageway. If they ask her to leave, she will. If he asks her, she'll go without protest. She'll thank them for what they gave her—too much, more than she ever deserved. It will tear her apart to walk away from the Heart Pirates, a crew she once swore she would never trust, but she'll go. She still has Nallely. Together, they can rebuild the Siren Sisters, find the Straw Hats, and hunt Doflamingo themselves if they must.

She'll still help Law if he wants it.

Her lips tighten. She repeats the plan in her head like a shield, but the grief remains. A tide she can't stem.

Because the truth is, she really thought—

She doesn't even know what. That Law might care, maybe. That their fragile, strange bond meant something. That she mattered beyond utility.

Her chest twists.

I'm so stupid. Of course it's not.

Law had become someone close, whether she wanted him to or not. Maybe not close enough. Those special spots are reserved for Nallely, Anita, and Alyssa. But maybe he could've gotten closer. Maybe not, if this is his answer to her kindness.

She shouldn't care. She tells herself that on a loop. She doesn't get tangled with pirates. She doesn't let herself bleed for people like this. She shouldn't.

But she's a fool.

She's only human.

And how could she not grow attached? It's been more than a year now that she's been with them. Of course, she's grown attached to a crew of reckless idiots who have made her feel alive in ways she didn't know she still could; to a man who, for reasons that still chafe the wounds in her heart, reached into her wreckage and pulled her out.

She remembers the sea spray sticky on her skin, the shriek of splintering wood, hearing her sisters falling one by one, and Isabel powerless to stop it. She had vowed revenge, sworn she wouldn't die, that she would drag Doflamingo down even if she had to crawl to do it. And then—Law. Law, who didn't have to help. Law, who gained from her rage but still offered her a bed, still fed her, still allowed her to remain among his own as though she belonged.

He didn't have to.

But he did.

And now—now his absence hangs heavier than any wound.

Isabel's steps falter. She presses a hand against the bulkhead, cool metal grounding her as her chest tightens with a grief too large to swallow. The filtered light catches on her face, and she wonders, fleetingly, if the sea outside can taste her sorrow, if it presses harder against the hull because of it.

She breathes once, twice. She doesn't understand why she's feeling so hurt by this.

It's not that serious. It's really, really not.

At the end of the day, Isabel is an outsider.

She is just Isabel.

Nallely glances at her but says nothing. She can tell by Nallely's stance alone that her friend wants to reach out and comfort her. Isabel feels even worse, somehow. Too full of tears.

Isabel wonders—not for the first time—what to do with herself if Law truly has no place for her anymore.

She straightens.

This is fine.

It has to be fine.

She'll handle it. She always does.

This isn't the worst thing she's dealt with. Not even close. She's survived more sinister events, bled for her freedom, sacrificed pieces of herself she can't even name anymore—lost parts of her soul, scattered like ash in the wind. She has clawed her way to the title she owns proudly.

A man ignoring her won't be the death of her. That's all this is. That's all.

The words loop in her head like a mantra, but her chest still feels tight.

Isabel lets out a sigh that sounds heavier than it should. "I'm tired," she mumbles, the phrase carrying more than simple exhaustion.

Beside her, Nallely doesn't hesitate. Her hand slips into Isabel's, warm and certain, having done it a thousand times before. Isabel almost pulls away on reflex—habit, defense, pride—but then she remembers who it is. Nallely. Her anchor.

She lets the hand stay.

Her best friend tilts her chin toward the faint glow of the hatchway, toward the strip of daylight waiting at the end of the corridor. "Do you want to stay here? I can get the stuff myself, girl. It's not a problem."

The offer is genuine, practical, but Isabel shakes her head, forcing a small breath through her nose. "No, no. It's fine. I want to get out and see the sun, anyway."

Nallely studies her for a beat, eyes narrowed like she can see straight through the cracks Isabel is trying to plaster over. But she doesn't press. She only squeezes her hand once, firm, before releasing it.

They walk together down the long, narrow passage, the steel walls closing them in, boots echoing against metal. The air smells faintly of oil and saltwater, the ever-present perfume of the Polar Tang. It feels darker down here than usual, Isabel thinks. Or maybe it's just her mood staining the light.

At last, the hatch yawns open above them, and sunlight spills in. Harsh, golden, alive. Isabel blinks against it, lifting a hand to shield her eyes as the warmth touches her skin. For the first time in weeks, something in her chest loosens, if only slightly.

Outside, the port is bustling. The creak of wood from the docks, the shouts of merchants haggling over crates of fruit, the scent of brine mixing with spices drifting from food stalls. Children dart through the crowd with sticky fingers and laughter. It's too bright, too alive, almost overwhelming after the submarine's muted quiet.

Nallely breathes in deep. "Fucking finally. Felt like I was becoming a little duende like you, Isabel. No offense." She glances at Isabel, arching a brow. "I'm going to stock up on so much alcohol, be ready, bitch. We're gonna get fucked up tonight!"

The attempt at humor draws a reluctant huff of air from Isabel.

Even here, even in the crush of life and warmth, she feels the absence. Her eyes flicker, unbidden, scanning the crowd for a tall figure in a black coat, a hat tilted low. She knows she shouldn't. She knows she won't find him.

So, what?

Nalley is all that matters.

At the thought of having her friend, the knot in her chest loosens.

So she straightens again, shoulders squaring, and forces her gaze toward the market stalls.

"Let's just get what we need," she says.

Nallely shrugs. "I'mma get some In-N-Sea. I heard they expanded over here. Do you want some?"

The thought of having a burger and its special sauce and fries, perks her up slightly. "Yes, please," Isabel murmurs.

Together they step into the sunlit chaos, Isabel carrying her grief like a shadow that refuses to let her go.

[x . x]

Something goes wrong.

And it's stupidass Penguin and Shachi's fault.

It happens like this:

Isabel parts from Nallely halfway through their shopping trip when they spot Bepo weaving through the market, his massive white-furred frame impossible to miss. She tells Nallely she'll circle around and maybe dig up information about the Straw Hats or her missing crewmates—Anita and Alyssa—while Nallely handles the supplies. Nallely gives her the "I'll feed you later" look but nods.

Isabel can't risk sticking too close to Bepo. The bear is never far from Law.

She vanishes into the crowd.

The port is noisy and chaotic. Crates of dried fish stack high beside baskets of glossy fruit, and foreign spices spill their heavy aroma into the humid air. Merchants bark over one another, hawking fabrics dyed in garish colors, glinting blades, and cheap trinkets tourists will waste coin on.

Isabel pulls her hood low and blends into it all, ears pricked.

She asks in passing, voice lowered, about the Straw Hats, about women who might match Anita or Alyssa's descriptions. She buys a pouch of dried mango just to loosen a shopkeeper's tongue, but it yields nothing but shrugged shoulders and a muttered, "Try the next island." Each time, her hope flickers and dies a little more.

By the time she gives up, she's weary. The sun has clawed its way high, hot on her shoulders, so she makes for the beach.

It isn't the same in daylight. It's too harsh and exposed.

Isabel has always preferred the quiet cloak of night. The hush of moonlight on waves and the shimmer of hope in them settles a disquiet in her mind she's never been able to tame.

Still, she can't deny the beauty in the sun—the tide lapping at dunes in a steady, rhythmic pull, the heat sinking into her skin, the salt sting on the wind.

She walks the shoreline, boots sinking into wet sand, and she thinks.

Thinking, thinking, always thinking. About her crew. About vengeance. About him.

She's torturing herself.

But how can she not? She can't just forget Law. He's a constant presence who makes it abundantly obvious in frequent capacities that he does not want to be around her. It's impossible to get rid of.

Her mission has to stay her anchor: find her crew, rebuild the Siren Sisters, drag Doflamingo into the dirt so thoroughly the world learns not to ever touch them again. That's what she has to hold onto. Not a man. Not his silence.

She almost convinces herself.

Until she collides with him.

Law.

She doesn't even realize it's him until she smacks hard into his chest, distracted by the glittering dunes. His coat smells faintly of sea and medicine, familiar enough to make her stomach jolt. The scene unravels.

Because, of course, Shachi and Penguin are there.

And of course, they've found something they should never have touched.

A crate sits cracked open in the sand, and inside gleams a monstrosity of tech—some kind of enormous ray gun, all sleek metal and ominous vents that hiss faintly with contained power. Isabel only has a heartbeat to think what the fuck before the dominoes fall.

Her bump into Law sets everything spiraling.

Law jerks forward, hand snapping out for balance—straight into Shachi's face.

"Oi—captain—!" Shachi yelps, stumbling.

He collides shoulder-first into Penguin, who's clutching the oversized ray gun like a child with a toy he shouldn't have.

The impact jostles Penguin's grip. His finger spasms on the trigger.

The gun howls.

There's a surge of light, violent and searing, that swallows Isabel's vision. The sand, the surf, and the smell of salt all vanish in the blink of an eye. She doesn't even have time to curse before the ground beneath her shifts and drops.

When the world slams back into focus, Isabel is already stumbling, boots sinking into soft, damp earth.

It's hot. Oppressively hot. The air is heavy, wet, buzzing with cicada-song and the shriek of unseen birds. The sky is mostly gone, hidden beneath a canopy of leaves as broad as sails, sunlight breaking through in green-filtered shafts. The smell is different too—humid soil, wildflowers, something faintly rotting.

Her pulse stutters.

The beach is gone. The port is gone.

And Shachi and Penguin are gone too.

She spins, breath hitching. Only Law is with her, standing a few feet away, his long coat incongruous against the suffocating green. He hasn't moved much, just enough to plant his boots wide, steady, bracing himself. His head turns slowly, gold eyes scanning the jungle with a hunter's precision.

Isabel's heart drops. Of all fucking people...

"What—" her voice cracks. Eugh. She cringes and forces her face to go blank when Law whips his attention onto her. She tries again. Better, this time. "What the fuck just happened?"

The only answer is the drone of insects and the rustle of something large moving through the underbrush.

Suddenly, everything is quiet.

Dead quiet.

Corpse-like.

Something is wrong.

Isabel takes a step back, heart hammering. Her sixth sense triggers at the feeling of Otherness. Of dread and wrongness. The soil is stuffed with moss, with vines tangling around her boots, as though the jungle itself wants to keep her still for consumption.

Law finally looks at her. Really looks. His face is taut, expression unreadable, though she swears she sees a flicker—irritation? concern?—before it's smoothed over. His silence cuts sharper than words.

Her chest twists. She wants to scream at him and demand to know why or what kind of captain lets his idiots play with tech like that. She wants to demand why the hell she has to be stuck with him, of all people, when he's spent weeks acting like she's poison.

Instead, all that comes out is a ragged breath.

Because the truth is, beneath the fury and disbelief, one thought pounds through her skull like a drumbeat:

They're alone.

Truly alone.

The jungle is suffocatingly close. Closer. The heat clinging to Isabel's skin is like a second, suffocating layer, and she briefly realizes that her coat is gone. The underbrush is gone—bugs, shrieks, rustles—every sound ceasing to exist to be replaced by a ringing, paranormal silence.

Isabel steadies her breath, forcing herself into the same cold calculation she's relied on for years. Panic won't serve her.

Law stands a few paces away, jaw tight, one gloved hand brushing at his hip before his gaze darkens. His nodachi isn't there.

That small flicker of unease on his face makes her chest tighten despite herself.

"There's something here," Isabel says, voice too flat for how she feels.

His glare flicks to her for a short second, but he doesn't answer. He's already scanning the shadows.

The rustle comes again, closer this time. A low growl reverberates through the soil beneath her boots.

And then it steps out.

The thing resembles a tiger in shape alone—hulking, broad-shouldered, its paws sinking into the earth with a heavy thud. Its fur is mottled and patchy, greased with some kind of sheen that almost pulses. And its head—its face—is wrong. Too wide. A gaping split down the middle, adorning a skull that has been cracked into a maw, lined with teeth that spiral inward.

Isabel's stomach turns.

Grotesque.

Monster.

It growls, and the sound is a chorus of screaming souls trapped in its throat.

For a fraction of a second, both she and Law freeze, measuring, calculating—then move at once. But it's too close. Their shoulders crash as they stumble against each other, and Isabel has to shove him back before she can think straight.

"Stay out of my way," she snaps.

"Don't get killed," he shoots back, too fast, unable to help himself.

The scythe manifests in her hands, dark steel blooming into existence with a flare that bends the shadows around it. The weapon hums, hungry, its edge catching the dim light in a gulp. Isabel plants her stance, arms loose but ready.

The beast lunges.

She meets it, movements cold, precise. Her scythe arcs in a vicious sweep, intercepting the snapping maw. The impact vibrates down her arms, but she doesn't flinch. Another step back, another measured strike. Every motion is a strategy, every breath timed, even as the grotesque thing pushes harder, heavier.

Law is forced back, unarmed. His hands twitch, his power always an option, but it doesn't budge when he calls for it. He sweats, and Isabel lets out a curse. Devoid of power. Without a blade, he hesitates, his teeth clenched.

It looks like Isabel will be the one to handle it.

Isabel pivots, slicing across the creature's shoulder, ichor spilling hot and foul. The beast howls. She doesn't falter.

She doesn't look at Law, but her words come out, certain enough that she won't need to express it again: "Keep a lookout."

The scythe glints again, carving the monster back into the foliage, its guttural screams echoing into the green.

But even when it stumbles and retreats, the dread lingers.

Whatever this jungle is, it isn't natural. It isn't the original island they docked on.

It's clear to Isabel that whatever thing that had been, it isn't the only thing on this island.

Isabel lowers her scythe only slightly, breath steady. Her eyes track the shadows. There's still something. It's too silent.

Law doesn't speak at first. His gaze lingers on her weapon, then on her, a glimmer of reluctant respect beneath the frustration etched into his features. "Well done, Isabel-ya," he mutters eventually, almost grudgingly.

Isabel, huh. "Yeah," Isabel replies flatly, her tone nonchalant.

They stand in silence, the jungle pressing in again—until the air shifts again.

Just like Isabel expected.

Figures erupt from the brush, shrieking as they lunge forward. Not animals—people. Or something that used to be. Hairless, their limbs too long, eyes sunken and wild. Sometimes non-existent, like elongated faces of a sinister bogey trying to appear human. They look like corpses fighting for life. Their bodies move on all fours with a grotesque mimicry of beasts.

The first of them lunges straight for Law.

Isabel doesn't hesitate. She shoves him hard to the side, taking the hit across her shoulder as claws rake against her. Pain flashes hot, but she doesn't falter. Her scythe hooks in a vicious sweep, cleaving through two of the creatures cleanly. Flesh and bone scatter. The smell of iron floods the air. It splatters over her face and clothes.

She doesn't let herself look, nor does she let herself think about the shapes, the screams, or the blood. She just cuts. Cuts, and cuts, and cuts, and cuts.

More come. A dozen. Two dozen. Beyond that.

Their shrieks swell, bodies clawing forward in waves.

Isabel tightens her grip, raising her scythe again. Her jaw locks, ready to meet them head-on.

She's not going to lose.

But it seems that Law has other plans, because suddenly, his hand clamps around hers.

She snaps her gaze to him, startled, but he doesn't give her the chance to argue. His grip is firm, dragging her with him as he shoves through the foliage.

"It's an ambush," he hisses, voice low and sharp. "We need to move."

The jungle blurs around them as they push forward with branches whipping against their arms and the ground uneven beneath their boots. The creatures follow, snarling, but each step seems to twist the world further.

The light fades unnaturally fast. The vibrant green of the jungle bleeds into shadow. Day collapses into night within minutes. Isabel begins to feel sick. This isn't normal. Are they even in the same world anymore?

The screams behind them don't lessen.

And the darkness feels alive.

Branches, dead leaves, and crusted bones splinter beneath their boots. The humid air has become so cold that it feels crisp and itchy in her lungs. Isabel's scythe drags behind her as Law pulls her forward, his hand iron around hers. The shrieks of the creatures echo through the jungle, bouncing from tree to tree, like the forest itself is screaming.

Shadows slither at the edge of her vision. When she dares a glance upward, she swears she sees movement in the canopy—shapes darting across branches too quickly, too silently, as though stalking them from above.

"Law," she mutters, low and strained.

"I know," he snaps, voice ragged, the acknowledgment costing him breath.

The ground dips, and their footing slips on moss-covered stone. They nearly stumble into a ravine with water glimmering faintly below. A waterfall roars somewhere ahead, its voice a constant, drowning thunder. For a moment, Isabel almost mistakes it for the collective cry of the horde chasing them.

They're gaining in, though.

Isabel grips Law's hand tightly. "We're doing it!" She yells over the roar, and Law looks at her like she's crazy.

She doesn't give a countdown or a second for him to rethink. Her mind feels sluggish, her body worse. She backs up, ignoring Law's demands to know what she plans to do exactly, before she takes a run, using all her strength in her legs to leap across. She makes sure to tug at Law hard enough that he can't stop her, and the two of them jump.

Law curses at her, but they make it. They land roughly, but their equal grip on each other stops them from tripping backward into the ravine. Law sends her a vicious glare, but Isabel is too busy checking behind her to notice.

She blanches.

The monsters jump with them.

She and Law look at each other briefly before coming to the same conclusion.

Keep moving.

They run.

For how long, Isabel can't tell. She's getting tired, earlier than usual.

Something is wrong. She's a killing machine, meant to outlast. Her Devil Fruit refuses to allow any exhaustion in her body, which is why she so seldom sleeps. But it's not working. Her body labors to keep up with Law.

By the time they burst into a clearing, their bodies are screaming for rest. The jungle gives way to the edge of the waterfall, spray chilling their sweat-slick skin.

And there, half-swallowed by the trees, sits a shack—wooden, rotting, its roof collapsed on one side.

It doesn't look safe. But it's shelter.

Law yanks Isabel toward it, both of them stumbling inside. The door hangs off its hinges, creaking as they shove it closed. The sound of pursuit lingers—snapping twigs, low growls, the unholy scrape of nails against bark—but the roar of the waterfall muffles everything, a chaotic curtain of sound.

Inside, it smells of mildew and age. Broken furniture litters the floor, wood splintered as though torn apart by claws. A window frame gapes open, letting in moonlight that glances off Isabel's scythe.

Finally, Law releases her hand. His chest rises and falls in sharp, uneven breaths. Sweat darkens the collar of his shirt. He leans against the wall for a moment, one hand braced, refusing to meet her eyes.

Isabel doesn't waste her breath on words. She slides her weapon into a guarded position, listening. Watching. Only then, when the silence stretches too far, does she glance at him.

She says nothing.

But Law notices, and her eyes linger as his expression tightens with his eyes cutting toward her.

She looks away first, scanning the shadows at the edges of the shack. Her pulse finally starts to even out. Yet beneath her calm exterior, there's a new awareness of a weight in the air, in the way his presence fills the small ruined space.

The shack settles around them. Neither of them speaks. The only sound is the relentless roar of the waterfall outside and the shallow rasp of their breathing.

Law finally moves, breaking the silence. His gaze drops to Isabel's shoulder—blood soaking through fabric, trailing down her arm in sluggish rivulets. He pushes off the wall and approaches, his steps deliberate.

"Sit," he says, voice low, clipped.

Isabel's first instinct is to refuse, to tell him she can handle it, but she doesn't. Not because she trusts him, but because he's right to acknowledge that she needs immediate medical attention. She lowers herself onto a shattered beam, her scythe propped at her side, the weapon's curve catching the pale light that leaks through the ruined window, wondering why her wound still feels so fresh.

Law kneels in front of her, already pulling bandages and a small kit from inside his coat. The shift from strategist to surgeon is seamless, practiced. His gloved fingers brush her arm as he inspects the torn flesh. He takes off his gloves, discarding them to the side for a proper inspection.

Isabel clenches her jaw, eyes fixed anywhere but him. The closeness is unbearable. She doesn't know what to think or feel, other than disgusted. The steady concentration in his expression and the way his breath ghosts across her skin as he leans closer to inspect the cut are all normal things, but it's different. It's different, okay?

He doesn't need to do this. He clearly doesn't want to. He's been avoiding her.

She doesn't understand.

(And a part of her feels touched that he still wants to take care of her.)

He smells faintly of salt and antiseptic, sharp against the mildew of the shack.

When his hand presses against her shoulder to steady her, she almost flinches. But she doesn't. She stays still, her scythe within reach, her pride coiled tight in her chest. When he begins to use the alcoholic on-the-go wipes, Isabel bounces her leg, impatient at the stings.

She lets her gaze wander. The walls are etched, she finds, with lines carved deep into the wood, curling and looping like veins. At first, she thinks they're just age, cracks from years of rot. But no. They're symbols.

Runes.

Her eyes narrow, tracing the familiar shapes. The language is old, older than any she's studied—but not foreign. Something in her devil fruit thrums in recognition, the faintest tug in her chest, like a whisper in her blood.

Death. Rebirth.

She swallows hard, her skin prickling as she stares at the markings. Whatever this place is, it isn't a coincidence.

She doesn't know what to think.

Maybe this is all in her head.

Law doesn't notice. His focus is entirely on her wound with his brows knit in concentration. His fingers are steady as he takes his time to suture the deeper cuts and wind the bandages around the more superficial ones.

It's the strangest intimacy Isabel has known: silence, the tender press of his hand against her skin, and the realization that this place is watching them.

It makes her squirm.

"Don't move," Law mutters, tugging the bandage snug. His tone is firm, but not unkind.

Isabel doesn't respond. Her jaw stays set, her eyes fixed on the runes. She doesn't realize she's holding her breath until Law stills.

His gaze flicks up, sharp and assessing. "What are you staring at?"

The question is quiet, but it cuts through the shack louder than the waterfall.

Isabel blinks, forcing herself to meet his eyes. They're too close—calculating, unreadable, catching every flicker of hesitation on her face. She wants to shrug it off, dismiss it, but the runes burn in her peripheral vision like ghosts.

"Nothing," she lies smoothly.

Law doesn't buy it. His eyes narrow, lingering on hers before sliding to the carved wood behind her. He studies it in silence for a long beat, then looks back, his expression unreadable.

"Those marks," he says evenly. "You recognize them."

It's not a question.

Isabel's fingers curl against her thigh, nails biting into fabric. She considers denying it again, but the pressure of his hand on her shoulder—steady, grounding—pins her in place. She hates how easily he reads her.

Her voice comes low, reluctant. "Some of them."

Law tilts his head slightly, but doesn't press further.

His focus returns to the bandage, and his hands resume their methodical work, though his silence feels heavier now, weighted with unspoken curiosity.

The waterfall thunders outside, masking the sound of Isabel's quickened pulse. She forces her eyes away from the runes, away from him, but the shack feels smaller by the second, as though the walls themselves lean in, listening.

The bandage holds firm. Law leans back, inspecting his work, but his eyes flick once more to the carved wood.

"What do they say?" His voice is quiet, careful.

Isabel tastes bile. Her gaze locks on the spirals and slashes cut into the rotting beams. Her lips part before she can stop herself. "Death. Rebirth."

The words linger in the air like smoke.

Law goes still. His expression doesn't change at first, but his eyes—his eyes search her face, long and purposeful. Isabel feels the scrutiny prickle down her spine. For a moment, she feels the need to snap at him and ask what the hell he's staring at. But when she finally meets his gaze, it isn't judgment she finds. It's disturbance. Recognition.

Her lungs feel harder to breathe in. She doesn't know why, but the heaviness in his stare doesn't unsettle her. He looks like he knows something. It freaks her out and anchors her at the same time. It reminds her he's still here and still capable of speaking to her.

It makes no sense.

Law exhales softly, breaking the silence, and pushes himself to his feet. He starts pacing, boots grinding against warped wooden planks, one hand raised to his chin in thought. Isabel watches him through narrowed eyes, irritation warring with a strange flicker of relief.

She leans back against the wall, cradling her arm, thinking just as hard. The jungle. The creatures. The runes. None of it makes sense. And neither does Law's reaction.

After a long stretch of silence broken only by the waterfall's roar, he stops. "You should read more of them."

Her brow furrows. "Why?"

"They're not random." His tone leaves no room for doubt. "If this shack was marked with runes about death and rebirth, there's a reason. Maybe it tells us something about this place. Or how to get out of it." His eyes are intense. "The fact that you can read them, in relation to your Devil Fruit pertaining to Death, means that there's a reason why we're here."

Isabel hesitates, then pushes herself upright, ignoring the pull of her wound. She tilts her head toward the carvings, tracing them with her eyes. This time, she lets the symbols speak.

Her voice is low, almost reluctant. "Memory."

Law's eyes sharpen.

She frowns at the wall, continuing, "Loss. Return. A cycle." The words slip from her mouth like echoes she doesn't remember learning. She feels sicker. "It doesn't make sense."

Law says nothing. He's staring again, too intently, his thoughts miles ahead of her. Something about the way his expression tells her he's found a connection she can't see.

"Law—" she starts, but he cuts her off with a shake of his head.

"Keep reading."

His voice is steady, but there's a crack in it now, faint but unmistakable. Isabel clenches her fist, staring at him for a beat longer, then turns back to the wall. She doesn't see the way his hands curl into fists at his sides, or the touch of something long-buried in his eyes.

Her finger drags across another carving, halting on a rune half-hidden beneath moss. The shape of it curls sharply and familiarly.

She's... seen this before.

Long ago.

In a white grave.

"Memory," she whispers again, but this one tastes heavier. "Child... white... Sentence."

Her throat tightens. Images stir at the edges of her mind—shadows, firelight, a choking cloud of smoke. A hundred screams swallowed by silence. Her head pounds with the strain of it, but no matter how hard she digs, the memory won't form.

What the hell?

She squeezes her eyes shut. No. No, this is too much. She feels dizzy. "It doesn't matter."

Law's voice cuts through instantly. "It matters."

Her eyes snap open, finding him across the shack. He hasn't moved, but his stare is carved out of stone, dark with something unspoken. He knows. He's waiting for her to catch up, but the distance between what she feels and what he sees is suffocating.

What. What, what, what? What is it?

"You're not telling me something," She accuses.

"I don't know what it is yet," He admits.

Isabel feels scatterbrained. She forces a breath, steadying herself. "I already know what my Devil Fruit is about. Death. Rebirth. And if I have to keep dying and forgetting—fine. If I have to be immortal, then I'll use it for something useful. Saving people." Her jaw tightens, defiant. "If I lose the memories every time, then they're better left forgotten." It hurts to admit, honestly. She's known that her Devil Fruit is powerful because it has the potential to make someone immortal.

At the cost of memories.

She's known this. She understands the sacrifice and has mourned enough at the implications. She doesn't remember her life before, but she does remember it involved blood on white. She's not totally hopeless.

But she doesn't need this reminder right now.

They need to get out.

For a long moment, the only sound is the waterfall roaring outside.

Law doesn't move. He only watches her, expression unreadable. Behind his silence, there's a question pressing against the air, making her restless.

And still, he doesn't give her an answer.

Isabel shifts her weight, ignoring another stretch of the wound in her shoulder as she brushes away another layer of moss. More runes glimmer faintly in the low light, curling like skeletal vines across the rotten wood. Her lips move before she can stop them.

"Death... rebirth..." she repeats, her voice slow, caught between wonder and dread. Her finger halts on a final mark, the shape sharp and cruel. "Memory."

The same three things.

Again.

Her heart aches.

She blinks, the air in the shack suddenly colder, heavier. The words arrange themselves on her tongue, as if the runes are demanding to be spoken. "To break the chain," Isabel whispers, almost against her will, "the memory must return. The life before must be remembered... or the cycle repeats."

Isabel's mind races.

Is this... Is this how she becomes immortal?

By remembering?

Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Or maybe she's thinking wrong. It doesn't make sense. Is this how she unlocks the full potential of her Devil Fruit, instead?

She can't think.

The waterfall outside seems to roar louder, echoing the sentence.

Law continues not to speak.

Isabel looks up at him, brows drawing in. "That's what it says. That's what it means. Do you—" She stops, because he isn't just listening. He's staring. His jaw is tense, his eyes dark, fixed on her as though she's some phantom returned to haunt him.

"Law?"

For a moment, he almost answers. Almost. But then his gaze flicks away, shadowed, as he turns sharply and begins pacing the shack, boots grinding against splintered wood.

He knows something. She can feel it in her bones, the way silence coils between them like a blade neither wants to touch.

And for some reason, even without words, Isabel takes a thin thread of comfort in that silence.

Isabel feigns indifference as she leans back against the warped shack wall. She can't force him to talk. She can, technically, but she won't.

The wood is splintered and damp against her spine. Flakes catch on her clothes, but she doesn't care. If he doesn't want to talk, fine. She isn't going to beg for answers he clearly doesn't want to give. Her shoulder throbs with a deep, biting ache. Still, she sets her jaw, dragging her eyes back to the etched wood.

The runes shimmer faintly again, sickly and alive, as though the night itself is coaxing them out of slumber. They breathe, pulse, writhe against the surface like veins. She narrows her gaze, her fingers trembling once more as they make another attempt to hover over the carvings before finally making contact.

"Death. Rebirth. Memory..." she mutters, the words coarse and cracked, her throat suddenly dry. Each syllable weighs heavy, clanging to the death knell inside her skull. She forces herself to read further, though every word feels like it's searing into her brain, branding flesh straight to the marrow.

And then—

The headache slams into her skull. A cleaving blow, sharp and splitting, squelches into her brain matter. The runes swim, distort. She clutches the wood hard enough for splinters to pierce her palm, but it's useless—images rip across her vision in jagged fragments, unstoppable, violent.

Gunfire. Deafening bursts, each one rattling her bones.
Children screaming, high and shrill, until voices break.
Blood spattering white stone, spraying in ribbons as small bodies crumple.
The floor is stained with it, her boots slipping, hands red and sticky as she drags herself to her grave.

Her own voice cries out to no one.
It cries, it wails, and it struggles, bleeding out as she shoved a boy forward. Dark hair matted with soot, wide eyes huge with terror.

Law.

The memory cleaves into her, raw and unrelenting. She sees him—small, fragile, his skin sallow from sickness, trembling in the shadow of men with guns. The stink of gunpowder and burning flesh saturates the air. Then the ceiling groans and collapses, beams and stone crashing down in an avalanche of dust and screams. Splinters drive into her skin, and blood sprays across her vision.

Through it all, she hears him—his voice shattering the roar, child-thin but desperate enough to split her heart.

"Isabel! Isabel, please, no, no, no—"

Her name ricochets in her skull, like a knife.

She gasps, staggering, one hand clamped hard against her temple, trying to hold her skull together. The shack tilts, spins, the floor heaving. Horror crashes through her chest in an icy flood, cold and suffocating.

Her knees give. The runes blur into nothing, smeared by darkness rushing in at the edges.

"Isabel!" Law's voice cuts through, sharper now, older, a desperate bark edged with command.

She sways, weightless for a breath.

And then the world falls out from under her.

[x . x]

Isabel wakes up to darkness, again. Her eyes adjust, her head dizzy.

There's a beach. The ocean is dark and the sand glitters under the moon. The waves lap at her feet, and she stares down at nothing.

She can't seem to remember.

But—

Law is next to her, head tilted down, asleep.

What?

Where is she?

She can't remember.

She can't remember...

Her eyes fall shut.

Her shoulder throbs.

There is no outside.

[x . x]

Isabel shudders awake.

Dread quickly coils in her stomach, tasting a sour copper on her tongue. Her skin feels like static, clammy with fever-sweat that soaks her shirt and sticks it to her ribs. Her heart hammers unevenly, both too fast and too weak. Fear etches itself into her chest, deeper than any wound.

She jerks upright, too fast. The world pitches.

Black dots swarm her vision, and she sways hard enough that she nearly collides with Law's jaw—but he shifts back in time, movements sharp, controlled. His eyes narrow, but his hand hovers as if ready to steady her.

She can't focus. Can't care. Her gaze latches on to nothing, sightless, pupils blown wide with fever's grip. Her body trembles as though the ground itself is shaking beneath her. The memory hasn't loosened its hold—white stone painted red, her boots slipping through blood. A child's mirror reflection, her own eyes staring back from a little girl's terrified face. Running, always running.

And someone—

"Isabel-ya."

His voice drags her back.

She blinks sluggishly, lashes heavy. Each breath she takes is thick and shallow, like she's drowning. Slowly, she lifts her head to meet his gaze.

Law's expression is blank, but the grim set of his mouth betrays him. "...Your wound is infected," he murmurs. "You're running a fever."

Her stomach sinks. That's not possible. Her Devil Fruit devours poison. Any measly infection should dissolve before it takes root. Her flesh should knit with enough blood spilled. That has always been the one certainty.

So why?

Her chest feels like ice as the thought claws through her. How is this possible? What does it mean?

"That's not good," she whispers hoarsely, voice more fragile than she means.

Law presses his palm to her forehead, his touch startlingly cool against her burning skin. He doesn't linger. His hand withdraws almost instantly, his frown deepening, shadows hollowing his eyes.

"...You're burning up," he mutters. And then, sharper: "We need to leave. Now. You need antibiotics."

The tone leaves no room for argument. It's clinical and edged with a rare urgency. His gaze flicks once to the door, then back to her, measuring her sway, her shallow breaths, as though he's already calculating how much longer she can stay upright.

Isabel nods, though the motion is weak, heavy, her neck trembling to hold her head. She tries to summon steel into her bones, but her body is soft clay beneath the fever, slipping apart. Out of the corner of her eye, her scythe disappears. Weak.

She's weak.

How can they leave? It's too risky.

Her hand curls into a hole in the wood, knuckles white.

She's... helpless.

"Can't move," she breathes. Her chest rattles with the words. She drops back down. The shack's rotting wood rises to meet her skull, but before the crack of bone can come, a strong hand intercepts, fingers splayed through her damp hair, steadying.

Law. He's crouched above her, cradling her head with the precision of a surgeon and the desperation of a man staring down an old nightmare. He doesn't let go.

Isabel can't think straight.

The world shifts and drips and shudders, unraveling into shapes she doesn't want to see. She keeps seeing that little girl again, flashing behind her eyelids, slicing through her fever haze: sickly skin, violet eyes, hair matted with blood and dust. Her own face, watching. Staring back at her like an accusation. Like a corpse with her eyes still open.

Her lungs quake. She lolls her head, fighting gravity, forcing her blurred gaze toward Law. His face hovers, dark-framed, sharp, but distorted in her sickness. His jaw tight, his eyes—God, his eyes—wide in a way she's never seen. She tries to speak, but each word drags claws through her throat.

She feels nauseous.

"You need to figure out a way out," she murmurs, breath wheezy against his palm. He stares down at her, and though she can't focus on detail, she feels the way his grip tightens, almost bruising in its need to keep her tethered.

"Can't... help. Incapacitated. You need to get out."

His voice cuts back, sharp as a scalpel. "If you're suggesting leaving my most prized counter against Doflamingo here to die, then you're more irrational than I thought, Isabel-ya."

It should sting. But Isabel doesn't care. She can't. Her head's too full of ghosts, her body too full of fever. She isn't listening to him, not really. She's listening to the girl. The one staring through the cracks in her memory like broken glass.

"Something... is wrong," she rasps. Her own tongue feels swollen. It doesn't belong in her mouth. "Didn't mean... to die."

Her chest shudders, her eyes slip shut. She feels Law stiffen around her, breath catching against her fevered skin.

"Can't... go back. She died." The words scrape raw. "Get out... of here."

She doesn't finish. She can't.

She's falling.

His voice follows her, distant, muffled, furious, breaking at the edges in a way she's never heard. Like he's choking on smoke, or on a memory he can't swallow down.

Then—flashes. Bursting like shrapnel in her skull.

A family, lined up in a hall of white stone. One death. A second death. A third. A fourth. All, sickness. A fire. Screams tangled with gunfire. Blood soaked into marble until the pristine streets drowned in red.

Children. Small bodies collapsing, twitching, stilling. Violet eyes—her eyes—rolling blank.

And her hands—no, Isabel's hands—shoving one little boy away from the massacre. Dark hair, terrified, the sound of his breath caught like a knife in his throat. She's shielding him. She's calling his name.

Then the ceiling cracks. Stone falls. Her ribs snap. Dust fills her lungs until she can't breathe. She's dying. She feels it, every crunch of bone, every vein screaming for oxygen. She feels his hands clawing at her shoulders, the boy's voice raw and ripping itself apart as he pleads—pleads—for her to live.

Isabel.

Her name. His voice.

Isabel jolts. Her heart spasms in her chest, the images chaining her to death itself.

She fights to surface. Her eyes fly open, heart pounding, and she drags her head toward Law, gasping. Her throat clogs with heat, and words tumble out, mangled.

"S'you," she slurs, tongue numb, jaw slack. The syllables nearly collapse into nothing, but she forces them out. "You're... him..."

Law's face looms above, blurred, his mouth moving too quickly for her to follow. He looks stricken.

Her body slackens. Breathless. Her heart claws once, then stops.

Her lips twitch. The last thread of thought slips free:

"You...'re the boy... I saved..."

Darkness swallows everything.

[x . x]

Law runs.

His boots sink into the mire with each stride, mud sucking at his heels as if the earth itself is trying to claim him. Rain lashes against his face, sharp as needles, soaking through his coat until it clings heavy to his body. His lungs burn, each breath ragged, condensed into fog that curls and vanishes into the frozen night. The trees crowd around him, endless, suffocating, offering no direction—no escape.

In his arms, Isabel hangs limp. Too limp. Her body jolts with his every desperate step, her head rolling loosely against his chest. Her skin is cold, clammy, waxen—yet slick with the fever-sweat he had felt only hours ago. Her weight is unbearable not for its heaviness, but for what it means: a body with no will of its own. A body that should not be here, should not be this still.

He has checked. Again and again. Fingers trembling against her throat, his ear pressed to her mouth, the sharp precision of a surgeon applied in the most animal desperation. No breath. No pulse. No Room to summon. Nothing.

Nothing.

By his own logic, by his own experience, and all accounts and purposes, Isabel is dead.

But Law doesn't care. There's something else. There has to be something else. This can't be it.

His mind claws for answers, for loopholes, dragging itself across splintered shards of reason.

—The infection. It had bypassed her supposed immunity. How? A pathogen that her ability couldn't corrode? An anomaly?

—His Devil Fruit. Dead, silent in this forest. Suppressed by something—Haki? An outside curse? A phenomenon?

—Her collapse. Sudden. Violent. Unlike anything he had anticipated.

—Her words. What she said. A terror, a memory, a ruined hope.

All these conclusions scatter through his head in pieces, half-built and unfinished. Normally, he would arrange them, stitch the puzzle together until an answer formed. But fear swallows the seams, stitches unravel. The clarity that defines him has drowned in terror and memory.

Because this is Flevance again, the white city is burning. His sister's hand is burning alive. His parents are bleeding with their brain matter at his feet.

And now—Isabel.

The only person who knew him before, the only ghost of that ruined place still alive, dead in his arms. Dead.

Dead, dead, dead. Fate had reached back to finish its work.

He grits his teeth so hard his jaw aches, a guttural sound building in his throat. The rain masks it, but it shatters him inside.

Law repeats himself.

The cabin was an utter failure.

He'd checked her as soon as she passed out. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then again. And again. His trembling fingers pressed into her throat, her wrist, her sternum—searching for a flicker, a pulse, a tremor of breath. Seven, ten, twenty times, each more frantic than the last, until his hands were clammed with sweat and shaking so hard he nearly lost his grip. He dragged her head back, forcing air into her lungs, pounding her chest with brutal, precise rhythm.

Minutes bled into an eternity—thirty of them by his feverish count—yet no warmth, no spark, returned to her body. Every failure carved deeper into him, until his breath rattled like broken glass and his thoughts collapsed into old memories of white streets soaked in blood.

And then things became worse.

The sound came first: a thin, rasping scratch, wood fibers screaming as nails—or claws—dragged across the rotting boards. His shoulders flinched at the noise, the way a wounded animal recoils from fire. He froze mid-compression, hands hovering above Isabel's chest. His head snapped toward the sound, movements jerky, unsteady, and he swayed where he crouched, like a man teetering on the edge of collapse. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.

The cabin's walls groaned again, the scrape deepening into a tear.

And Law couldn't stop his hands from shaking.

The cabin walls were shredded by unseen claws. Groaning wood splintered beneath unnatural weight. He remembers the way his hands froze, still pressed against Isabel's lifeless chest, his body swaying with hyperventilation, until instinct forced his head up. Shadows shifted. Shapes circled. Hungry eyes gleamed from the cracks.

His Devil Fruit would not answer him. His scalpel was gone. Weaponless, hopeless—he had snatched up a jagged plank of wood, driving it forward with raw desperation into the first snarling maw that breached the doorframe. The entity recoiled, screeching, black ichor splattering across the floorboards. Law didn't wait to see if it rose again. He had climbed, clambered, bursting through the cabin's roof with Isabel in his arms.

And now, the forest swallows him whole.

The snarls echo behind him, gaining ground. The sound claws through the downpour—low, guttural, too many throats at once. The skinwalkers do not tire. He knows this. Their pursuit is endless.

Worse still, there is another.

Through the gaps in the trees, Law has caught sight of a darker shape. Tall and menacing, it doesn't stumble through the woods like the beasts. Instead, it's a cloaked figure, gliding with unnatural speed, a scythe glinting in the stormlight. The blade arcs in such a familiar shape that bile burns the back of his throat. It's too much like Isabel's weapon. Too much to be a coincidence.

He doesn't have time to analyze it. He can't. Isabel is dying. She's dying. She's dead.

He needs to move.

So he runs. Fueled by adrenaline, by fury, by the clawing refusal to accept the weight of Isabel's body for what it is. Fear drives his heart into a relentless rhythm, and dread stifles his lungs until each breath feels borrowed. His vision tunnels. The forest warps into shadows and teeth.

And still he runs.

Because the moment he stops, he loses everything.

He doesn't know for how long he runs.

Minutes. Hours. Days. The measure of time has dissolved into the pounding of his feet and the shriek of his lungs. His body is running on nothing but spite and terror.

When Law finally stumbles to a halt, it isn't with dignity. His knees buckle, and he collapses face-first onto a flight of cracked stone steps, the slap of his body ringing sharp against the rained surface. The world tilts as he instinctively protects the back of Isabel's head. It takes a dangerous minute before he pushes up with one shaking hand, only to find himself staring at a ruin: a looming mansion of crumbling stone, windows shattered and barred with rusted iron, like a prison that has outlived its captors.

The front door hangs ajar, sagging on its hinges, revealing a yawning black throat of nothing inside. The air smells of mildew and old iron.

He crawls.

Every joint screams rebellion. His chest heaves, rattling like broken machinery. His heart thrashes against his ribs the way it once had, when the White Lead had poisoned his blood and left him waiting for death. And now, again, it feels as though death has been hunting him, snapping at his heels, whispering into his lungs.

He doesn't hear pursuit anymore. No claws, no tearing wood. Nothing.

But silence isn't assured, and Law would be damned if he waited for the inevitable just because he thought it was safe.

Isabel is heavy in his arms. He holds her close, arms cramped and raw, his grip frantic yet careful, terrified of worsening the damage he's already inflicted in his delirium. Her arms dangle limp, scraped by thorns from his blind flight. A smear of blood is on her cheek from where branches tore at her.

He mourns.

But he can't look at her face. He can't. No, he just can't.

Because if he does, he might break completely.

He staggers upright, legs trembling, lungs shredding. He coughs, wet and violent. Crimson splatters against stone. He tastes copper as blood coats his throat. The ache in his chest is a serrated blade. Each breath feels like a heart attack.

He forces himself forward anyway.

Inside. One step, then another, static swimming at the edges of his sight. He makes it just past the threshold before his strength fails. Isabel nearly slips from his grasp, but he forces his body to go limp in a controlled fall, lowering her just enough so that when she touches the warped wooden floor, it isn't a drop but a surrender.

He collapses beside her. The heavy door swings shut from the force of his fall, slamming into its frame with a boom that echoes through the hollow mansion.

Law's head lolls back. He gulps for air like a drowning man. His eyes spark with static and colors, his hands trembling with the aftershocks of everything he's forced them to do. Pain gnaws at his bones, his chest, his throat. His body is a ruin.

He closes his eyes.

The darkness is no worse than what waits outside.

[x . x]

The pounding comes first.

A frantic, desperate thud-thud-thud rattles the rotting frame of the door and jolts Law from the half-conscious daze he'd woken into after several hours recovering from his near-death experience.

"Let me in!"

The shrill cry shatters through the black stillness of the mansion. Law sucks in a sharp breath and instantly regrets it—his lungs seize, his throat scorched raw with pain lancing through his chest. He chokes on air, falling onto his side with a strangled groan. His hat topples off to the side, and he vaguely feels the cold breeze saunter through his sweat-dribbled hair. His head throbs. His body feels hollowed, wrung out.

Shit.

The door rattles again, harder this time. Each pound reverberates against his back where he'd collapsed against it.

"Let me in!" The voice cracks, feminine and high-pitched, ragged with panic. "I know you're in there! Isabel! Isabel, please!"

Law's blood turns to ice.

The name wavers the bits left of his adrenaline back. It's a rapid, agonizing pain that his mind fights to keep, but his body continuously burns.

Isabel?

Isabel?!

He remembers. Fuck, wait. He remembers. Isabel. Isabel, Isabel, she needs him, she's—she's—He sits up too fast, the walls spinning. His hands claw at the floor as he drags himself toward Isabel, who still lies motionless where he set her down. His vision blurs, but he can see it—her chest, faintly rising and falling in shallow pulls of air.

Breathing.

She's breathing.

Law freezes, staring. His ears ring. His throat works, but no sound comes out.

How...?

But the voice outside tears through his shock again. "Isabel, I swear to god if you don't let me IN!"

The door slams on its hinges. Dust falls from the ceiling.

"It's me, Alyssa! Please, let me the fuck in! Oh my god, oh my god—"

The name hooks in his brain like a barb. Alyssa. He's heard it before. Where? Think. THINK. His mind races, skipping until it slams into place.

Isabel's crewmate.

Law's pulse stutters.

Then his reason slams back, cold and merciless.

No. No, no, no. Too easy. Too obvious.

This has to be another one of the jungle's tricks. This has to be a mimic. A trap. This island was already crawling with parasites and whispers that wore the voices of creatures he didn't think could exist except in horror flicks. Who's to say this isn't another?

The growls start then. Low. Wet. Rising.

Not inside—them, outside. Snarls carry through the wood, closing in around the feminine pleading. The sound rattles up Law's spine, and for a second, his body locks, teeth chattering from both fever and raw fear.

"Please, please, Isabel, let me in!" the voice outside shrieks, breaking. "You—you're dying, I know, okay? The rune you made on me got activated, I teleported here—I thought it was broken before so—oh my god, is she dead? Is she dead!?"

He doesn't know who she's asking.

Law grips his scalp, crouched low beside Isabel's body, every instinct clawing in opposite directions. His heart thunders like it'll split apart. He wants—needs—to believe that whatever or whoever is outside is who they say they are. But he can't. He can't.

The snarls crescendo. The voice outside stumbles into sobs. "I—I can heal! If you can hear me, please—please come close to the door!"

Law's breath saws in and out. His body trembles, and his eyes burn holes into the wood. If it is her, she'll die out there.

But if it's not... Isabel—

"No," he rasps, a broken sound that tears at his throat. He shuts his eyes. "I can't risk it."

He gathers Isabel through more frantic calls. He drags her as best as he can, as far as he can. He doesn't manage very far when the banging stops.

For one terrible moment, there's only silence.

Then the world explodes.

Wood splinters, iron shrieks, and the door is ripped from its hinges. The frame crashes inward and sends shards scattering across the stone floor, causing Law to jump. And in the jagged outline of the ruined entry stands a hulking figure—broad-shouldered, swords at his hip, framed in the pale wash of moonlight.

Clutched to his chest is the person Law assumes is Alyssa, hair brown and curly, wearing a black tank-top and a pink skirt sludged with mud and blood, her heeled legs kicking as he half-drags, half-hauls her inside. Her sobs are very real, frantic, her hands reaching for Isabel the moment she sees her on the floor.

Behind them, the snarls erupt into full-throated roars. Shadows writhe outside, clawing at the threshold.

Law doesn't think—his body moves. In a heartbeat, he's gathered Isabel back into his arms, staggering to his feet, body coiled like a cornered animal. His eyes blaze with paranoia, exhaustion, fury, every muscle screaming as he squares himself against the intruder.

The stranger's single eye lands on him—sharp, unyielding.

Law's eyes widen. He knows who this is.

Zoro.

One of the Straw-Hats.

The swordsman's gaze narrows.

Steel hums in the air between them, unspoken and dangerous.

Law clutches Isabel tighter, chest heaving. Zoro's hand drifts to a sword.

Law tries to think. He's weaponless. His Devil Fruit power is null. He is without strength, without proper exit, with the weight of an unconscious person in his arms. Everything that Law has thought of in his worst nightmares is coming to fruition, right here, right now.

He is defenseless.

At best, Law can jog away before he's killed instantly.

But.

Law narrows his eyes. Does Zoro know that Law took care of his captain? Has the news reached?

Law will have to gamble. For Isabel's life to be saved, if she isn't as dead as his pathetic hope wants to think or make him delirious about, then this is the only chance he has. It'll be annoying as shit, having to make the Straw Hats owe him another favor to make his plans in defeating DoFlamingo true after all, in the end, but Law needs to think of the now.

Isabel is too valuable to lose.

Law knows every rational reason why.

The one closest to his fraying heart rings the scariest and truest. One he refuses to think of. Not now.

There is always Alyssa. The new woman. Law can gamble with both.

But his mind keeps spinning. It spins, endlessly, mindlessly.

Law can't think.

If this isn't Zoro, then he's done for. If this isn't Alyssa, then he's done for.

Incredibly high risks. Risks that his mind, for some reason, can't fathom to take.

For one suspended instant, the mansion breathes nothing but tension.

Law can't think. His mind is fractured glass, and every shard cuts with the same conclusion: this can't be real. There's no way in hell the people standing before him are who they appear to be. A Strawhat and one of the missing Siren Sisters—here, of all places? No. Impossible. The island is cruel, a liar, a puppeteer. This is another trick.

Then, "Move, fatass!"

Zoro is shoved aside with surprising force, and the woman barrels toward him. Law recoils, every nerve screaming.

"What the fuck are you doing!?" she shrieks, eyes wild, hands shaking as she points at Isabel's limp body. "Let me heal her!"

Law freezes. His instincts howl. He doesn't know what the hell this is—but it reeks of deception.

He doesn't have time to answer. Snarls splinter through the hall, sharp and layered, and in the same heartbeat, the swordsman plants himself at the doorframe. Metal flashes. Claws meet steel. "Hurry it the fuck up!" Zoro barks, voice guttural, as he hacks down the first beast that surges through.

Law stumbles back when the woman lunges for Isabel. "Who the hell—!"

"I don't give a fuck!" she spits, and before he can blink, her hand flicks down. A vial shatters at his feet.

The floor splits open in a bloom of agony. Thorned vines spear through the wood like jagged spears, lashing around his legs, chest, neck, arms—driving deep beneath his skin. Flesh tears. Hot blood seeps down his body in rivulets, slicking the bindings until they glisten red. Law's snarl fractures into a guttural groan, dragged from his lungs against his will. He jerks, trying to hold on, but Isabel is wrenched from his arms, ripped away.

Law failed.

I failed.

I failed.

I fucking failed.

The thought slams again and again, relentless, until his skull feels split with it.

Memory tears its way forward, unbidden—faces drenched in blood, his parents' corpses, his sister trapped in a closet, schoolmates' eyes glassy in death. And Corazon.

Corazon.

I tried.

Law feels like he's about to die. But he can't care about himself right now.

All he cares about is Isabel.

Isabel, Isabel, Isabel.

Law is about to beg.

Just leave her fucking be. She's been through enough.

Because of me.

What happens next is nothing he expects.

The woman doesn't tear Isabel apart. She doesn't morph into the slavering mimic Law was sure she was. Instead, she staggers under Isabel's weight, mumbling curses, and carries her carefully across the room. She lays Isabel down—gently—onto a faded cushion propped against a shriveled, brittle plant.

Law's chest heaves. He doesn't understand or trust his sense of self that what's going on in front of him is real. But all he can do is watch, body pinned by the thorns.

He watches Zoro at the door, blades flashing, each strike brutal but sloppy, slower than Law remembers the legendary swordsman being. Monsters keep coming. He keeps cutting.

He watches Isabel's chest rise and fall, shallow but steady.

He watches the woman—Alyssa—pull another vial from the small leather purse she's holding. The liquid inside sloshes thick and red like clotting blood. She uncorks it with her teeth, jams her hand against Isabel's jaw, and forces her mouth open.

The sharp scent burns even from where Law is. Copper and something older. Something wrong.

Law is helpless but to watch as Isabel drinks and drinks.

His heart is pounding in his ears so loudly that it drowns everything else. His lungs burn with every shallow, wheezing breath. He can barely keep his head upright. Every second feels like a lifetime.

Alyssa hovers over Isabel, flapping her hand in a frantic attempt to push air into her lungs. A minute passes. Too long. Far too long.

Then—

A heavy thud. A sharp grunt. Zoro crashes to one knee as another wave of snarling things slams against him.

The monsters are caving in.

Zoro snarls, forcing himself upright again, blades slashing in wide arcs. "You just had to screw us, huh!?" he spits, voice strained with rage and exhaustion.

Alyssa whirls on him, wild-eyed. "Fuck you! You didn't have to come with me—I said I'd do it myself—"

"Like hell I was letting you go alone!" Zoro barks, splitting a beast in half mid-sentence. "You'd get yourself killed in ten seconds flat!"

The argument is a blur of rage and desperation.

Law can only watch.

"Fuck's sake—" he hisses through clenched teeth, trying to move, trying to tear free of the vines digging into his body. But they're buried deep—too deep. Each twitch sends knives of agony through his skin, his muscles, his veins. If he forces his way out, he'll rip himself apart.

The monsters are crawling toward him. Fingers outstretched. Teeth bared. He can't stop them.

He's helpless.

Alyssa throws her hands in the air, shrieking with sarcasm, "WELL, I'M SORRY! Nobody's perfect!"

"Just SHUT UP and heal!"

"Don't YELL AT ME. I'm TRYING!" she barks, voice cracking. "My powers aren't working!"

"No shit they're not!" Zoro snarls. His chest heaves, sweat dripping down his jaw. "This whole place is fucking us over!"

A sudden, unbearable sound cuts the room in half.

A gasp follows. Not from Zoro or Alyssa. Not from Law, either.

From her.

Everything stops. Even the monsters hesitate.

Disease Law thinks looks like the black plague creeps along the floorboards. The air grows sharp and brittle. Law blinks, breath stalling in his chest.

Isabel.

Law lifts his head, hope crashing through his veins like fire.

She sits up with a sudden, shuddering inhale—gasping, choking on air. But she's breathing. She's breathing.

"A-Isabel!" Alyssa's voice cracks, relief splintering her panic.

But something is wrong.

Isabel's pupils are blown wide, swallowing the color from her irises. Her eyes glow. Her skin glows—an otherworldly pulse of green and violet flame crawling across her body like living light.

Law's blood runs cold.

His voice cracks. "What the fuck did you do!?" He tries to yell, but it breaks into a cough, tearing his throat raw.

Alyssa jerks her gaze at him, teeth bared. "My job!"

Then—

A scream.

A high, piercing, inhuman scream.

It rattles the glass. Splits the air.

Law almost blacks out. His skull feels like it's going to crack open. He can't even cover his ears—the vines hold him fast, digging in deeper as his muscles seize. He watches Zoro and Alyssa crumple, hands to their heads, groaning in agony.

But Isabel—

Isabel is rising.

Through the haze, Law forces his eyes open, watching.

He watches her stand. Watches her summon a weapon from the flames rather than from her chest, which she's known for doing. A different scythe comes out, bigger, black and silver and burning at the edges, dripping with black goo.

She lifts it with terrifying ease—

—and swings.

One clean, elegant arc.

The horde is sliced apart like paper, torn into ribbons of gore and shadow. The monsters in the back are thrown like ragdolls, sent screaming into the black jungle beyond the door.

Law stares with his chest heaving and body shaking.

Wow, is all he can muster.

Briefly followed by you're alive.

Isabel lowers her scythe by degrees, the steel's edge dragging against the ruined floor before it vanishes into nothing. She lets out a heavy breath. Silence reigns as Zoro shuffles from foot to foot, gripping his lowered swords, teeth clenched against rubber. Alyssa walks closer, hovering beside Isabel with an arm stretched out in consolation. Then falters, withdrawing when Isabel straightens with a deep breath.

The flames crawl back into Isabel's body, violet and sickly green, devoured by her skin until only the faintest shimmer remains. She tilts her head back, breathing as if gathering herself.

Law can only watch through the fog of his pain, pulse pounding, lungs clawing for air. His thoughts feel scattered, torn between awe and dread.

Zoro finally breaks the silence, his voice edged with dry venom. "Well. That was subtle."

Isabel snaps her head to him. The swordsman doesn't so much as flinch. Zoro keeps his nerve, nonpulsed.

Law is quick to notice that her eyes are back to normal. The relief hits him like a blow.

He sags.

He's so tired.

He's so, so tired.

"Isabel," Alyssa starts, coming closer. Her eyes shine, but her hands hesitate in the air between them. "Are you okay? Are you back with us?"

Isabel doesn't answer her. She turns to Alyssa slowly, instead, expression dead. She stares for so long, and Alyssa waits, hope written plain across her face. And she is right to be, because Isabel launches herself at Alyssa and encapsulates her in a big hug. Law hears sobs and words murmured against clothes. He can't make them out. He can't keep upright anymore. His vision tilts.

Law is pretty sure he's bleeding out. His eyes close, weak.

And then he's not.

He tumbles forward and into awaiting, warm arms that draw him in. Arms that smell a lot like Isabel.

"Law," He hears her voice. Then, farther, "Alyssa. Do you have another one of your trapped Ginger Bouquets?" Her voice is laced with urgency.

"Um. Yeah, here."

He's shifted, his head tilted back. Cold fingers pry at his jaw. He clamps it shut on instinct.

"Stupid man," Isabel clicks her tongue. "Open. This is to heal you."

He resists, stubborn even now, but she forces it past his lips. Bitter tang, a sharp bite of apple undercut by something acrid, sliding down his throat. He chokes it down—and then the pain ebbs away, washed out in a dizzy, floating high.

He feels refreshed. No pain. No awful, burning muscles. No bones threatening to break or stuffy sensation inside his chest.

Freedom.

"He's going to be high out of his mind," Alyssa mumbles.

"You're the one who laced him with your plants, Alyssa." Isabel shoots at Alyssa.

"He's an unknown! How was I supposed to know you know him?" Alyssa huffs.

"...Just cover the entrance," Isabel says, weariness threading her voice. "If those things come back, I don't have the strength for another round."

Steps echo, growing distant.

"Hell of an attack," Zoro grumps with an air of respect. The sudden change of voice makes Law's ears itchy. "You're the Leader Alyssa keeps name-dropping, huh?"

Law forces his eyes open, blurry shapes sharpening into Isabel's silhouette.

"I am," she says simply.

Zoro tilts his head, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Good hand you've got."

"What about me?" Alyssa calls over her shoulder.

"Yours is crap."

"At least I don't smell like crap!" Alyssa snaps back.

"Oh yeah? Let's not bring up the fish incident."

Their bickering grates against Law's skull. He groans inwardly. Too much talking.

"Shut up," Isabel snaps at both of them through their bickering. They do. "Law's recovering."

Thank you, Law doesn't say.

"So are you," Alyssa mutters back.

Ugh.

Law squints past Isabel, but the world is just black shapes swimming in the dark. His gaze slides back to her instead, finding her staring softly down at him.

She looks... different, somehow. Her expression is, at least. Usually, she carries a hard edge. And after he'd been avoiding her for the past month after finding... that out, she'd gone back to her previous self, scathing and cold. It was his fault, he knows. He'd been a coward.

And then I almost lost her.

The thought scrapes through him. He exhales, turning his face aside. Same mistakes. Again.

Love is always about loss.

He doesn't intend to repeat it.

But he manages to rasp out words, thin and ragged, something that costs him more than he'll admit:

"...Good to see you up, Lunabel-ya."

Her fingers brush his cheek, light and trembling, and something in him knots painfully at the touch. He wonders if she remembers the cabin. If she remembers the words she mumbled at him just before her almost death, or if they've been lost to the chaos that landed them here. He can barely hold onto the memory himself, dazed and frayed as he is.

Maybe he imagined it.

"...Thank you, Law," she murmurs, hoarse.

And the raw, aching tenderness woven into it makes him wonder if it was real at all.

[x . x]

Zoro and Alyssa spend the next frantic hour dragging heavy wardrobes and cracked furniture from the neighboring rooms, barricading the broken front door.

Each scrape of lumber against gravel reverberates like thunder through the hollow mansion. Dust bombards them from the ceiling and, on occasion, causes Alyssa to smack Zoro for it. The sound of their effort becomes a rhythm, hammering the silence into something almost bearable.

Law and Isabel remain where they collapsed at the base of the foyer stairs, slumped together on the cold floor. He tells himself they're only supporting each other, nothing as pathetic as clinging. But his body refuses to pull away.

The silence between them is not awkward. For once, there are no sharp words or cutting silences. Just breathing, in and out, in tandem. Isabel's shoulder brushes his. Her warmth seeps into him through torn clothes.

Exhaustion bleeds the edges of the world. It feels like days have passed, though he knows it's been mere hours. Maybe not. He doesn't care to know right now. The smell of damp stone hangs heavy in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of blood. His blood. Her blood, the creature's blood, any fucking blood. Their sweat, too. Isabel's and Law's.

His shirt clings uncomfortably to his chest, but when he catches the faint trace of Isabel beside him—her musk tempered by something almost sweet—it nearly unravels him. She smells alive. He doesn't understand how, after everything, but the reminder is such a relief. Law feels like if he were a weaker man, he would've cried his heart out.

He's losing his mind.

Neither of them speaks. Not when Zoro curses in the distance, not when Alyssa drops a wardrobe with a bone-jarring slam, not even when a door creaks far above them. Their silence feels deliberate, like both of them know words would shatter the fragile reprieve they've carved out.

When Isabel finally speaks, her voice is low, roughened by exhaustion—but sharp enough to cut him open.

"You were stupid," she mutters. Her head doesn't turn, eyes fixed somewhere in the shadows ahead. "Letting Shachi and Penguin meddle with that ray gun. You knew better."

Law exhales, long and heavy.

It's a relief to hear her speak, especially about the events that led them here.

That means she's fully recovered. Probably.

Law is physically fine. Mentally...

Yeah. Another trauma to add to the box of discarded nightmares he keeps locked tight.

"I told them not to touch it," Law drawls, voice roughened with fatigue. He wants to sleep. Badly.

He doesn't trust Zoro or Alyssa—under normal circumstances, a problem he would care about. But Isabel can handle them. If his working theory is correct—that only she can access her power here—then the odds tilt in their favor. Still, he keeps running the possibilities: ambush, betrayal, the ugly image of Zoro and Alyssa's bodies splitting open into the creatures that stalk these halls.

Law doesn't like the thought. Or the hollow, useless churn it leaves in his chest.

But—

But, he repeats. Isabel is reliable.

She will handle them swiftly.

Law trusts her.

Law blinks.

Oh.

"Stupid man," Isabel mumbles. It's without anger.

Law doesn't reply.

He thinks. A lot, about escape plans, about what he's seen, about their current situation. Everything that has gone wrong has, and by some miracle, remedied by chance and the backup, brilliant contingency Isabel implemented on a crewmate. Law hadn't even known about whatever seal Alyssa spoke about briefly. It makes him swallow, the skull of glistening purple iris burning on his skin.

Thinking about Isabel is making him spiral.

So he'll choose to discover other matters instead of asking her if she remembers him. All of him. Flevance.

"We need to get out of here," he says finally, voice flat but heavy with intent.

"We do," Isabel agrees instantly.

"But we have limited solutions," he continues. Alyssa's gambit won't happen twice. That miracle was spent. One in a million, and he loathes admitting they'd needed it.

Isabel shifts, just slightly against him, and Law feels the hesitation before she speaks.

"There's... another way." Her voice is quieter now, the sharp edges dulled with something he doesn't often hear from her: reluctance. "But I don't know if you'd be willing to do it."

Law's eyes snap to her profile, narrowing. Intent. Relentless. That surgical focus that never misses. "How do you know?"

Her silence is answer enough. He feels her draw back—not physically, but behind the shield of her own thoughts, the walls he can't see past.

"Tell me," Law presses, the words low, almost a growl. "If there's a way out, we're taking it. We need to get out."

But Isabel doesn't answer. She stares into the shadows, lips pressed tight.

The thud of footsteps interrupts. Heavy boots and Alyssa's lighter tread. Zoro shoulders the last wardrobe into place, and Alyssa calls from the hall, "It's clear. Nothing moving, not for now."

Law tears his gaze from Isabel. His hat lies several feet away on the cracked floorboards, miraculously untouched, though the corpse of a twisted, half-decayed creature is sprawled beside it, its innards leaking in a smear across the floor. His eyes linger a moment longer than necessary. Later, he thinks absently, he'll want to dissect it. For answers.

He makes to stand, stiff and oddly fine. He rolls his shoulder, testing the power of the woman Alyssa's odd vial that he won't question, for Isabel's sake. Other than a dull soreness, he's completely fine. Incredible.

That's another thing he'll dissect for answers. The properties of Alyssa's power are too crucial to let pass by.

He walks forward, thinking heavily on Isabel's response. Not the focus, though.

Guarded hope springs. What isn't she telling him?

Law feels a shot of frustration. They've been through too much for these childish guessing games. He intends to get the answer, one way or another. He is sick of this place.

He reaches for the hat instead, brushing dust from the brim before setting it on his head. His chest aches with the movement.

Hours. Somehow, hours have passed.

Law finally regards Alyssa and Zoro, who'd been conversing among themselves. Alyssa is standing beside Isabel, holding her hand. And Isabel lets her.

Law is so fucking tired.

"Well?" He snarks, unintentionally. All eyes turn toward him.

Isabel's, the most damning of all.

They're soft. Again.

Law looks away. Like a coward, down the hall. "Are there bedrooms?"

"If you consider shitty, moldy ones, then yeah," Zoro remarks blandly.

Good enough for Law.

[x . x]

Everyone tries to sleep through the night. Or at least, they pretend to. Nobody has the strength for discussion, and Law, of all people, isn't inclined to drag anyone into one.

A rare thing. But after the chaos he's gone through, his body demands rest. He needs time to collect himself, time to force the cracks in his mind back into something resembling discipline. Unfortunately, his head won't give him the privilege.

They've scattered to separate rooms. It's safer that way—or at least it looks safer. Law doesn't trust Zoro or Alyssa, not even this mansion's walls to keep whatever prowls outside from bleeding through.

Hence why he takes the room beside Isabel.

He tells himself he just needs to sleep off the poison, the drug, whatever it was that dragged him half-alive back to his own skin. But his body is at war with his mind: his bones scream for sleep, his veins buzz with unease. The ceiling above becomes his only companion, blank and endless, as if mocking the ocean he's separated from.

Law doesn't think this is an island at all. The logic doesn't add up. The horizon is wrong, the sky refuses to shift, and time itself feels trapped in a loop. Something deep in the marrow of his instincts insists this place is... something else. Something older. And that thought drives him mad.

So mad that exhaustion never arrives.

So he does what he always does when sleep abandons him: he revisits the past. He replays choices like a surgeon dissecting his own mistakes. He sees Flevance in flashes—the ash-white streets, the sickness seeping into children's smiles, the endless funerals. He sees Corazon, too, warmth and fire and sacrifice, burning across every shadow. The ache opens inside his chest like an untreated wound, throbbing, infected, festering, no matter how many years he pretends he's stitched it closed.

Sometimes he thinks the White Lead never left him. It must've calcified in his bones and rewired his heart. The rot of it will always remind him he's temporary, poisoned, defective.

It's pathetic. But tonight he feels pathetic. Filthy, unkempt, exhausted, and still somehow too restless to stop thinking.

And of course—he thinks about Isabel.

About how she claimed, almost carelessly, that there was a way out of here. And how she refused to explain. He knows her well enough to see the omission for what it is: deliberate. That knowledge scratches against him, splinters beneath his skin. If she knows, why won't she speak? If she's holding back, then the price of escape must be one he won't want to pay.

Death? Blood? A sacrifice of power?

The possibilities spiral, and Law's mind drags him deeper into their weight. He's tired of losing things. Of trading pieces of himself—crew, mentors, fragments of sanity—just to survive. He can't afford another loss.

Which is why he doesn't ask her. He tells himself it's restraint.

In truth, it's cowardice.

A sound jolts him.

Three soft knocks against his door.

Law's chest tightens instantly. His body betrays him, freezing. Instinct whispers for silence, to feign sleep. His pulse spikes with suspicion. Why now? Who is it? He doesn't want the answer. He wants the peace of being ignored.

And then—

"Law?"

Isabel's voice.

His eyes snap open, burning in the dark. Something inside him jumps painfully, traitorously, against his ribs.

He sits up, sluggish, not even bothering to appear remotely presentable. His clothes are ripped, his skin still tacky with dried blood, his hands trembling faintly from adrenaline he refuses to admit hasn't ebbed. His hat—of all things—still sits crooked on his head like some parody of stability. He doesn't move to adjust it.

"Come in," he mutters, voice flat, heavy with exhaustion.

The door creaks. Slowly, carefully, Isabel slips in. The shadows of the hall frame her, her eyes glinting violet as they catch the dim light of the moon that refuses to go away. It's ridiculous, how his heartbeat reacts—how the simple sight of her makes something in his chest lurch, a soundless gasp trapped in his throat.

He hates his stupid, treacherous body.

She doesn't stride, doesn't stand tall with her usual air of command. She lingers in the doorway, violet eyes catching the moonlight, expression—Law can't decide—uncertain? Vulnerable? He's seen her composed under fire, sharp when pressed, but this version of her is something else entirely. Something that makes him sit up straighter, alert despite his fatigue.

"What's wrong?" His tone sharpens instantly. "Did something happen?"

Her face doesn't twitch. No hesitation, no flinch. "Things are fine," she says evenly. "As fine as they can be here, anyway."

Law studies her. He doesn't believe her, but she isn't giving anything away. He'll have to take her word for it because he doesn't hear any commotion outside. She isn't leaving either. She wants something. A thought occurs to him. Maybe this is it. Maybe she's ready to tell him what she knows about this cursed place, and how they'll manage to get out.

But she doesn't move for further conversation. She just stands there, staring at him, silent.

Law narrows his eyes. The tension gnaws at him. "Look, Isabel-ya," he mutters, voice low and edged, "just spit it out already."

If he tells her he's tired, she'll bolt. He knows it. And he can't risk her walking away, not when she's standing here, when she looks like she's about to finally hand him the key to everything.

But Isabel doesn't spit it out. Her gaze drifts instead—toward the barred window. The moonlight brushes over her features, softening them, and Law's chest tightens. She looks almost fragile, almost breakable in that pale glow. It rattles him. He shouldn't be noticing this. Not now.

"I don't know what to think," Isabel says at last, voice quiet but deliberate. "Or what to do."

Something lances through him—alarm, anticipation, a rush of heat that nearly knocks the breath from his lungs. She's going to bring it up. The cabin. Her words before she collapsed. She remembers something. She must.

Law shifts, scooting sideways on the bed, leaving space. He gestures subtly. "Sit." His voice is gruff, practiced, the way he addresses patients when he wants them close enough to treat.

For a moment, she just looks at him—measuring, weighing. Then she steps away from the doorframe and shuts the door behind her before she sits down beside him. Too close. Their shoulders nearly brush, warmth bleeding into him. He doesn't move away. He can't.

Law forces himself to keep his breathing even.

Isabel draws in a sharp breath. And then, abruptly, she blurts: "Do you know the name Flevance?"

The world stops.

Law's heart slams so violently against his ribs that he almost misses his own response. "...Yes."

Silence engulfs the room, viscous and suffocating.

Law's ears ring with the echo of that single word.

So I was right.

He waits, every nerve in his body strained taut, praying, dreading.

Then Isabel turns to him. Her eyes are wide, shocked, and yet—sad. The slow, trembling nod she gives him hits harder than a bullet.

Does she remember?

Law grips the edge of the mattress until his knuckles blanch. He wants to say something—anything—but the words choke out before they can form. So he stays silent. Breathless. Watching her.

They sit together like that, bound by the unspoken weight of the past. A fragile, loaded quiet.

Then Isabel pushes herself up, suddenly and sharply.

Without a word, she storms out, the door groaning shut behind her.

Law is left sitting there, stunned, confusion and hope and fear all clawing at his chest.

He stares at the space she vacated, the silence now deafening.

What happened?

[x . x]

Morning does come. Miraculously.

The abandoned mansion looks different in daylight, though not less unsettling. What was once drowned in oppressive darkness is now laid bare, pale light filtering through the tall, iron-celled windows. Dust motes float lazily in the beams, almost serene, but the calm feels wrong—mocking. The cold breeze seeping in through the cracks in the warped wood smells faintly of damp and rot. The chandeliers overhead sway on rusted chains, their unlit candles dripping dried wax like stalactites. The wooden floors creak beneath every footstep, announcing movement even when no one speaks. The night of horror has bled into day, and the mansion, though quieter, has not lost its edge.

Law hasn't slept for shit. His eyes are ringed with shadows, his coat clinging heavy and stiff with dried blood and grime. He's up, pacing restlessly, when Isabel finds him.

She looks better than she has any right to—her hair is neatly tied back, not a strand out of place. But her face betrays her; her eye bags hang heavier than his, skin pale from exhaustion. She hasn't slept either.

Law notices immediately that something is wrong. She doesn't look at him.

"Good morning," he mutters, voice rough.

She doesn't answer. Her face stays neutral, unreadable, as she strides past him. Law lingers in the doorway, studying her, before reluctantly following. When he moves, she quickens her steps, pacing ahead, keeping distance.

Law doesn't push it. But unease knots in his chest.

Something is wrong.

Either he said something, did something—hell if he knows. Isabel doesn't talk, and though he tells himself maybe she's just exhausted after everything, the memory of her storming off last night hangs heavy. Overwhelmed, maybe. Or something else.

When they reach the foyer, Zoro and Alyssa are already there. The place looks like a battlefield turned waiting room.

Zoro sits slouched on the floor, one knee propped up, his forearm resting lazily across it. His other arm is braced behind his head against the wall, but the casual posture is betrayed by the blood still smeared across his torso, half-dried into his haramaki. He hasn't bothered to clean it. His expression says he doesn't care.

Alyssa leans against the opposite wall, fiddling with an empty potion bottle between her fingers. Her pink skirt is stiff with dried blood, her black tank top clings uncomfortably with sweat and other fluids Law doesn't want to identify. Her hair's a tangled mess, sticking damp to her neck. She looks as worn as he feels, though her sharp eyes scan the window with defiant alertness, as if daring the island to try again.

The morning outside looks deceptively peaceful. The island that had been locked in night forever is washed in muted daylight, the kind that feels temporary, like it could fade at any moment. Birds are quiet. The breeze through the broken shutters is crisp, cold, and oddly clean, carrying the scent of damp leaves. It should be a relief. Instead, it feels fragile, a thin veil stretched over what happened hours ago.

As Law and Isabel step in, Isabel lets her steps fall louder than necessary, the hollow thuds of her boots echoing across the foyer. Alyssa looks up, startled, then brightens when she sees Isabel.

She pushes off the wall, strolling over. The two of them exchange hushed words, voices low, sharing something private. Alyssa eventually pulls back, giving Isabel a faint, reassuring nod before returning to her post by the window.

Law watches, silent.

Isabel doesn't look at him. Doesn't say a word to him. Doesn't say much to anyone, really, but the sting is there all the same. He feels like an outcast in a group where he should be the anchor. She should be at his side—confiding in him, trusting him. He's known her the longest. She remembers their childhood now. That should mean something.

He presses his lips into a hard line, shaking his head. He's overthinking. Letting exhaustion chew holes in his reasoning.

It doesn't matter. They need to get out of here.

His gaze shifts to Alyssa, who's watching him now with something sharp in her expression, something bordering on haughtiness. Law straightens, crossing his arms.

"Alyssa-ya," he says evenly, his voice hoarse from disuse. "I need a rundown of your power. Same with Strawhat-ya."

"Can we get a shower first?" Alyssa whines, lifting her hands and gesturing down at herself. "I feel disgusting."

Law stares, unblinking. She can't be serious.

"The showers don't work here," Zoro says, flat as ever.

"No," Alyssa drawls, heavy with sarcasm, "no way, really? It's like that wasn't the reason I was asking!"

"Oh." Zoro finally cracks an eye open, lips twitching. "I thought you were asking because you stink like shit."

Alyssa kicks his shin, hard. He doesn't even budge, though something sharp flickers across his mouth like he wants to grin. "Look who's fucking talking! You smell like marinated ass cheeks!"

Law's eye twitches. If they keep this up, he's going to lose his mind.

"We do need a shower," Isabel says at last, voice cutting through. Law's head snaps toward her, too fast and eager for the sound of her voice. She stands with her arms crossed, gaze pinned to the floorboards. The dark circles beneath her eyes seem carved deeper in the pale morning light, but her hair remains pristine. Her composure seems irritatingly intact. She looks tired. Bone-tired. "We need to find a body of fresh water. To drink. To wash up. And food, too. We may have to head out and check."

"Through the front door?" Alyssa points toward the barricaded double doors, massive and splintered, sunlight leaking in thin cracks that catch the dust in the air.

Isabel shakes her head slowly. "There's a back door."

Law's gaze sharpens. "You went exploring?"

She only shrugs and offers nothing more.

His jaw clenches, a breath caught hard in his throat. She knows a way out—and she hasn't told him. And now, she barely speaks at all.

If this goes on much longer, Law thinks grimly, he's going to go crazy.

"We need a plan," Law starts again, his voice firm like he's already bracing for someone to dismiss it.

"Or we can just rely on scythey over here," Zoro mutters, jerking his thumb toward Isabel without lifting his back off the wall.

Law's glare is immediate, sharp and cutting, but Zoro doesn't even flinch. He's not even looking at him.

Straw Hats are annoying.

"No, we need a plan," Alyssa urges, leaning forward on her knees. Law feels a bit better at the emphasis. "We can't just rely on Isabel. She's tired."

"It's fine," Isabel lets out, almost like a sigh, her eyes half-lidded as though speaking costs her more effort than she wants to admit.

"It's not," Alyssa snaps, shoulders tensing.

"It really is," Isabel's voice turns sharper, side-eye flicking toward her in warning.

The silence that follows drags, tight and fragile. Alyssa rubs her temple. "Fine. Whatever you say. Don't overwork yourself."

Isabel doesn't bother replying. She just exhales through her nose, gaze slipping to the ground.

Law shifts awkwardly, scratching at the dried blood crusted against his neck. He hates this. The air is heavy with irritation and exhaustion, and the fragile thread holding them together feels like it could snap at any moment. Their morale is already scraping rock-bottom, and their defenses against the creatures outside are all but spent.

He knows they need a plan. He knows it. But with limited supplies, dwindling energy, and the constant threat lurking beyond the mansion walls, their choices are brutally thin. The main priority has to be sustenance. Food, water, something to keep them upright. As much as Law wants to demand answers from Isabel—demand how they're supposed to survive this place—some part of him knows it won't be simple. Whatever it takes to escape, it will cost them something. And they aren't ready for that. Not like this.

"If we head out, we stay together," Law finally says, thinking aloud, trying to ground himself in strategy. "We'll assemble in four. Two in the front, two in the back. Zoro-ya will clear a path with his swords so we have a way to retreat if needed. He's forward. Alyssa will be next to him, keeping lookout. Sharp eyes."

Zoro grunts, unimpressed. Alyssa just blinks.

"Isabel-ya and I will cover the rear. I'll take the left. Isabel, the right. She's our main line of defense, so if anything slips through, she's there to intercept. Clear?"

Alyssa tilts her head, blinking owlishly at him. "Huh? Did you say something?"

Law resists the urge to drag a hand down his face.

"Alyssa," Isabel hisses, voice edged in annoyance.

"What?" Alyssa picks at dried blood on her cheek, and Law sees it flake. "I'm sorry, I got lost in thought."

"You always do that when a man is talking," Zoro adds blandly, like he's been waiting all morning to throw it at her.

"Yeah, well, that's because they never say anything interesting."

Law's teeth grind together. His patience feels like paper about to tear.

"We'll be heading out in groups of two," Isabel cuts in, voice clipped, taking control before the argument spirals. She raises two fingers. "You'll be in the front with Zoro. I'll be behind you with Law. Is that clear?"

Alyssa clicks her tongue but nods. "Crystal."

"Good." Isabel doesn't waste another second. She turns on her heel, stalking toward the back hall. "Then let's move. We don't know how long daylight will last."

Law breathes out slowly, a tiny thread of agreement slipping from him.

That, at least, is something he can agree upon.

[x . x]

Everyone is on edge.

The heat is unbearable. The air feels like it's burning his lungs.

The sky blazes white, washed out as if bleached by fire, but the sun itself is nowhere to be found, hidden behind that relentless glare. The trees cast shadows that do nothing. Thin, needle-like veils of shade mock their existence rather than soothe. The humidity clings like a fevered hand; sweat beads and runs down Law's forehead in stubborn rivulets. He swipes it away again, only for more to spill. His shirt sticks damp against his spine. His pulse feels thick in his throat. No one speaks.

Alyssa keeps her eyes sharp, crouching now and then to pluck leaves and roots with quick, sure fingers. Law suspects she knows which ones might save them from infection, which might keep them alive, though he doesn't ask.

Zoro hacks through the jungle with a steady rhythm, his broad shoulders glistening, muscles flexing as the blade slices. The sound of steel through vegetation is harsh, almost violent, but reassuring in its consistency. He seems almost unbothered by the heat, a furnace made flesh, cutting their way forward with machine-like patience.

They have no destination. No drift. Just a straight line carved into the endless green.

Law checks behind them often, eyes flicking over the path. He half-expects it to knit itself closed again, swallowing the trail whole, erasing their existence in one slow breath. So far, the way remains. But he doesn't trust it. The island feels aware—its silence too deliberate, its air too heavy. He imagines it biding its time, waiting for nightfall to erase every trace of their steps and strand them deeper, swallowed whole.

It's a risk they have to take if they want to survive.

Beside him, Isabel moves with grim purpose. Her blade slices through vines as she scratches her insignia into the bark of trees and trunks as marks of proof that this is the way. Smart. Law silently commends her. It's the kind of small, vital thing he nearly forgot, lost in the haze of thirst and heat.

They all keep guard. Eyes darting. Muscles strung tight.

The march feels endless. Walls of green, pressed in too close. Trees, vines, and shrubs tangle thick as chains. There's no coast or familiar glimmer of blue. Not even a whisper of the ocean they once knew was there.

The silence is thick and absolute. No birds. No chitter of insects. No rustle of beasts. The jungle is alive but voiceless, as though it has swallowed all other life. And if there is no wildlife... there is no food.

Law's tongue drags against the roof of his mouth, thick and dry as leather. His head feels fuzzy, light—his thoughts like a staggered heartbeat. Dehydration, heat stroke, and worse flashes in his mind with cruel possibilities: kidneys shutting down, skin peeling, tumors blooming from this brutal, unrelenting sky. His own thoughts betray him, spinning too easily into nightmare.

And then, finally, something shifts.

Zoro slashes through a curtain of branches. The blade cleaves clean, revealing open air—and Zoro jerks to a sudden stop, boots scuffing, nearly pitching into empty space. Alyssa snags his arm without thinking, steadying him with a grunt.

"Found something," he rumbles, voice low.

Law and Isabel hurry forward, hearts pounding. The sight makes Law's breath catch in his chest.

A hollow yawns wide before them, vast as an open wound in the island's body. At its center, a lake glimmers—a vast, rippling expanse fed by a waterfall that crashes with thunderous force, spray misting the air. The noise alone is enough to break the silence, a roar that feels like salvation after hours of oppressive stillness. Lush grass carpets the banks, dotted with flowers so vivid they almost seem unreal, blood-reds and burning golds swaying in the damp air. Insects hum. Butterflies wheel. Bees dart between blossoms. Life.

And from the branches of massive, broad-leafed trees, heavy fruits hang like offerings. Alien in color, swollen and ripe, but promising.

It's salvation. Or it looks like it.

Law's gut twists. He glances at the others. Their eyes flicker with the same cautious hunger, the same disbelief.

"Who's going first?" Alyssa asks, her voice dry, frayed.

"Could be a trap," Isabel murmurs, echoing the thought already gnawing in Law's head.

"Could be salvation," Zoro counters, too blunt to mask his hope.

"We proceed with caution," Law declares, voice firm despite the rasp in his throat. "If this is a trick, we won't get second chances. But we can't ignore it either."

"Over there," Alyssa points.

Stone steps, half-devoured by moss, spiral down the slope toward the water. They look jagged and feel ancient.

"And a house," Zoro adds, voice lower now.

Law squints. Sure enough, nestled against the bank sits a weathered yellow house, its walls dulled with grime, its roof patched with mismatched rose-colored tiles—half missing, half clinging stubbornly to the frame. Time has battered it, but it still stands. Whole enough to shelter a family. Whole enough to hide one.

He chances a look at Isabel. Her expression is unreadable, carved to stone. She looks expectant.

Law drags a hand down his face, sighing. His nerves are already sparking like live wires. "We'll take the stairs. See what we're dealing with."

"Fine by me," Zoro says.

"Finally." Alyssa lifts one foot, sandal dangling from her blistered heel, and rubs the sole with a wince. "I'm done walking."

"We'll rest soon," Isabel murmurs softly.

Alyssa smiles at her, tired but grateful.

Law doesn't smile. He can't. His gut is still heavy and a knot of dread refuses to loosen. If this place is real—if it's safe—then it's everything they need.

But there's only one way to know.

He nods once at Zoro. "Lead the way."

"Not a good idea," Alyssa mutters. "He's hopeless with directions. So am I. Switch."

Isabel steps forward. Her eyes find Law's, steady.

Law exhales through his nose. "Fine. We switch."

And so they descend.