Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Penguin finally manages to get their drink orders in among the hubbub of the crowded bar, he only half-hears the quiet laugh coming from his left. 

“Expensive tastes, huh?” the man who the laugh belonged to asks, making no effort to obscure the fact that he was the source of the sound. He’s tall, that much is obvious even with both of them sitting, his legs folded almost uncomfortably under the wooden bar top. His hair is blond and messy, cropped awkwardly uneven, as though done in a hurry by someone who’d never held a pair of scissors in their life. His cheeks are gaunt and his skin is pale, almost paper-white, which should by all accounts mean that the details of his appearance add up to one sorry picture, but the smile on his lips seems so sincerely bright that Penguin can’t bring himself to pity him. “A man of culture. I commend you.”

“Want some?” he asks, figuring the comment must refer to the order he made for himself and Shachi – a North Blue cognac their captain had put them onto. Not that ordering hot chocolate makes Bepo any less of a man – bear? – of culture, but the stranger looks like he needs a stiff drink.

“‘Fraid I don’t have the funds for that,” the man laughs, gesturing at the shirt he is wearing. Or, well – to call the piece of fabric on his upper body a shirt would be rather generous, Penguin comes to realise very quickly as he casts his eyes over the other’s torso, but that’s probably the polite term to use. In any case, it’s worn and thin, threads sticking out in every which direction. If it’s at all indicative of the man’s financial situation, Penguin supposes his comment is fair enough. “Or anything else, really. Dirt poor, me. Just here to people-watch.”

But it’s been a long week, and here’s something else Penguin supposes: if a man wants a drink around here, he damn better get a drink.

“Hey, barkeep!” he calls out, resting his elbows on the splintery wood. “Three glasses for the cognac actually, please!” And then, leaning back to grin at the stranger: “It’s a good fuckin’ day. I’m paying.”

The man regards him with a look Penguin can’t quite decipher for a moment. He almost starts doubting his own assessment of the situation, but then the stranger’s expression softens, and he ducks his head with a soft laugh.

“That is kind of you,” he says. “Thank you.”

Penguin slaps him on the back. The stranger twitches, but before he can feel bad about pushing an unspoken boundary, the man exhales and shifts closer, clasping his hands together. He’s staring straight ahead of himself even as Penguin looks at him, but his jolt at the touch is towards Penguin’s palm, not away from it. Most of Penguin’s experience with handling touch starvation comes from knowing his captain when they were both snotty-nosed brats, but at least he’s adept enough at recognising the signs.

“Of course,” Penguin grins, bumping their shoulders together and taking a moment to appreciate the fact that he’s had the opportunity to learn just how walk the plank between extroverted stranger and sticking his nose into someone else’s business. “Come drink with us, man. No time to make new friends like the present!”

He thinks he may be laying it on a little thick – the guy looks like he needs company, yes but maybe not the overbearing type – but fortunately, his familiar rambunctiousness doesn’t seem to be taken as an insult. The man just chuckles, peering at Penguin through clumped blond lashes.

“No time indeed,” he says, and when the bartender places their orders on the wooden surface between them, Penguin can’t help but appreciate an extra pair of hands. 

(The stranger does trip over his own feet on his way to the secluded table Bepo and Shachi have picked out in the corner, but the glasses he’s clutching at are empty given that Penguin had ordered a whole bottle of the cognac in advance and elected to carry it, so he doesn’t feel the need to gripe about it.)

“Sorry about that,” the man chuckles, placing the glasses on the table cautiously. Penguin is about to shoot a warning glance to Bepo and Shachi so they don’t ask too many questions, but there doesn’t end up being much of a need: at the tail end of the fall of Doflamingo’s Dressrosa, drinking with strangers turns out to be the rule, not the exception.

What Shachi does tell the stranger is, “You look like shit,” and Bepo nearly trips over himself with subsequent apologies, which is quite a feat given that he is sitting down. The stranger seems to take no offence to it though, laughing heartily as he tucks his (truly freakishly long) legs under their table.

“Being a prisoner for thirteen years will do that to you,” he says in an airy tone, holding Shachi’s gaze with a pointed gaze of his own. Penguin admires the attempt, but if there is one thing he knows about his oldest friend, it’s that it’s damn near impossible to make Shachi uncomfortable.

“Well then, no wonder you need a drink,” he snorts, making grabby hands at the bottle Penguin is still holding. Penguin forks it over.

It’s just the three of them – well, four now, with the stranger – the rest of the Heart Pirates either busy dealing with the fallout of overthrowing a tyrant or getting the party on elsewhere. Penguin hopes their captain is sleeping off his injuries, though he’s well aware of the level of wishful thinking involved in assuming that Law will be capable of staying asleep for more than an hour without bolting up in cold sweat for the nearest week or so. At least he’s got his many plans to keep him busy, not to mention the ever-distracting company of the Straw Hat Pirates, but Penguin’s not stupid enough to assume that coming face to face with the frequent main character of his nightmares and living to tell the tale won’t have left its mark. He’ll talk to him about it, one day, when they’ll both have had a little more time to process. For now though, he drinks.

To call the amount of cognac Shachi pours into the round glasses generous would be an understatement, but you’re certainly not going to catch Penguin complaining. Judging by his appreciative gaze, the stranger isn’t planning on it either. Shachi clinks his glass against the side of Bepo’s mug and takes a sip.

“So, thirteen years?” he asks, conversationally, peering at the stranger through the shades from under the brim of his hat. Penguin would tell him off for being insensitive, but he can’t deny his own curiosity. And besides, if the man didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t have to bring it up in the first place. As it stands, he doesn’t seem offended by the question, swirling the drink around in his glass and watching the light refract through the amber liquid.

“Or so,” he hums, “depending on how you want to count it.”

It’s not really a detailed answer, but then, it wasn’t really a detailed question, and Shachi accepts what he’s been given with grace. After everything the people of Dressrosa have been through, it’s only polite not to pry.

“And what about all of you?” the stranger asks, refusing, it seems, to let the silence linger any longer than it needs to. “New in town, or no such luck? Minks are not a common sight around these parts, no offence.” He inclines his glass towards Bepo, who gives him a sheepish gaze and mutters an apology into his mug. Penguin maintains that they’re going to teach him not to apologise for every little thing one of these days, but after the week they’ve had, he’s not quite ready to fight another battle. At least the stranger turns out to know enough about the world to not freak out over a talking bear. Small blessings.

(Then again, talking bears seem to have been a norm in Dressrosa for a while there, teddy or not, so at least they’ve got that going for them.)

“With everything that’s been going on here, calling it luck feels almost insufficient,” Shachi chuckles, lips twisting into a mournful smile. They all know why they can’t have made their move against Doflamingo any earlier, but that knowledge is of precious little comfort to the what-ifs. “But yes, not from around here. We’re pirates, actually.”

It’s not the sort of information they’d usually volunteer to people who don’t recognise them from wanted posters, but there’s nothing usual about what’s going on here, so the confession seems to come easy. It doesn’t stop the stranger’s eyes from widening for a moment, not scared per se but on guard, before his shoulders relax again.

“Are you guys the ones responsible for kicking Doflamingo’s ass, then?” he asks, sounding half incredulous and half impressed. They nod as one (not very humble, but hey, credit where credit is due), and the man throws his head back with a laugh. “Well, shit. If anything, I should be buying you a drink.”

Penguin raises an eyebrow (the effect of it is lost under his hat, but he nonetheless likes to think it affects his delivery) and gestures to the stranger’s shirt. He laughs again.

“Touché.”

The man drinks slowly, having only taken a sip in the time it takes Penguin to practically drain his glass, though if he really was one of the poor bastards whose Dressrosa experience was worse than average, Penguin supposes he can’t judge – his alcohol tolerance must’ve taken a bit of a hit. Still, it’s nice to see the smile on his face widen when the liquor hits his tongue.

“Quite the feat,” he says, “to take down a mighty Warlord of the Sea.” His voice is flat, still, pleasant even, but there is something in the way his lips curl around the words that Penguin can’t help but find unsettling. It’s hatred, yes, but not only hatred. It’s the look Penguin notices on their captain’s face sometimes, but turned up to a thousand.

It’s… none of his business, really.

“Yeah, well,” he says (maybe a little too cheerily, but the man seems to take it in stride), “we had the Straw Hats on our side, so you know. With their track record, it’d be more of a surprise if we didn’t.”

“I’m sure that would mean something to me,” the man chuckles, “if I had read a single newspaper this decade.”

Which is a terrible loss for him, frankly speaking – the tales of the Straw Hat shenanigans have been a great contributor to the increase in Penguin’s enjoyment of the news (as well as Law’s blood pressure) – so they spend the next ten minutes catching the guy up on all the messes their allies have gotten themselves into and then out of, for the most part. He listens with rapt attention, eyes wide and sparkling, and although Penguin is usually very grateful for the fact that his captain isn’t batshit insane, he can’t deny that he is sometimes a little jealous that their adventures aren’t nearly as entertaining to recount. Then again, if being on this side of it is always this fucking tiring, he’ll gladly leave the novel-worthy stunts in the Straw Hats’ occasionally capable hands.

(He’s not thinking about going after Kaido today, thank you very much.)

“And so their captain decided that our captain is his friend now,” he concludes, throwing back the rest of his second drink, “which in his worldview apparently means being terrifyingly ride-or-die, so when we told him we’re going after Doflamingo, he didn’t even hesitate.”

“Which is for the best,” Shachi adds, refilling it for him. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re no chumps, but I doubt we could’ve done it without them.”

Penguin wraps his fingers around the glass.

“Well,” he says.

“Well,” Shachi says.

“Well?” the stranger echoes. He doesn’t say anything else, just watches, curious, and Penguin is but a man easily swayed by peer pressure.

“Don’t tell him I told you this,” he blurts out after a moment, spurred on by the silence and more loose-tongued with the cognac than he probably should be (though, hey, the rest of them don’t try to stop him, so there’s at least an equal distribution of blame). “But if the Straw Hats didn’t interfere, I doubt our captain would still be alive today.”

The stranger tips his head to the side, a silent invitation to continue. Penguin sighs.

“He was planning – well, we’re still not one hundred percent sure if he was planning for the possibility of his death, or genuinely intending for his death to be a part of the plan–” (“It’s the latter,” Shachi mutters sullenly against the rim of his glass as Bepo averts his eyes) – “but the way he was talking about it, you’d think it was a done deal.” It still makes him shudder to think about the nonchalant practicality with which Law had discussed who will take on the burden of captaincy in the event of his passing. “Not that we didn’t do our damnedest to stop him, but he’s a fucking immovable object.” He smirks. “Helps that Straw Hat is an unstoppable force.”

“Helps that Straw Hat is unfamiliar with the concept of following a plan, more like,” Shachi snorts. “He wouldn’t know reason if it hit him in the face.”

“In his defence, way too many things hit him in the face to tell the difference,” Penguin shrugs, the two of them cackling at the easy back-and-forth. Bepo still looks unsettled by the topic at hand, but in their defence, it’s easier to make bad jokes about something that didn’t happens than it is to agonise about just how easily it could have.

It’s a little more difficult to tell whether the stranger agrees with the sentiment, though his eyes, when Penguin meets them, are a little misty. “Quite the dedication to the cause,” he says softly. “Doflamingo more than deserved what was coming to him, but would it really have been worth dying for?”

“It would be to the captain,” Penguin sighs. And then, because they really know how to make a drink in the North Blue, or maybe because the stranger still looks so conflicted at the notion, and definitely because Law isn’t here to hear him gossip: “Doflamingo killed his father.”

The stranger blinks. His expression shifts in a way Penguin can’t articulate, though it’s hard to say whether that’s because it’s so subtle, or because he’s too distracted by Shachi kicking him under the table for running his mouth.

“Oh,” the man says. “Well, we’ve got that in common.”

“No shit,” Shachi says, sympathetically, and when he raises his eyebrows, it does have the intended effect. “Man, what’s his fucking damage?”

“What isn’t his fucking damage,” the stranger shrugs, deadpan, which is an accurate summary if Penguin’s ever heard one. “You’d like to think there’s a reason for these things, but sometimes, people are just… cruel.”

“But sometimes they aren’t”, Bepo says, softly. It’s the first thing he really contributed to the exchange beyond muttered apologies, but Penguin would be hard-pressed to deny that it is a remarkably good contribution. The stranger looks up at him, smiling.

“But sometimes they aren’t,” he agrees. “Give my best wishes to your captain, would you? Revenge is a motive I can get behind, but it does taste sweeter when you live to tell the tale.”

It’s a more exhausting conversation that Penguin was emotionally prepared to have today, truth be told, but it doesn’t not leave him feeling a little lighter. They’re still going to have to talk to Law about this eventually, and Penguin is definitely not looking forward to the amount of unimpressed glares it’ll get them, but their captain is still around to give them said unimpressed glares, and that’s a trade-off Penguin would accept any day of the week.

Or something.

Ugh, liquor makes him sappy.

“What about you, then?” he rushes to ask the stranger before his traitorous brain makes him blurt out something stupidly sentimental (Shachi has enough blackmail material on him as is). “Any plans now that this whole thing’s over?”

“Honestly, I’m trying not to think about it,” the man chuckles, taking another sip of his drink as though to prove his point. “I mean, it’s – I’ve been here for as long as Doflamingo’s been here, and I was under his thumb way longer than that. The fact that I can make my own choices now is a bit overwhelming.”

“Wait, he brought you here with him?” Shachi confirms, blinking. Penguin supposes that does explain the thirteen years. “Shit, man. How’d that happen?”

“Long story,” the stranger sighs, draping one arm across the back of his chair. “It doesn’t start with this, but a couple years before he got to Dressrosa, he put a few bullets in my chest. Had me knocked out for a while, so I couldn’t run. And then – well.” He waves his hand vaguely at their surroundings, though it’s hard to tell just how much of the situation he is trying to encapsulate with one gesture. There is a faraway look in his eyes.

“He really likes shooting people, doesn’t he?” Penguin blurts out, because some things just don’t lend themselves to good responses. Shachi kicks him under the table again, but the stranger doesn’t seem to take offence, a laugh slipping past his lips.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Penguin is pretty sure that he knows… well, if not the half, then at least a quarter, a disjointed collage of Doflamingo as a person glued together from late-night drunken rambles aboard the Polar Tang and the angry tears in their captain’s eyes as he wakes up from nightmares than never quite go away, but he supposes that if the stranger really has been around the Warlord for as long as he says, he’s got a few more data points to bolster his conclusions. It seems like such an easy thing to lose yourself in, all the strings and schemes and gunshots. He knows it’s hardly an original sentiment, but he’s glad Doflamingo is gone.

“Good luck figuring it out, then,” he says, and he means it. He has no doubt that if the stranger hasn’t thrown in the towel yet, he’ll do just fine for himself with Doflamingo out of the picture, but a well-wish is no skin off his back. It gets him a smile.

“Any suggestions on where to start?”

Penguin would be almost tempted to introduce him to Law – there’s a guy who knows how to rebuild his life after escaping Doflamingo’s grasp, which is apparently more common a situation that one might initially think – if he wasn’t so sure that anything related to the Warlord will never not leave a sour taste in their captain’s mouth. Besides, for all that Law has the experience, it’d be a bit rich to say he’d made especially healthy choices with his second chance at life – see the whole willing to die for revenge thing – so perhaps the stranger would be better off without that particular example.

“Well, do you have any family left?” he asks, momentarily too distracted by the idea of anyone following in his captain’s footsteps to think the question through. And then, immediately coming to his senses as the stranger barks a disbelieving laugh and Bepo stares at him with all the disappointment a cuddly polar bear can muster: “I mean, uh – shit, sorry, I know we just talked about your dad, I wasn’t trying to–”

“No, no, it’s fine,” the stranger waves him off. He’s still smiling, but his smile twitches awkwardly at the corners, as though it takes effort to keep it from slipping. “I’m fine. It’s just – you couldn’t have picked a more complicated question to start with.” And then, before Penguin can mutter another apology or tell him that he doesn’t need to answer, because the stranger apparently either has no filter or no desire to use it for the sake of anyone else’s comfort: “My parents were murdered, my son is dead, and if I never see my brother again, I’ll still have a panic attack at the idea of being near him when I’m on my death bed.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then, Shachi grabs the cognac bottle and weighs it in his hand, scrunching his nose up at what he finds.

“If you guys were going to be like this,” he says, deadpan, “we should’ve gotten more liquor.”

“I’m sorry,” Bepo says at the same time, gently, because unlike the rest of them, Bepo isn’t an asshole. The stranger turns his smile towards him and pats him gently on the arm.

“You’re fine,” he says, voice light, just as it has been light moments prior (does he come with other settings?) “You’re all fine, really. Sorry for making it a whole thing.”

“Eh,” Penguin shrugs, finally finding his voice again. “If you’re going to go through shit like that, the least you should be allowed to do is to make it as much of a thing as you want.”

It still feels a bit flimsy as far as reassurances go, but the sentiment seems to be appreciated, so Penguin will take it as a win.

“There is one person,” the stranger adds after a moment, the faraway look creeping back into his eyes. “He was– well, he’s as close to a living father as I have, I suppose. He raised me. But I… did something, right before I got captured, that I know put us at odds.” His smile takes on a sardonic edge. “Think thirteen years was long enough for him to get over it?”

“Pretty sure thirteen years is long enough to get over most things,” Penguin shrugs, though he supposes nothing is ever a guarantee. “Worth a try, right? If he’s still mad, no harm no foul. And if he isn’t, you’ll have someone to help you figure shit out.”

“True enough,” the stranger concedes, chuckling under his breath. “He shouldn’t be hard to find, at least. Well, unless he finally retired, but even then, I’m pretty sure I still have some contacts…”

They lapse into silence for a moment as the stranger contemplates his next steps, Penguin and Shachi contemplate if they should be nicer to people, and Bepo probably contemplates the life choices that got him here. Then, the former seems to snap back to himself, slamming his hands on the table and straightening his back. This does mean he towers above all of them by at least a head, but if anything, having to look up at someone might be a novel experience for Bepo.

“Right,” the man says, firmly. “Right.” He finishes his cognac, or whatever is still left of it anyway, wiping the moisture off his lips with the back of his palm. “Thank you for the drink. And the company. And my life, I suppose.” He chuckles, though not with nearly enough levity to think him anything but sincere. Penguin thinks that he’d have to talk to him a little longer to learn to reliably discern between the different shades of his smiles, but he can’t imagine he’s wrong to accept the gratitude as genuine. “I’ve got a few calls to go make now, but this was… nice. Really.”

“Good luck!” Bepo cheers (because Shachi and Penguin clearly still have a ways to go in their contemplations.) “See you around! Or, well, maybe not, since we’re not really staying long, but I mean, if we’re ever – or you’re ever – or, uh, if we’re… both…” He blinks sheepishly at his failed attempts to talk himself out of a corner, ears twitching in minute distress. “Sorry.”

The stranger laughs, patting him on the shoulder as he gets up. “I hope I’ll see you around too, for what that’s worth,” he offers, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Actually, in case I do, may I ask your names? Might fool people into thinking we know each other for perfectly mundane reasons.”

“I don’t think anyone who knows us would buy that,” Penguin snickers, before drawing a small breath. “But sure. I’m Penguin. Yes, really. Yes, hence the hat. Yes, the fact that I ended up on a crew with a polar bear is a coincidence.” Through a good deal of trial and error, he found that giving a few answers in advance tends to make people less likely to ask follow-up questions, even if he didn’t directly address whatever else it is they may be wondering. This guy must get a lot of questions about his name, they probably think, or at least Penguin hopes they think, because he does get a lot of questions about his name, and he thinks he deserves some sympathy here.

“Shachi,” Shachi says, because he likes adding fuel to the fire. It’s not his fault he was named after a killer whale, but it is his fault that he uses it to make Penguin’s life more difficult. “And this guy here is Bepo. He’s our mascot.”

“Hey!” Bepo protests, dismayed. “I’m the navigator!”

The stranger laughs, a twinkle in his eye which Penguin can’t help but feel proud to be a partial cause of. “I don’t doubt you’re a fantastic navigator,” he tells Bepo, chuckling again as the mink puffs out his chest, pleased at the praise. And then, in the same cheery tone of voice – which isn’t unfair, since this should by all accounts be no worse than a half dozen other things he’d already used it for in this conversation – he says, “Name’s Rosinante. Nice to meet you.”

Penguin lets go of his glass.

He’s not holding it above the table, balancing it instead, half tilted, on the edge, so it doesn’t do much more than clink quietly as the rest of the base connects with the wood. For all that Penguin cares though, it could’ve shattered, and the sound would still not be enough to cover up the sudden rush of blood in his ears.

He isn’t sure he’s eloquent enough to describe this feeling, the weight of awareness that comes with the realisation that not only are the colourful scraps you’ve been staring at for the past half-hour actually puzzle pieces, but they also just so happen to come together into a photograph of a dead man. It’s the revelation of a childhood assumption you’ve never thought to question being overturned, the shock of the ocean’s cool touch on your skin when a gust of wind topples you overboard on a hot day. Not all that bad, in the grand scheme of things – hell, refreshing enough that you might have even considered jumping in yourself – but so disorienting in its lack of warning that you’ll end up with a lungful of seawater anyway.

And Penguin’s never even met the guy before.

Shachi, a small part of his mind concludes, was right. They should’ve gotten more liquor.

Shachi, it turns out, is also more levelheaded, or better at pretending to be levelheaded, or hell, maybe just not as drunk. In any case, he straightens too, though he doesn’t get up, his hands folded serenely in his lap. The effect is, no doubt, undermined somewhat by Bepo’s and Penguin’s matching bug-eyed stares at his sides, but he doesn’t let it phase him as he meets the no-longer-stranger’s gaze.

“Does that come with a surname, Rosinante?” he asks, and Penguin can only commend the mild-mannered tone.

Not that the tone does much to soften the blow, it seems. Rosinante’s face shutters, all at once a mask, the corners of his smile suddenly sharp enough to cut if you get too close. It’s self-defence, unmistakably, not a threat of him striking first, but it’s so desperately transparent that it’s all the answer they need.

“Does Shachi?” Rosinante asks, and oh, maybe he’s not all that hard to read after all. He really is bad at sounding flippant when he doesn’t feel in control.

“If it did, I wouldn’t be afraid to say it,” Shachi shrugs, just as calmly as before, though it’s obvious even through the shades that his eyes don’t leave Rosinante’s. He’s not a scary man, or even a particularly serious one, but if you’ve known him for as long as Penguin has, you sometimes forget how easily he can fool people into believing otherwise.

Rosinante exhales, low and uneven. He pulls the chair out again and collapses into it, his knees bumping into the table with enough force to make the glasses rattle. He’s smiling, still smiling – suddenly, Penguin understands the Jolly Roger he embroidered diligently into everyone’s overalls at his captain’s request far better – but there’s no overlooking the trembling of his hands.

“I don’t know what you heard,” he says in a half-whisper. “I don’t know where you heard it, I– no, of course I know where you heard it, but whatever Doffy told you–”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Penguin suggests, because he might still be floundering a little, but he’s not going to take that kind of slander. “If you imply that we’ve taken anything Doflamingo has said to heart, I’ll take it as a serious insult to our intelligence.”

“And character,” Shachi adds.

“And captain,” Bepo says, because he may be a pushover sometimes – okay, often – and he may still be blinking at Rosinante like he’s seeing a ghost – fair enough – but Penguin has never known him to be anything but unwaveringly ride-or-die for Law. Not that the rest of them aren’t, but Bepo has the added bonus of not having been a little shit as a child.

At the very least, their spontaneous yes and’ing serves to loosen Rosinante’s fists enough that Penguin is no longer concerned with him breaking the skin of his palms with the unevenly bitten nails, though even if the man stops looking like he’s about to bolt, Penguin can’t pretend he knows where to go from here any better. Well, the answer is to the Polar Tang, obviously, but as it stands, he’s pretty sure there are a couple steps missing.

“You have a devil fruit power, don’t you?” Shachi says, because Shachi might have actually learned a thing or two about plans from his time on the crew. “Can you show us?”

Rosinante is still watching him wearily, but he must find whatever sincerity he is looking for in Shachi’s eyes, because he raises a hand between them and snaps his fingers. “Silence,” he says, and suddenly, it’s like nothing Penguin can describe. It’s not like the dead of night on the Tang, because even then, in the stillness, there is no escape from the ever-present whirr of the motor. It’s not like plugging your ears, not even in the quietest room, because that just makes the blood rushing through your head all the louder. This silence is overarching and absolute. It’s like – Penguin has no frame of reference, but he imagines it might sort of be what it’s like to be deaf.

All at once, the trouble Law had falling asleep in those first few months of their tentative friendship takes on a whole new dimension.

The devil fruit show-and-tell is as much of a confirmation of the man’s identity as it is a convenient way for them to have this conversation without needing to skirt around their terms, and Rosinante seems more than willing to take the advantage of it. He exhales again, one long rush of air, the sound of it amplified by the ear-splitting silence, then fixes his gaze on one of the flaps of Penguin’s hat.

“Donquixote Doflamingo is my brother,” he says, softly, the corners of his lips only slightly upturned, which – well, duh, they got that one from the context clues, but Penguin can’t deny that it’s nice to have a proper confirmation. Being correct throws him off-kilter, but being wrong would’ve been worse. “By blood, at least. But don’t mistake it for loyalty.” His tone slips once again into an easy flatness, but it’s impossible to miss the glint of steel in the cherry red of his eyes. Penguin’s seen that look on his captain’s face before; he knows better than to doubt it. “I owe him nothing. I might have, once upon a time, but any strings that might have bound us then, he made sure to sever with his own two hands.”

Now that’s an effective metaphor. Penguin approves.

“So just to make it clear,” Rosinante continues, his gaze darting over to settle on Shachi’s shoulder, “I’m not on his side, I’m not planning to help him, and to answer your question, if I have any say in it, no, Rosinante does not come with a surname.” He breathes out, shakily. “Is that okay?”

It’s an admirable sentiment, said with an admirable dedication, and it leaves no room for doubt. But Penguin is an idiot, and some things still just don’t lend themselves to good responses, so instead of anything that might make him sound like a normal, sane person reacting to somebody baring their soul, what he says into the following ringing silence is –

“Do you want a different surname?”

It does nothing to help the silence, obviously. If anything, the three incredulous gazes that snap to him as soon as the words leave his mouth make it worse.

Not that it’s entirely unreasonable of the people who the gazes belong to, to be fair, because now that he thinks about it–

“Damn,” Shachi drawls after a moment, ignoring Penguin’s immediate sputtered backpedaling as he smirks so wide it threatens to split his face in two. “I mean, I wouldn’t personally propose to a man I’ve known for less than an hour, but–”

“No, shut up– Shachi, I swear to god, you know that’s not what I– You know exactly what I meant, you asshole, don’t you dare–!”

Penguin protests loudly, even as he feels his face heat up to an alarming degree, and he’s pretty sure Rocinante’s devil fruit is the only reason other patrons don’t start turning their heads to see what the commotion is about. In his heart of hearts though, he knows that anything he says now is pointless. Shachi’s got that glint in his eye, obvious even through the shades, which means that come morning, just about every Heart Pirate and ally on the island will hear about Penguin’s unfortunate choice of words. If that’s not bad enough, Rosinante is snickering too, failing spectacularly at stifling his laughter in the palm of his hand, and even Bepo – Bepo! – is staring at him with glee in his beady little eyes. Penguin is well aware that the universe is the kind of asshole to catch you on a technicality, so he knows better than to think he’d rather drown himself than deal with this, but man do his friends make it difficult sometimes. It’s not his fault he doesn’t always think about the things that come out of his mouth, alright?!

And maybe it’d be different if he wasn’t trying to squabble. Maybe if he wasn’t trying to squabble, he’d confer on the matter with his crew; exchange a few looks, draw a few straws, decide which ones of them get to stay behind, and who’s responsible for going to fetch their captain. Maybe they’d talk about the best way to break the news, or whether to break the news, or, if they don’t, about how to keep Rosinante from bolting the moment they let him out of their sight, afraid of being handed over to the marines or else the crowd that clamours for Donquixote blood. But Penguin is trying to squabble, and they’re all staring at him, and he did have a point with the surname thing, honest, so what he says next instead is –

“Our captain’s name is Trafalgar D. Water Law.”

And, well. He might not have the power of the Calm-Calm Fruit at his disposal – doesn’t want it, truth be told, the drawbacks far too much of an effort to come to terms with for the sake of some peace and quiet – but if there was ever a way to tell what it might feel like, plunging the world into silence with a word, Penguin supposes this might be it.

Bepo wasn’t talking to begin with. Shachi shuts his jaw with a snap. And Rosinante–

Well.

Penguin hadn’t exactly noticed it until now, but ever since he ran into Rosinante by the bar, the man never quite stopped smiling. Talk of imprisonment, talk of deaths, and still, the corners of his lips remained stubbornly quirked upwards. It would make him worry, in retrospect, considering Doflamingo’s inclination towards human guinea pigs both literally and metaphorically, but as soon as the concern arises, it is instantly dispelled.

Objectively speaking, a face with a smile shouldn’t look all that different from the same face without one. But objectivity, Penguin thinks as he takes in Rosinante’s new expression, is dead in a ditch.

“What?” Rosinante says.

“I mean, I wasn’t going to say it quite yet,” Shachi says. Still, Penguin can’t help but notice the twitch of his lips, a satisfied little smirk, and – damn it, he thinks. Played again.

“Calm,” Rosinante barks, and whatever Shachi opens his mouth to say next is swallowed by silence.

Small blessings.

Much smaller of a blessing when Rosinante turns the full intensity of his gaze towards Penguin.

“Trafalgar D. Water Law,” he says (and Penguin isn’t not familiar with people looking at him with this much fire in their eyes, but it’s certainly not the sort of thing you get used to), “is dead.”

“Who told you that?” Penguin asks. And then, because he can’t quite help himself: “Was it Doflamingo? Because I don’t want to doubt your intelligence, or your character, or our captain, but–“

“Calm,” Rosinante says, again, and, well – that one isn’t, Penguin supposes, entirely unwarranted.

“Can I please keep speaking?” Bepo asks, awkwardly.

“Oh, they can keep speaking all they’d like,” Rosinante forces out through gritted teeth. “We just won’t hear them.”

“I see,” Bepo nods, looking reassured. “At least you didn’t shove them into a treasure chest, right?”

…If anything, a game of forcibly muted charades is more fun with three participants than it is with two. Then again, the only thing Bepo is trying to convey with his silent flailing is evidently how deeply apologetic he is, so guessing correctly is not much of a challenge. It might give Shachi something else to tattle about later, at least, though Penguin isn’t actually sure if there are all that many people out there who’d get the joke.

Oh well. Rosinante gets the joke, clearly, even if the way he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes makes it pretty apparent he doesn’t find it particularly funny. Still, it’s proof – just about the best proof they can offer without dragging him onto their ship at that, considering there would’ve been no way for them to know about that particular detail if not from Law – and he seems to realise it, if the way he glances over at them through parted fingers is anything to go by. Penguin catches his eye.

“Don’t–“ Rosinante begins, but the sound of his voice in the absolute silence seems to startle even him. He clears his throat awkwardly, then drops his hands down to the table in a lopsided arc, and suddenly, the gabble of the bar-goer crowd filters back into the air between them. At his side, Shachi makes an experimental noise, and Penguin shoots him a distracted thumbs-up, but both of them wait for Rosinante to continue speaking. Under their expectant gazes, he clears his throat again.

“Just,” he says, softly, “don’t lie to me about this.”

Penguin can’t even begin trying to parse through all the complicated emotions that coil around his words. The best he can offer is that Rosinante sounds sort of like how a glass balanced precariously at the very edge of the table might sound if you gave it a voice.

“We’re not lying,” Bepo says, and it’s a good thing Bepo says it, because despite the bear paws, he is not particularly known for pushing glasses off tables. “Want to come to our ship and see him?”

“Please?” Rosinante says. It’s a whimper of a word, just barely loud enough to be heard without a blanket of silence to aid it, but it tumbles off his lips instantly, without a hint of doubt. It’s as though he thinks it’s an offer they would take back if he doesn’t answer fast enough.

Penguin reaches over to gather the liquor glasses, hooking two fingers through the handle of Bepo’s empty mug as he pushes himself easily up to his feet.

“Just let me close the tab,” he says, grinning, and he doesn’t look away until Rosinante grins back.

***

By Penguin’s standards, the Dressrosa evenings are a little too warm. He’s no expert on climate, but he’s pretty sure the tall cliffs surrounding the island shield it from the chilly ocean breeze, which means the temperature doesn’t dip much even as the sun slips below the horizon. He realises that this is entirely a problem of his own making – the overalls can’t possibly be helping his thermoregulation, not to mention the hat – but he refuses to fundamentally change himself as a person because of something as trivial as the weather. Besides, it’s not like Bepo can get rid of his fur, so Penguin might as well overheat a little in solidarity.

Still, he can’t deny that there probably are some benefits, if not for him, then at least for Rosinante, who isn’t exactly dressed to withstand any kind of chill. Not that he seems like he’d mind, or even notice, what with the still somewhat dazed expression on his face, but Penguin feels… responsible or something. And anyway, if their captain’s miraculously alive father figure catches a cold on their watch, it’d be their heads on the line.

It’s a straight shot from the bar to where the Polar Tang is docked, as much as anything can be a straight shot in Dressrosa with its winding colourful streets (at least where said streets haven’t been levelled with all the fighting), but getting back is still something of a struggle. There is a crowd at every corner, it seems, crying, laughing, drinking, and although Penguin is definitely not begrudging the citizens their celebrations after everything they’ve been through, he wishes he had a little bit more room to breathe.

It doesn’t help that they’re a distinctive bunch – him and Shachi with their hats, and Bepo because he is, well, Bepo – so as they make their way towards the harbour, it’s hard to miss the wide-eyed looks. Most people seem too wary or else too awestruck to approach them directly (for the sake of his ego, Penguin prefers to think it’s the latter), but there have been a few exceptions here and there in the days they’ve been here, so he isn’t too surprised when somebody tugs him shyly on the sleeve.

“You three are with the Heart Pirates, right?” the woman in front of them asks as they turn to face her. She looks to be in her early twenties, maybe, so him and Shachi can’t resist shooting her matching grins. Bepo nods, because he is polite like that, and the woman offers them a hasty bow. “Thank you so much for what you have done here! You, the rest of your crew, and the Straw Hats… I don’t know how long this would’ve gone on for if it wasn’t for you!”

At the back of his mind, Penguin can admit that his contributions to the final victory were perhaps not the most significant, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to refuse some glory. He preens under her gaze, then offers her his hand to shake, though she seems far more interested in shaking Bepo’s (it’s the paws, man, no one can resist the paws!) She doesn’t hold them up for long, slinking back into the crowd after expressing her gratitude, but all in all, Penguin can’t deny the interaction’s got him in high spirits. Well, higher spirits, he supposes, stealing a glance at Rosinante. It’s been a good day.

Stealing a glance at Rosinante also has the added bonus of spotting the bewildered look that passes over his face though, so Penguin gives him a questioning hum as they fall into step again. Rosinante half-turns to face him.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding suspiciously faint, “did she call you guys the Heart Pirates?”

Oh yeah.

Penguin is looking forward to hearing Law explain that one.

“That’s nothing,” Shachi snorts, evidently coming to the same conclusion. “Wait ‘til you see his tattoos.”

“Or his coat,” Penguin says, because if they’re going to snitch, it’s better to do so in Law’s absence lest they end up with wrong heads on their shoulders for a couple hours.

“Or our Jolly Roger,” Bepo adds. “Uh, though actually, I guess you’ve already seen it on our uniforms. Sorry.”

Rosinante, who either hadn’t, in fact, seen the Jolly Roger on their uniforms, or at least hadn’t paid enough attention to read into its shape, turns fully to stare at the symbol embroidered into the grey fabric over Penguin’s heart. In doing so, he stops watching where he’s going and walks right into a street lamp, but even as Bepo fusses about making sure he’s okay, it seems like he can’t quite tear his gaze away.

“What the fuck,” he whispers, flatly. And then, blinking so fast Penguin is almost concerned about him giving himself a headache: “Wait– so– When you said that your captain attacked Doffy just to get revenge–?”

“Obviously,” Penguin agrees, smirking. He is really looking forward to hearing Law explain that one.

They continue through the streets, Bepo’s paw resting on Rosinante’s forearm to guide him, given that he seems to pay even less attention to where he’s going in light of the new revelations. Penguin supposes he understands – or, well, maybe not understands, exactly, given that he’s yet to find out about any previously presumed dead children swearing revenge in his name, but he can at least empathise. The guy must be having the weirdest week of his life.

“Speaking of hearts though,” Shachi asks, curiously, because he clearly isn’t all that worried about empathising, “do you prefer to go by Rosinante or Corazon?”

“Oh,” the man in question says, startling. He takes a moment to consider, lips pursed in thought. “Corazon is… more of a title, I suppose? Not to mention the circumstances of me acquiring it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly used it for a long time, but…”

He trails off, the corner of his smile twitching momentarily downwards. Penguin’s not quite sure what he was going to say before he went quiet, but given that it seems like one of the only people who called him by any name at all in the past decade was Doflamingo, he honestly doesn’t think he wants to know.

“Fair enough,” Shachi shrugs after a moment’s pause, when it becomes clear that Rosinante isn’t planning to elaborate. “Though if that’s the case, you’ll probably have to train our captain out of calling you Cora-san.”

Rosinante trips over nothing, narrowly avoiding a reunion with the pavement only by the merit of Bepo’s quick reactions as their navigator straightens him out again. He doesn’t even seem to notice though, eyes wide and way too glossy to write it off as simply a reflection of the occasional lamplight they pass.

“Ah,” he says, voice suspiciously thick. “No, that’s. Fine.”

Penguin doesn’t even bother trying to stifle his laugh.

Shachi looks like he’s contemplating continuing to be a menace, but before he can come up with more probing questions, the harbour finally comes into view. It’s much less busy now than it had been when they first docked at Dressrosa shores, most pirate crews with a lick of sense getting the hell out of here before the marines really get their asses into gear. Even if it had still been busy though, it’s not like the Polar Tang has ever been particularly hard to spot, being bright yellow and also a submarine. Penguin’s eyes zero in on her bulky form bobbing on the waves instantly, and he nudges Rosinante in the side, pointing her out.

“A submarine?” the man asks, amused and incredulous all at once.

“Can’t put a fish inside a birdcage,” Penguin shrugs. Take that, Shachi – you’re not the only one who knows how to be a menace.

The deck appears empty as they approach, which isn’t a surprise – Law has given the crew blanket permission to go and have fun, threatening temporary dissection upon anyone who dared to suggest that he would be anything less than capable of protecting their ship on his own, even with his injuries. Not that they’ve tried particularly hard to suggest it, to be fair. It wasn’t very difficult to tell that their captain just… needed a moment alone.

Sort of a moot point now, Penguin is forced to conclude with a sigh, but oh well. Extenuating circumstances.

Though of course they actually need to explain said extenuating circumstances to Law now before he gets all cranky about them not following his thinly-veiled orders, which, Penguin can already tell, is going to be a whole thing in and of itself. They dawdle at the rocky shoreline, exchanging uncertain glances as Rosinante fiddles with the edge of his shirt. They can’t just send him in there without giving their captain a forewarning – as funny as that would be, Penguin is not in the business of being too much of an ass to his friends – which means one of them is going to have to take one for the team and give him a brief rundown. Except, like – how do you even do that? Hi, so, turns out that the guy whose murder was the main thing driving you for the past thirteen years is alive, actually? Yeah, right.

“I think we should send Bepo,” he offers, uncertainly. “He always takes stuff better when Bepo tells him.”

“Yeah, but that’s – bad stuff,” Shachi shrugs. “We can’t get him to start associating Bepo with good stuff, or he’ll start getting mad when there’s bad stuff again.”

“I’m sure he associates me with at least some good stuff,” Bepo mutters, dejected. It’s true, of course – anyone with eyes knows that Bepo is their captain’s favourite – but it can be funny to make him squirm.

In the end, they can’t find any sticks around the craggy cliffs to actually draw straws, so they settle on a game of rock-paper-scissors instead, which Penguin promptly loses. It’s what he gets for choosing rock when he knows Bepo nearly always goes for paper, but he keeps expecting their navigator to learn the concept of unpredictability. One day he will, and then Penguin will have the last laugh.

“Off you go, then,” Shachi (who isn’t a visionary and therefore had also picked paper) grins, clapping him on the shoulder. Penguin flips him off.

Still, he lost fair and square, and when you’re on a pirate crew, you learn early on that you get far more done when you don’t waste your time squabbling about the distribution of tasks. So Penguin hops over the thin stretch of water that separates the Tang’s wing from the ground, clambering up the rope ladder to the deck. He spares one more glance back at the others (mostly Rosinante, who is watching him, unblinking), then breathes in the salty ocean air for courage, and ducks through the metal doorway into their ship’s insides.

Penguin beelines straight for Law’s cabin, because for a man who snaps at people as often as he does for not giving their injuries enough time to heal after major battles, their captain sure is a hypocrite. In his defence, at least he doesn’t usually rush straight into action before he’s sufficiently confident his body can handle it, but getting him to stick around in the sickbay for longer than it takes to stitch up his wounds is always a challenge. He claims that, having the most medical expertise on the crew, he’s more than within his right to sign his own metaphorical release forms. Privately, Penguin thinks he just really doesn’t like hospitals, but he knows when to keep his observations to himself.

In any case, Penguin beelines straight for the cabin, and is vindicated in his assumptions when he sees the thin strip of light along the floor where the door doesn’t quite connect with it. The part of him that does have some medical expertise is mildly annoyed that Law isn’t catching up on much-needed sleep, but most of him is relieved that he at least won’t need to weigh up whether their news are urgent enough to wake him.

He raises his hand to knock before he can talk himself out of it. Might as well not have bothered – his knuckles barely have enough time to connect with the door before he can hear the low huff behind it.

“Come in, then,” his captain calls out, brusquely. Penguin pushes the door open and slips inside.

Law is sitting cross-legged on the bed, a book lying open in his lap. He’s shirtless and missing most of the bandages he had on this morning, save for the one on his upper right arm (Penguin still shudders to think about what it represents.) He looks tired, obviously, wrung out worse than Penguin had seen him this decade – this is why he should be catching up on sleep! – but more than that, he just looks… small. Lost, maybe. On him, it’s strange to see. 

Ah, the aftermath of adrenaline.

Or revenge.

“Sengoku came by,” Law volunteers, apropos of nothing, after a moment of them staring at one another silently. Penguin blinks.

On one hand, it’s a good thing he starts the conversation, because Penguin was definitely going to overthink his approach and then blurt out something horrifically embarrassing or else horrifically crass. He didn’t go into this expecting Law to make it easy on him by speaking first, so the fact that he does is a welcome surprise.

On the other hand: what?

“What?!” he shrieks out loud. “Like, the ex-Fleet Admiral Sengoku? That Sengoku? Sengoku the Buddha? What the fuck did he want?!”

Judging by his small smirk, Law was definitely aware of the effect his words would have, and is now thoroughly enjoying the look of horror on Penguin’s face. He always did have a sick sense of humour. If this wasn’t an especially ridiculous thing to lie about, Penguin might not have believed him.

That said, when he asks what it was Sengoku had wanted, Law’s face does something… complicated. His smirk doesn’t falter so much as it takes on a different tint, his gaze darting back down towards the pages of his book. It’s grief and confusion and solace all at once, a cocktail of emotions that are particularly difficult to interpret, and any other day Penguin might’ve let it go as a hopeless case.

But he’s not stupid, see.

From Law, he knows Rosinante was a marine. From Rosinante himself, he knows about the man who raised him. This time, at least, he remembers that puzzle pieces exist for the express purpose of putting them together.

“Actually,” Penguin says, “don’t answer that.”

“It wasn’t to arrest us,” Law tells him, bemused, though there is a sharp edge in his gaze, curiosity bordering on suspicion. That’s what he gets, Penguin supposes, for getting over the apparent shock that quickly.

“Didn’t think so,” he says. And then, before his captain can demand he explain what exactly he did think: “There’s something you need to know.”

The words tumble out in a rush, with probably a touch more grim determination than the topic at hand really deserves, so the pendulum of emotion in Law’s eyes swings solidly into the territory of wariness. He has always had a way of pulling himself together within seconds, of compartmentalising anything that might stop him from performing at his best and shoving it as far into the back of his mind as it would go. It makes him the best captain you can ask for in a crisis, but it also means they’re really overdue for adding a therapist to their hospital roster of a crew.

“Does this have something to do with the stranger currently with Shachi and Bepo?” Law asks, before Penguin can clarify that what he’s talking about isn’t all that bad, actually. Penguin blinks again.

“How do you–” And then, as his brain catches up: “Ah, never mind.”

Ever since their captain had mastered Observation Haki, he became damn near insufferable at using it. From Penguin’s somewhat limited understanding, it’s the sort of thing that always is, in the background, a sixth sense of sorts… but to be honest, he would not be terribly surprised if you told him that Law’s level of “background use” is a bit less background than average. When you show an ever-paranoid man a way to maintain a constant awareness of his surroundings, you can’t exactly be surprised that he grabs onto it with both hands.

(That, and it also means he no longer needs a direct line of sight to know when his crew is doing something he doesn’t approve of, or to detach a few of their limbs in retribution for any such activities. It makes him a damn menace, is what it does.)

Still, as useful of a tool as Haki is, it doesn’t seem to be enough to clue Law in on the identity of the man currently in Shachi’s and Bepo’s supervision, which is probably for the best. That’s the sort of thing you need to prepare a guy for. Which Penguin isn’t trying to claim he’s particularly qualified to do, mind, but at least he can offer some semblance of a forewarning instead of just dropping Rosinante into his captain’s lap at a particularly belated birthday present. They’re really trying to avoid giving him a mental breakdown here.

“Right,” Penguin says. “Well, it does. Uh, have to do with the stranger, that is. Or, not technically a stranger, but–“ He pinches the bridge of his nose before he gets too ahead of himself and tries again. “So. Doflamingo was an asshole.”

“Really,” Law says, deadpan. If he’s confused at the non-sequitur, he doesn’t show it. 

“Fair enough.” He is, Penguin supposes, preaching to the choir here. “But like, would you believe me if I told you he was enough of an asshole to keep someone in captivity the entire time he’s been in Dressrosa? Uh, close captivity, I mean. More than average.”

His captain sighs, glancing briefly down again. Law feels the weight of this on his shoulders more acutely than any of them, Penguin has no doubt, given how close a track he kept of the atrocities Doflamingo has committed while the World Government turned a blind eye. They couldn’t have done anything to stop him before now – Penguin is still silently baffled at how well the stars aligned this time – but knowing that the guilt is misplaced has never stopped anyone from feeling it.

“I think I’d be more surprised if you told me he didn’t,” Law says, tiredly. “I– They’re welcome if that’s what this is about, I don’t need personal gratitude for–”

“It’s not,” Penguin interrupts. He breathes in sharply; forces himself to look straight into Law’s eyes because he can’t afford to come across as anything less than honest here. “And so. Would you believe me if I told you one of the people he did this to was his own brother?”

The thing is, Law likes to pretend he’s inscrutable. He cultivates this air about him, mysterious or downright creepy depending on how generous you feel like being with your descriptors, and the public’s perception of him reflects it – the Surgeon of Death, they call him, the Heart-Stealer. But as used to that as he is, he often forgets that not everyone around him falls for the blank-faced facade. He can fool the general public all he wants, maybe even his allies, though Penguin has some faith in the Straw Hats’ ability to see past his carefully constructed defences. But for all his trying – and oh, there has been trying – he had never been able to fool his crew.

This is all to say that as Penguin stares at him, he can tell exactly when the implication in his words hits.

Being the one who gets to see the look on Law’s face, he decides, was so worth losing at rock-paper-scissors.  

Law’s gaze bores into his eyes with all the intensity of a supernova (pun fully intended), searching them for any sign of dishonesty. Penguin lets him look; he needs him to know that he means this, that he would never lie about something so important. He doesn’t take the trace of disbelief on Law’s face as an insult – his captain never trusts easily, and anyway, Penguin will be the first to admit that what he’s saying here is remarkably difficult to believe, no matter how gullible you may or may not be. He’s within his right to doubt.

Still, whatever he is looking for, Law seems to find, because he raises a trembling hand in the air, fingers half-curled. “Room,” he breathes, the familiar blue glow engulfing the cabin in a matter of seconds. For a moment, Penguin is worried he might end up with his limbs rearranged after all (or worse), but the shimmering field expands further, no doubt beyond the Tang’s hull with how long it takes before Law finally flips his palm over, curling his fingers into a fist. “Shamb–”

“–and then there’s Jean Bart, who–” Bepo is saying, his gaze fixed way up above Penguin’s head, before he cuts himself off with a confused stutter. Penguin clears his throat to declare his presence, and Bepo looks down, understanding dawning on his face as he, no doubt, puts two and two together. “Oh. Hi Penguin.”

“Hi Bepo,” Penguin says, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. Well, his work here is done. As far as their captain’s ways of telling people to get the hell out go, shambling somebody without a word can only be considered polite. “You guys want to go get another drink?”

Shachi snickers at his side, throwing his arms over both of their shoulders (or trying to, anyway, difficult as it is to do with Bepo’s height). He hops up, dangling his feet in the air for a moment, before planting them firmly back on the ground and tugging the two of them away from the shore by the sleeves of their overalls.

“Thought you’d never ask!” he grins, and, well – Penguin can only appreciate the enthusiasm.

***

Trafalgar D. Water Law can confidently say he is having what counts as one of the weeks of his life.

That’s about all he can confidently say about the situation that has unfolded a few days prior, though it’s more than he expected he’d have to say on the other end of the fall of Dressrosa. It’s… a lot. Just the fact of him still being alive is a lot, and that’s without going through the laundry list of all the other things that have happened in their time here. He’s resolutely not thinking about them for now, going as far as to take off as many bandages as he can reasonably justify removing (that’s to say, all of them but the one on his arm, which– nope, still not thinking), but he’s got enough experience with these things to know they’ll catch up to him the moment he’s no longer exhausted enough for dreamless sleep.

At least he can get some peace and quiet after he sends his crew away to party, he thinks at the start of the evening as he stares, unseeing, at the pages of a book he plucks off his shelves at random. It’s sorely needed – even if one ignores Doflamingo, which Law knows full well he can only dream of doing, the Straw Hats have been loud enough for a whole lifetime and then some. So he’s looking forward to his quiet night, thank you very much. Surely the universe has exhausted all of its surprises for the week.

You’d think Law would know better than to tempt the universe by now.

He doesn’t know what he expects when Penguin shows up, looking a strange mix between frantic and elated, but it’s not what he gets. What he gets is an implication, a carefully worded hint, and an unblinking gaze – he knows what Penguin looks like when he’s trying to pull a prank or just lie, and this isn’t it. Besides, Penguin is smart enough to know exactly what his words are insinuating, and he would take care to rephrase if he didn’t mean it exactly the way it comes out. Loathe as Law is to admit it, Penguin knows him, and he wouldn’t pull something like this if he wasn’t one hundred percent confident in what he was saying.

And so there goes Law’s peace and quiet.

There goes Penguin, too, as Law clenches his fist to swap his places with a stranger. Penguin might be one hundred percent confident in what he was saying, but Law is not, and Law prefers to nip that delusion in the bud before it takes root in his chest (as if, a voice inside of his head mocks, it hasn’t already.) Here’s the plan: Law is going to look the stranger in the eyes, Law is going to determine that his crew is wrong, and Law is not going to cry himself to sleep.

You poor, poor fool, the voice croons. Haven’t you learned the thing about plans yet?

Being that it is a submarine, and thus made to be relatively compact, the Polar Tang has somewhat low ceilings. They’re high enough that Bepo doesn’t go around running into doorways, even on the rare occasions when he isn’t slouching, but not much more than that, which means that if their ship is ever to welcome guests taller than about nine feet, they should probably have the reception on deck. It also means that the man who materialises in the cabin in the wake of the blue flash instantly hits his head on the ceiling, yelping in distress. He’s blinking rapidly, swiveling his head in comical confusion as those who aren’t familiar with Law’s power are wont to do, and oh, Law remembers belatedly, oh, that’s the thing about plans – they never quite go right.

Well, he does end up looking the stranger in the eyes when he finally spins around enough to face him. It’s the second step that poses a problem.

It’s a face Law can recognise in his sleep, thing is. Oh, his memory, ever-fallible and ever-cruel, has dulled the details over the years. But when he sees the face again (changed though it may be, paler and hollow-cheeked), in his mind’s eye it snaps once again into perfect clarity. It’s like rereading a passage from a well-loved book – a few sentences in, and you find yourself quoting the rest off by heart.

Or maybe it’s like seeing a ghost.

“Law,” the stranger says, sounding remarkably like he’s also seeing a ghost. Law wonders if he is professionally qualified to diagnose his own psychotic break.

The principle of Occam’s razor recommends constructing the simplest explanation you can think of and going from there, but Law doesn’t think it should apply when being wrong is going to make you wish you’d put a razor to better use. No, there are options, possibilities Law cannot afford to discard even if all he wants to do is accept what he’s seeing in front of him as the ground truth. He’s probably not seeing ghosts, or having a psychotic break (though with how hard it is to keep himself from falling apart the more he stares at the stranger’s face, it’s touch-and-go), but–

There are people out there who can steal faces, he thinks. There’s at least one person out there who can steal faces, though if Straw Hat is to be believed, they are currently at Impel Down, and would have no reason to mess with Law regardless. Still, it’s Impel Down – they could be dead by now, their devil fruit fair game for anyone who stumbles across it, anyone who might have such reasons. And even if that weren’t the case, his crew’s little excursion into Dressrosa has proven quite readily that manufacturing a devil fruit is not impossible, and sure, stealing faces is not a Zoan ability, but it’s a proof of concept, and– 

“Law,” the stranger says again. It’s gentle, almost concerned (Oh, Law thinks, I’m hyperventilating), but it reverberates between his temples. It’s loud, so loud – the words, the waves crashing against the Tang’s hull, the humming of her pipes inside the walls by his cot, his own harsh breaths.

“Don’t talk,” he forces out through gritted teeth, just barely resisting the childish urge to slap his palms over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise. Sensory overload, auditory subcategory, his mind determines impartially, which helps nothing, because a diagnosis is not a remedy, and it’s not like being able to tell you got your arm torn off helps reattach it, unless you’re–

“Silence.”

The word and the following snap of fingers are probably two of the loudest sounds either of them have made since he shambled the stranger into his cabin. They should, by all accounts, feel like needles under Law’s fingernails, like metal stakes in his skull. But he knows what they herald, and all he can do instead is choke on his own relief.

The silence comes, immediate and perfect. It settles around them like a shroud, and although it doesn’t quite block out Law’s breathing or his heartbeat (irregular, he notes, absently, should probably check that), it’s easier to get a handle on those himself when the rest of the world doesn’t try to drown him in its sound. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think about how much it feels like being thirteen and trying to sleep.

He counts down from ten.

When he opens them again, the stranger is still there, shoulders still hunched to stop his head from grazing the ceiling. He is blissfully quiet, but the concern in his eyes as he watches Law is – is not the kind of thing you can fake, Law thinks despite himself, trapped somewhere on the edge of delirium. He remembers what concern looks like in those eyes just as clearly as he remembers the precise locations of long-faded lead-bleached patches on his own skin, and he wonders, hysterically, if he’ll see them again if he looks in the mirror.

It’s not, Law thinks despite himself, impossible.

His throat is desert-dry, but he forces himself to speak.

“What was my sister’s name?” he asks, and then curses himself for asking. It’s the first question that comes to his mind with all the thoughts of lead, but it’s not a question he can reasonably expect to be answered. It’s been thirteen years, and he’d mentioned her to the man the stranger may or may not be twice at most, words slurred with fever. It wasn’t vital information, it’s not a name he can rely on anyone but himself to remember, and the stranger failing to do so will tell Law nothing. He digs his fingernails into his palms. “No, scratch that. When–”

“Trafalgar Lami,” the man in front of him says with not so much as a hint of uncertainty. His smile is soft, and the last smile Law had seen on that face still comes to him in nightmares, but this one feels like a dream. “You loved her very much.”

The thing is, Law thinks as he chokes on his own breath, Occam’s razor would probably not be such a popular principle if it were easy to resist.

“The first time we met, I threw you out of a window,” the maybe-not-stranger continues with a breathy laugh, because the doubt must still linger in Law’s expression, even if he can feel it retreating from his mind, a rat fleeing a sinking ship. “Sorry about that, by the way. Then again, the next time we met, you stabbed me, so I think we’re even. You stuck around after that, for some reason, so–”

“What did I just say about not talking?” Law interrupts, though it’s something of a surprise that his whisper is even heard over the voice that fills the cabin, and his head, and somehow doesn’t make him feel like screaming. He isn’t even sure why he speaks, just that the fizzy, frenzied hope that fills his lungs needs an out, or it might well tear them at the seams.

“Wha–” the man sputters – “I was answering your question–!”

And it’s his scandalised squawk – and it’s the look in his eyes – and it’s the way he throws his arms up, affronted, before making a face as they obviously hit the ceiling – and it’s all of that, and more, and everything, and finally, Law can feel the dampness on his cheeks.

“Hi, Cora-san,” he breathes, wounded, and the man he never dared to wish to see again wastes no time launching himself into his arms.

***

Cora-san alternates between wailing about stupid idiot children putting their stupid idiot lives at risk, and wailing about how Law is all grown up now. Based on his blubbering, it’s obvious that he knows something about Law’s escapades in Dressrosa (probably from his crew, damn them), but Law doesn’t really feel like clarifying how much, now or ever. Cora-san has a vice grip on his chin, tilting his face this way and that as he seems to drink in the view, and although Law can’t help the way his cheeks heat up, he also can’t exactly blame him. He’s hardly much better.

It’s kind of difficult to parse through all the sobbing, but Law has some experience, thirteen years out of date though it may be, so he manages to put it together that Cora-san thought he was dead, too. Which… does explain why he looked at Law like he was seeing a ghost, at least, but is also exceptionally stupid, given that Law was not the one who got shot five times in the chest that day on Minion Island. Granted, it caught up to him eventually (he’s never going to admit how much the hug makes his own wounds sting), but he reserves the right to make fun of anyone who believes a word that comes out of Doflamingo’s mouth.

“He can be very convincing,” Cora-san whines, rubbing his eyes with the back of his palm. “He convinced you to join his crew, didn’t he?”

“I was eleven!”

He was eleven, and he wanted to see the world burn; he was thirteen, and he just wanted to survive; he was twenty six, and all he wanted was revenge. And now – well, he’s twenty six still, and he survived, and he’s got his revenge, and the world is not quite burning, but it’s getting there as Law stokes the flames. This morning, he didn’t think there was much left for him to want.

This evening, he watches as Cora-san peels himself reluctantly away from the hug, and he thinks he should’ve considered the obvious choice far earlier. This evening, he’s twenty six still, and he wants to live.

Cora-san laughs wetly, tapping a pale finger against his solar plexus.

“Your crew did tell me to wait until I saw your tattoos, but, wow,” he says. His words are breathless and his touch is soft as it traces the shape of the inked heart. Belatedly, Law regrets not putting on a shirt.

“Shut up,” he hisses, hoping in vain that his cheeks aren’t quite as flushed as they feel. How he wishes his bastard friends wouldn’t run their bastard mouths a day in their lives. “What the hell else did my crew tell you, huh?”

It’s a rhetorical question for the most part, a complaint he doesn’t think he wants answered. But Cora-san’s eyes snap up to meet his, and Law doesn’t even have time to regret speaking before he says, softly –

“They told me Doflamingo killed your father.”

Law thinks his face might be on fire.

Vivisection, he decides, maniacally. He doesn’t even need to use his devil fruit powers. If Penguin and Shachi are going to insist on having loose tongues, he’s going to insist on his right to cut them out.

“Yeah,” he manages, because the ringing silence isn’t always a comfort, “well.”

“Well,” Cora-san echoes. Law moves to shove him away, but the man catches his wrists, glancing down at the ink on his knuckles through fresh tears brimming in his eyes. “I told them my son is dead, to be fair, so I think we’re even there, too.”

Fine, Law concedes as his gaze trips over the quivering smile on Cora-san’s lips. He can use his devil fruit powers a little.

He has no clue how long they stay there, nor if any of his crew stumble back from their celebrations at any point, his Observation Haki dulled with shock in a way which would’ve been alarming if he could bring himself to care. It’s hard, the thing is, to care for vigilance when your heart hammers out a frenzied rhythm against your ribs. The hope was bad enough in its unfamiliarity, but the elation that comes in its stead really throws Law off-kilter.

Law is a man who carves himself into pieces, who suspends his organs in the air in front of him to examine them, critically, for faults. Law is a man who got his arm torn off and screamed at the pain, yes, but not at the loss. Law is a man used enough to being happy, sure, but he is not a man used to being complete.

He’s not a man used to wanting to get used to it either. And yet.

And yet–

There is a lump in his throat.

“So what are you going to do now?” Law forces himself to ask, or maybe can’t quite stop himself from asking. He tells himself it’s because he needs to know, but really, it’s because he knows already.

Donquixote Rosinante is a marine. Law doesn’t hold it against him, of course. He couldn’t hold anything against him in the first few months of him being dead, lost in the torrent of grief and fever, and by the time his mind had cleared, the memory of a lie had long since lost its sting. But it doesn’t change the facts, just like it doesn’t change the distant look Sengoku had fixed Law with just a few hours earlier, the look Law was sure his own eyes reflected. Donquixote Rosinante has places to go back to, people to go back to, a job to go back to – one would have to be a fool to think that Sengoku doesn’t have enough sway in the Marine Corps still to reinstate a former Commander even after thirteen years of absence.

Law won’t begrudge him this. He’ll be happy enough just to know that he’s out there, alive, alive, not quite a dream come true only because it was a dream he never dared to have. He’ll be happy. He just needs to hear it said.

Cora-san looks him in the eyes.

“You know,” he says, and maybe he doesn’t see Law’s internal conflict, or maybe he’s just ignoring it, because the smile on his lips is downright amused, “I was just talking about that with your friends.” And then, before Law can huff, because what hasn’t he been talking about with his friends, damn them all: “D’you think you guys have a free spot on the crew left for me?”

Oh, Law thinks. Right.

You’d think after the week he had, he would remember that the world is dead set on proving him wrong at every turn.

You’d think after the week he had, he would learn that being proven wrong is not always as bad as it sounds.

“You can replace Bepo as the mascot,” he says, and pretends his voice doesn’t tremble. He expects a scandalised gasps in return, but true to form – at every turn, seriously – all he gets is a considering grin.

“Well,” Cora-san drawls, “with all the hearts…”

Law pushes him off the cot.

***

They depart from Dressrosa the following afternoon. It gives them enough time to drag their asses back to the Tang and sleep off the worst of their hangovers, though Penguin can’t pretend his head isn’t still throbbing a little when he turns too fast. The rest of them probably aren’t much better, but headaches don’t exactly stop gossip from traveling in whispers from cabin to cabin, and they certainly don’t stop Shachi and Ikkaku from throwing a party that same night. Penguin grumbles, but he shows up, obviously, because they promise good booze, and because he’d have to be one hell of a spoilsport not to celebrate the addition of a new crewmate.

Rosinante is the guest of honour, of course – everyone wants to get a word with the guy in whose name they just overthrew a tyrant. Their captain, given that he’s been stuck to his side like glue the entire day, glowers at anyone who dares to try recounting all the other things they’ve done in his name, but given the nearly palpable happiness in his eyes, the glowering is surprisingly ineffective. They get a good few stories in, Rosinante looking sufficiently enthralled, before Shachi gets a weird glint in his eyes, and Penguin thinks, Oh yeah.

“Oh yeah,” he says, out loud, “before Shachi makes this into a whole thing.” Everybody on deck turns to face him, and he can already hear the muffled giggles coming from the three witnesses of his unfortunate slip of the tongue. He glares between them, his eyes stopping on Rosinante as he gestures his way. “He’s going to be traveling with us now, right? So it’s safe to assume he’s going to end up on a bounty poster eventually?”

“If we do what we’re plannin’ to do, sure he will,” Ikkaku agrees, intrigued. Penguin is pretty sure no one has explained the whole Kaido thing to Rosinante yet, actually, and he really doesn’t want to be the one to do it, so he barrels on.

“Right,” he says. “And that usually involves names. Not that we control what the marines put on their posters, obviously, but can I get everyone on board right now for trying to convince them his full name is Trafalgar Rosinante?”

It’s a fascinating sensation, he will discover later, to have your tongue floating in the air outside of your mouth. But for now, as his crew cackles in giddy delight at the matching crimson-red faces of their captain and his father, he feels vindicated – and really, what more can anyone ask for?