Chapter Text
Law woke slowly, feeling heavy and disoriented.
The last thing in his mind were the chaotic fragments of the aftermath of Blackbeard's attack. He remembered the icy sting of the water as it choked him and pulled him down. He remembered Komurasaki's arms around him as she dragged him back to the surface, kicking and grasping futilely to keep both their heads above water. That was the last thing he remembered distinctly. That, and a flash of Bepo's powerful sulong form scooping both of them from the icy jaws of the endless sea, pulling them away from the fragments of the sinking ship.
After that, only darkness, and cold.
But he was warm now. And laying down somewhere. Before he could open his eyes he felt the weight of a blanket on him, and he could hear the soft sounds of someone else in the room. Quiet breathing. Rustling fabric.
The Polar Tang. He remembered it split in half, and the sharp decompression sending everyone he cared about into the darkness of the sea. He stirred against the blanket, sucking in a sharp breath.
Blackbeard. That sneering, unpleasant oaf of an upstart. Blackbeard— the monster who somehow kept rising the ranks despite everything.
Blackbeard the creeping darkness infecting the era of piracy with a desire to drag everyone down to his fucking level.
Blackbeard, the man who beat him to shit and threw him in the ocean and killed his best friends in the world. He felt the churn of something sick in his stomach as he tried to open his eyes again. "...damn it all.."
Law managed to pull his eyes open and as his vision swam into focus he found himself in a cot in a narrow room— on a ship, judging by the porthole window high in the wooden wall. There was very little to see, other than the bed he was in, a small table with a jug of water, and a chair at the foot of the bed where Komurasaki was dozing, dressed in something unfamiliar, not her usual kimono, with a blanket around her shoulders.
He tried to sit up, shifting his arm to prop himself up and stare around the room, at Komurasaki's clothes, and out the porthole.
"...Someone picked us up? It can't be Blackbeard, Komurasaki'd be in chains or worse." He murmured to himself as he tried to activate his 'room' to give himself a sense of the surrounding area.
He felt an unfortunately familiar wooziness as he moved— and even worse as he tried to call on his devil fruit abilities— and realized with a start that there was still a sting of biting cold around one wrist. As he managed to sit up and pulled his arms out from under the covers, he saw a chainless, bracelet-like manacle locked around one wrist. The outside of it was metal, but lined certainly with sea-stone.
Komurasaki sat up, hearing him speak. "Mm? Ah, captain, you're awake?"
"Komurasaki," he said slowly, cautiously, "...why am I chained with sea-stone?"
His mind was going a mile a minute, only stopping to hitch on the image of the bodies in the water. His heart beat faster in his chest as he sucked in an uncomfortable breath. "I hope you have more context for all this than I do."
"I do, captain," she nodded. "Our rescuer asked me in advance to apologize to you for the precaution. He said that he was concerned your first instinct might be to try to kill everyone on the ship."
Komurasaki's face had that same placid, almost amused look on it, that Law was still learning how to tell when it was genuine, and when it was a mask for her anxieties. The answer seemed obvious now, but he still couldn't be sure.
He stared at her for a long moment with a twitch of his lips, before he laughed weakly and fell back onto the sheets.
"Thanks Komurasaki. I'll try not to go on a rampage. Promise." He looked over her outfit again, judging identifying markings. She must have gotten it from someone on the ship, it'd serve as a clue to exactly who had 'rescued' them, and if this was going from the frying pan to the fire. "Seems like a pretty sensible precaution, depending on the rescuer is. It ain't Kid. Kid's ship couldn't possibly look this normal."
She was wearing a quite ostentatious dress, florid and ruffled, and very unfamiliar to her usual style, though the blue and yellow pattern of azaleas on it wouldn't have been entirely out of place on a kimono. A kimono wouldn't be that low cut however, or sleeveless like the dress was, judging by what he could see of her arms underneath the animal print blanket over her shoulders. Neither really suited her pale green hair or her complexion.
"No, it's no one I'd ever met before," she said, shaking her head. "Though they seem to know you, captain."
"....."
Dressrosan fashion. That was a Dressrosan dress, very clearly. A dancer's dress, like one he'd seen recently enough for it to be seared into his memory. His brow furrowed as his lips drew into a tight line.
"They seem to know me, do they. What'd they look like, if ya don't mind me asking. Our rescuers who knew me so well."
He had a sinking feeling in his gut. It couldn't possibly be. It had to be a coincidence…or maybe it was Rebecca and Violet who…
No, Violet had left Dressrosa. She sure as fuck had left Dressrosa. Rebecca too , but…
Komurasaki leaned her chin in her hands, elbows on her knees, peering at him. "Well, I can describe them for you, but their captain did introduce himself. He wanted me to tell you one thing before I said who he was, though."
Law shot up to a sitting position despite the fatigue and discomfort, having to painfully raise his hand to his head to steady himself. ".....hahahhhhhhhh fuck. Fuck. Alright. I'm listenin'."
"He wanted me to make sure you knew they're treating Bepo in their infirmary for his wounds and fatigue. I don't know if you remember, but he passed out just as we were being fished out of the water."
Law lurched forward the nausea washing through him and making him swoon against his hand.
"Hhh…Bepo…he's…" Tears welled up in his eyes. "Thank hell he's at least okay. Him, you, me, thank hell at least some of us survived."
Penguin and Shachi… Ikkaku… the whole crew sucked into the darkness of the ocean. Besides them.
"And it's…good…good knowin' they're taking care of him."
Even if they were who he was increasingly terrified they were.
Doflamingo and his gang; the very gang that Violet had reportedly fled and turned up in the company of. A gang that shouldn't have existed.
Komurasaki nodded. "I heard that it seems like he's going to be okay, thank goodness. He took some kind of drug, didn't he? To induce that state? I don't think it was good for him."
Law grit his teeth.
"Yeah…the artificial Sulong state. It ain't good for him, it's only for emergencies. I'm glad he's pulling through…"
"Indeed… Ah, anyway, you wanted to know who rescued us?"
He rubbed his fingers over the outside of the bangle around his wrist. "...I have a creeping suspicion, but it's better if you just let me know."
"The name he gave was Doflamingo. He says you'll know it."
He felt sicker than ever, a worse nausea than the seastone washing over him as he made a low gurgling sound.
"Komurasaki, hon. It's been fun having you in my crew, wish it was for longer." He dropped back onto the bed to stare at the ceiling with a twitch of his lips. "I'm screwed. He's gonna kill me while I'm down."
Doflamingo. Doflamingo. Doflamingo Donquixote. The name repeated over and over in his mind as his teeth grit together. "I should have been DONE with him! I'd …Shit, we'd won! And now here he is dragging me outta the sea? For what? To end me himself??"
"How would I know?" Komurasaki seemed both unalarmed by, and unimpressed with, his outburst. She leaned a little closer to him as he fell back on the bed. "I take it the two of you have some kind of history that I'm not privy to."
He looked up at her with tired eyes.
"Yeah. Sorry, Komurasaki, it's… complicated. I was venting. Rest assured, this is the worst ship we coulda been picked up by right now barring fuckin' Blackbeard." He looked at the bangle around his wrist with a grimace. "He's the man I spent years trying to bury."
Metaphorically and literally. Bury the memory of any good times they may have had when he was growing up— and bury him for the death of Rosinante in the snows of the north blue. "He killed someone who tried to save me, and I tried to kill him to even the scales."
"I see. Then it's certainly strange that he bothered to fish us out of the ocean at all." She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "Stranger still that they've been caring for Bepo."
Komurasaki had been sailing with them for a total of five days. Five days since she'd left her home shore of Wano to become a pirate on his ship. And now that ship was blown to hell, and she was here with him, with absolutely no context for it. Considering all of it, she seemed remarkably unperturbed.
"Yeah, it's– it's real odd. You seem pretty calm, Komurasaki. I'm impressed. Even considering you don't know exactly what kind of guys captured us…it's impressive."
Law pressed his hand to his face, looking at her with one eye and laughed bitterly. "...my ship's sunk. My men— my friends— are dead. I've got nothin' but you and Bepo anymore. And now we're captured, saved, whatever…by the Donquixote pirates. You've got nerves of steel. I respect that. Hope this massive fuckup hasn't completely dashed any respect you mighta had for me."
"Hardly," she said, shaking her head. her gaze was steely. "Tragedy and setback aren't what define a man's character, but how he moves forward from them. And if I'm calm, it's because I've been trained that way since I was small, captain, to maintain dignity and composure in the face of chaos and loss. And I've had practice. Lots of it."
He sat up slowly again, taking a deep breath with a nod.
"I'd heard. And it's pretty damn remarkable to see, Komurasaki. I'd say sorry to add a lil' more chaos to your life, but you asked to be a pirate…this is the pirate's life."
He rested his head against his knees, drawing them up. "We're gonna heal up from this. If Doffy—" He bit his tongue on the nickname. "Doflamingo— if he really 'rescued us' or not, we'll deal with it. We'll get through this.Shachi, Penguin, Ikkaku…they woulda wanted us to."
Komurasaki nodded. She stood, finally, and came and sat on the edge of Law's cot. "I did ask to be a pirate. And I intend to continue to pursue the life of a pirate at your side, captain, assuming you'll have me. I hope you don't feel like I've brought some curse on you from Wano."
The tone was conversational-– flippant, even— but something in her eyes told him that it was a thought she'd had on her own, and one that didn't amuse her.
He reached out, with the great difficulty of a cursed man fighting sea-stone, and squeezed her shoulder with a weak grin.
"Of course I'll have ya, Komurasaki. I promised I'd take you to sea, didn't I? You're my crew. That means somethin' to me. And…this ain't a curse, neither. Real as curses can be, this ain't on your shoulders. This was bad luck. This was Blackbeard and one hell of a terrible coincidence."
She smiled; beautifully, grimly, with determination. "I'll take your word for it. You've the more experience between the two of us. So what then, is our path forward, captain? What's the 'plan', so to speak— if only in the short term."
"I'll tell you one thing…" He leaned towards her with a feral edge to his smile, a dark mania welling within him. "We're going to get strong enough to sever Teach's head from his body and sink his freakshow of a crew to the bottom of the sea. But that's long term."
His eyes darted to the door. "...the short term plan is figuring out what Dof…Doflamingo's intentions are here and how we can work forward with him here. If this is his ship, the whole DQ family's on board. Which means a whole slew of hideously awkward reunions."
He hesitated before he murmured. "I used to be one of them, just… so you know that."
"Really?" She sat up with interest. "And you spent, in your own words, years trying to bury their captain. It must be a complicated history you have indeed. What a fate to bring you into reunion now."
Komurasaki's tone was gentle and sympathetic. But there was something at the edge of her voice, in the look of her eyes, that almost felt like she was excitedly reaching for popcorn. Maybe she did have a pirate's temperament. Maybe growing up in a brothel had left some interesting marks on her.
He wouldn't have been surprised. Honestly, the hint of those interesting marks had been the very thing that convinced him to take her along when she gave her pitch. She was a fascinating girl, after all.
Of course, that was one thing, being grilled about his sordid past was another. He felt himself flush a bit under the scrutiny, shifting in the sheets.
"Yeah uh, it's sure a fucking tangled web of fate. If I didn't know any better I'd suspect Doflamingo's fucking strings to somehow be behind it. But this is even outta his hands." He rubbed his neck. "...Doffy and I have a lot of history. He stopped me from suicide bombing myself when I was a kid and took me into his gang, but…"
So much had happened. He'd grown to love and respect the man…up until he very much didn't. Up until Rosi snatched him away and told him exactly what Doflamingo's plans for him were— and exactly how cruel he could be. "Things happened. It went south between me and the other members of the family."
"I see," she nodded, thoughtfully. "Interesting. So far everyone I've met has been fairly cordial to me, if… admittedly very odd, Captain Doflamingo included. Though I have little way to measure what counts as odd outside of Wano."
"Cordial. The Donquixote Family?" He wasn't exactly incredulous…no, they could be very charming. Something he knew all too well. They weren't exactly very polite but they were charming and friendly up until the point they weren't. "They're absolutely odd. Doflamingo's fond of gathering up all kinds of folks… who'd you meet? That looks like one of Viole— Viola's dresses."
Violet— Princess Viola— hadn't been with the family when Law was there. But he'd heard about her extensively from Monet on Punk Hazard, and he'd seen her, however briefly, in Dressrosa.
"It is, yes. It's a little big on me in some areas, but she was very kind to lend it to me." Komurasaki tugged at the chest self-consciously. "Ah, besides her and their captain? There was quite the bunch— they didn't all introduce themselves. There's a precious little doll woman who was called Sugar. And a woman in a maid uniform they all call 'Baby'. I don't know if that's her name. I also caught the names 'Vergo' and 'Dia', and I could pick them easily out of a line up. I'm good at putting names with faces."
Certainly one of her many skills as an Oiran.
"Good fuckin' skill to have, Komurasaki…very good skill." He complimented her as he put his hand to his head with a sharp hiss. "Baby…yeah. That's her name. Baby 5, actually. It's…"
It was a fucked up, tragic story for why she was called that. A dismissive 'non-name' for a child deemed dead-weight turned into an affectionate name by the gang. She'd become rather proud of it when they were growing up together.
"It's a hell of a story for why. Sugar…be careful with her." His eyes darted to the door. "...she's got the power to make the world forget you ever existed."
"Well,thank you, that's terrifying," Komurasaki huffed a nervous laugh. "I'll keep it in mind. She seemed very quiet, though that big man was even quieter. Is there anything else I ought to know? Well, I imagine the answer is 'a lot' but I don't expect a full annotated history given the circumstances."
"A whole lot," Law rubbed his temple with the side of his hand. "Sugar used to have a sister, Monet… I killed her. They probably ain't happy about that. Vergo was a fake marine who's one of Doflamingo's closest men. Beat the shit out of me a while back. Baby's got an explosive temper. Literally, if she turns into a bomb. Dia…he's one of the executives"
He counted off his fingers before he paused and he pointed to her. "and one more thing, Komurasaki. Doflamingo was the guy supplying the SMILE fruits to Kaidou that let him empower his men. That's part of his operation, the finding and smuggling of fruits and the production of artificial fruits."
She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes for a moment, perhaps committing it all to memory. "I see. So he was responsible for the SMILE fruits that found their way to Wano's shore. You were certainly not lying, captain. This is quite the situation for us to have found ourselves in. I admit, in hindsight I was acting quite blithely and naively these last two days."
Two days.
"T…" Law's eye twitched , his body suddenly feeling exhausted all over again. "...two days?"
"Ah. That's right, we hadn't yet spoken of how long you'd been unconscious." She bit her lip, and nodded. "Yes, captain, it's been two days. I was very worried."
It must have been the effect of the seawater on him. He'd certainly choked some down during the horrible encounter.f
"....the ocean's curse, probably…" He pressed his hand to his face with a shaky smile. "two days. Two days on the Donquixote family's ship. Two fucking days. Great, alright. Well I'm awake now, Komurasaki. Sorry to worry you, I'm…fine."
He wasn't fine. His eyes flicked to the door, half expecting to see that horror show of a smile looming in it at any moment. "This is gonna work out."
Doffy gripped the neck of the bottle and took a swig from it. He'd had too many already. He'd been drinking almost constantly for the past two days.
He was tense.
He was on the outs with Trebol, who hadn't been shy about telling him how he felt when Doffy had fished Law and his crewmen out of the sea.
Trebol thought he should throw him back like a bad catch, and shoot him a few times on the way down for good measure.
Trebol thought that Law would only bring disaster on the family. He pointed out that he already had. The disaster of Dressrosa was barely three months behind them, and while yes, they were doing well with Cross Guild now, Law had broken their little empire. Law had been responsible for Monet's death. He had almost killed Vergo.
What sense did it make to save his life?
He was right— it didn't make any logical sense to rescue him. It had just been Doffy's first instinct.
It had been his first instinct when Violet had spotted the Polar Tang in Blackbeard's sights, to haul the ship forward at all speed.
It had been his first instinct when he'd seen Law, pale as fish belly in the arms of his monstrous crewmate.
It had been his first instinct when he'd seen Law for the first time, shaking and strapped with explosives.
He took another swig from the bottle.
It had been his first instinct when Rosi had kidnapped him.
All Doffy had wanted was to ride to the rescue.
He'd put the family over his feelings. Doffy was always putting the family over his feelings. When he'd killed his own brother to protect them. When he'd asked Monet to protect them all with the last of her strength. When he'd nearly had to say goodbye to Vergo.
All of it was putting the safety and success of the family over his own feelings.
His fingers shook on the bottle. So Trebol was mad at him? So what. So the rest of the family was confused, and angry. They'd get over it.
Assuming Law didn't kill all of them. Trebol's voice rang in the back of his mind. Law's always been difficult. Unpredictable. Destructive. Out for blood. You can't trust him.
He was right about all of it. Doffy knew that. In concession to 'trust', he'd put a seastone cuff on him, to keep him from lashing out immediately, at least.
To give Doffy time.
Time to talk Law down. Time to get him to see reason.
He'd done it once before, talked Law down from self-destructing. He wanted to believe that he could do it again. He hadn't had time in Dressrosa, not with the chaos. Not with Straw Hat. Not with the rest of the family dead set on interfering.
But this time. This time he would make time.
This time it wasn't going to end like that night so many years ago with his finger on a trigger, and Trebol's voice telling him that he had to put his feelings aside and protect the family.
This time he was going to be selfish.