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“I guess that's something to be said about this whole alliance thing,” Nami remarks, leaning over the railing.
Robin leaves off watching the Polar Tang surface to glance at her. “Hm?”
“Well, you know.” Nami waves her hand toward the Heart Pirates' submarine. “Every time we see another ship, it usually means we're about to get in a fight. Marine ships, rival pirate ships, and what have you. It's nice to be able to see another ship without having to dive for the cannons, you know? It's restful.”
Luffy chooses that moment to slingshot himself from the top of the Sunny's mainmast to the uppermost deck of the Polar Tang. The submarine has yet to finish surfacing, and the deck is still dripping with seawater – not only does Luffy narrowly miss landing in the ocean, but he proceeds to stagger drunkenly the moment he touches down.
“Restful,” Nami repeats.
The two crews mingle. They gather on one another's respective ships, they trade greetings and back-slaps, they joke and laugh and argue. Law calls it “conferring over strategy”. Everyone else calls it “catching up”.
“How're things?” Luffy asks without preamble. He's balanced – rather precariously – on the railing of the Tang's upper deck. “Got in any fights lately?”
“We've avoided them,” Law tells him. He's paying as much attention to what Luffy is saying as is warranted, but his eyes rove over the Strawhat pirates within his line of vision. Zoro's sharing freshly-tapped booze with Jean Bart, and when he reaches over for a refill, the edge of fresh white bandages can be seen just beneath the edge of his waist sash. Chopper is chattering away to Bepo, gesturing with one hoof while the other rests in his lap, the arm encased in a cast. Black Leg Sanji has an almost indiscernible limp – if Law weren't a doctor, he might not have noticed it at all, but it's there. “I see the same can't be said of you, as usual.”
“It was just a thing.” Luffy waves his hand dismissively. “Ran into some jerks, made some friends, had to deal with stuff. Chopper punched a catapult in half.”
The corner of Law's mouth quirks upward. “Yet another hapless island in your debt, Strawhat-ya?”
Luffy makes a face. “No debts. I didn't do anything I didn't want to.” He drops down to the deck proper. “What're you avoiding fights for, anyway? That sounds boring.”
“I'd rather be bored than dead.”
“Really? I'm not sure I would.”
The noise Law makes is most definitely not the beginnings of a laugh. “Thought you'd say that. But we've been gathering information. Rushing headlong into fights doesn't help much with that.”
“You mean like spying?” Luffy tilts his head curiously.
“Reconnaissance,” Law says.
“Bless you.” Luffy pauses, mouth twisting into an expression that's as close to “thoughtful” as Luffy can get. “Who've you been spying on?”
Over on the deck of the Sunny, Nami slaps Shachi for some reason. It distracts Law enough to hesitate before he answers. “Blackbeard.”
He doesn't even have to turn his head to feel Luffy's eyes on him.
Law knows that Luffy gets angry – he's seen it before, many times. But he doubts that Luffy has it in him to devote years of his life to the destruction of a single person. He's the kind of man who sees an enemy and either sidesteps them or punches them until they stop being a problem. He doesn't plot, and he doesn't hunt, and he doesn't stalk his enemies like prey. Not like Law has.
The distinction is simple, really. Law could do that because Law could hate. Luffy gets angry, but he doesn't hate; sometimes Law thinks that maybe Luffy can't hate.
But if he did hate anyone, Law thinks that Blackbeard would be at the top of the list.
“He's hunting Devil Fruit users,” Law continues. “Half the pirates on the Grand Line are some type or other. Not nearly all of them, but everyone is someone's friend, someone's brother or sister, someone's comrade. Makes him everyone's business, including mine.” The Ope-Ope Fruit is known as the ultimate Devil Fruit, after all, though he's never told Luffy that. He doubts that Luffy would care anyway.
Luffy speaks up, almost startling him. “If he messes with you, let me know,” he says. It's odd, the way he says it. Luffy's tone has none of its usual chipper enthusiasm, nor does it have the grim determination that one might expect from a statement like that. He says it calmly, nonchalantly, the way one would dispense advice about proper time management or stain removal.
“I'll keep that in mind,” Law says at length. “He's got his sights set on you, considering your history. Not to mention you have three other users on your crew.” He's not sure what Blackbeard would do with the Hito Hito Fruit, but the thought of the newest Emperor getting his hands on Chopper makes his stomach twist. “You might want to keep an eye out, yourself.”
Luffy wrinkles his nose. “We're not that good at spying.”
“News to me.”
“Except Robin,” Luffy continues, ignoring or blissfully unaware of Law's sarcasm. “She's good at that stuff. Plus she has friends in the Revolutionary Army. They've been fighting with Blackbeard, too – I bet they'd know things.”
Sometimes Law wonders if Luffy knows how many people would kill to have the kind of connections he does. Counted among Luffy's supporters are grateful island kingdoms in his debt whether he wants it or not, a growing fleet of self-proclaimed subordinates, a blood father and adopted brother leading the Revolutionary Army, two former Warlords and a current Warlord – and those are only the ones that Law is aware of. Yes, Law is very glad to be counted among them rather than counted as an enemy.
“Oh!” Luffy's sudden outburst startles him again. “Speaking of Devil Fruits – we got something cool. Wanna see?”
Law glances around at the mingling Strawhat and Heart pirates, decides that his curiosity is worth the slight risk of coming back to find the decks on fire, and shrugs. “Lead on.”
In hindsight he should have expected Luffy to sling an arm around his waist and slingshot them both to the Sunny's deck. Luckily he manages to bite back a startled yelp, for all the good it does his dignity.
(It's not that great a loss; his dignity was done for the moment they tied the reindeer to his head on Punk Hazard.)
Luffy is already chattering again by the time they land – Law isn't sure whether to be proud that he sticks the landing, or dismayed that he's accustomed enough to stick the landing. “I guess this is another reason why there's no debts after all the stuff we just did,” Luffy is saying as he leads the way down into the Sunny. “They threw a pretty nice party after I was done beating up that one guy, and then somebody said something about giving us a present and I said 'hey you already fed me and that's a nice present', but Nami and Usopp sat on me and took it anyway. We've been keeping it in the library.”
Law raises an eyebrow at that. If it had been a monetary gift, then he's fairly certain the navigator would have insisted on holding on to it. “Why the library?”
“Well we were trying to figure out what it was, and nobody wanted to go for the most obvious way, too risky, but Robin managed to find it in one of her books.”
Getting a straight answer from Luffy is like pulling teeth. Wait, no, Law has his Devil Fruit; pulling teeth is much easier. Rather than waste his breath pressing him, Law simply follows Luffy into the Sunny's library to see for himself.. He notices right away the books stacked on the main table, not yet organized and put away. Sitting in their midst is a fruit.
Idle curiosity is now keen interest; the swirling pattern on its skin marks it unmistakeably as a Devil Fruit. “They just gave you this?” he blurts out.
Luffy sits up on the table, plucks up the fruit, and tosses it to himself as if it's a tennis ball instead of a valuable source of supernatural power. “Yup! The old guy in charge of the village said somebody found it in the jungle – there was a jungle on the island, did I mention that – a while ago. Thirteen years, I think? They picked it and everybody kept it around as a 'village treasure' or something, but then someone picked a fight with someone else, another jerk showed up and tried to wreck the place, it was kind of a boring story but we showed up and beat the crap out of a bunch of jerks, and they gave it to us as a thank-you.”
“And Nico-ya found out which fruit it was?” Idly Law picks up the book at the top of the nearest stack and flips through it. It's a reference guide to Devil Fruits – one of many, since Devil Fruits are far too numerous to fit them all into a single text. Each has a hand-drawn illustration and a description, Paramecias and Zoans and Logias, organized by color and shape to make identification easier.
“Yup!” Luffy leaves off playing one-man catch with the Devil Fruit and simply holds it. “We got lucky. Robin wasn't sure it would be in any of her books on Devil Fruits, but it was. Not sure if it was in that one, but she told me all about it earlier.” He puts the fruit back on the table, and Law is in the middle of turning a page when Luffy speaks up again. “It's called the Nagi-Nagi fruit.”
The book slips from Law's hands and bounces off the edge of the table before clattering to the floor.
“Sheesh, Traf, careful you don't do that when Robin's around,” Luffy chides him, stretching his hand down to retrieve the book while Law struggles to get his heart rate down. “She almost threw Franky overboard when she caught him dog-earing the pages.”
Law isn't paying attention. “What did you just say?”
“You know, that thing where you fold the corner so you don't lose your place? Robin hates that-”
“Before that,” Law almost snaps. He puts his hands on the edge of the table, steadying himself. He must have heard wrong. Surely he must have heard wrong. “You were talking about the fruit.”
“Oh, yeah, that.” Luffy glances at the object in question. “The Nagi-Nagi fruit. If you eat it, it lets you make things silent. Yourself, or other people, even cannons and explosions and stuff.”
Law's head swims.
“I don't get the point of that,” Luffy says dismissively. “You can't fight with it, and what's the point of making an explosion quiet? The 'boom' is half the fun anyway.”
Law clenches his teeth until his jaw creaks. “Are you sure?” he asks. “That this is that fruit?”
“Robin's sure, so I'm sure,” Luffy replies. “She was surprised because she heard somewhere that the Navy was supposed to have that fruit, but maybe she was wrong or the user died or-”
“And what-” His throat is dry, and his voice cracks. Law takes a moment to swallow before speaking again. “What are you planning to do with this?”
“Dunno yet.” Luffy's narrow shoulders roll in a shrug. “Nobody on the crew wants it. Me, Robin, Chopper, and Brook are already Devil Fruit users. Nami likes swimming too much. Zoro wants to be the greatest swordsman without a Devil Fruit. Sanji thinks we have too many hammers already and he doesn't want to be one of them. Usopp doesn't think the power's cool enough. And I knew Franky wouldn't want it – he didn't even want the Mera-Mera fruit when I offered.” He leans back, propping himself up with one hand while he idly rolls the fruit around with the other. “Nami thinks she can probably sell it, but she says Paramecias don't sell as well. Which is stupid – we're both Paramecias and we're the strongest people I know.” He purses his lips. “I don't want to sell it, though. It's not like gold and jewels. It's way more important, so I think we'll just hold on to it until we think of something. Even if it is kind of a weak power-”
“You're wrong.” There's an edge in Law's voice that he didn't mean to put there. He thinks, control, but his hackles are up and it's no use trying to smooth them right away. His knuckles are white against the table.
“Huh?” Luffy cocks his head, wide-eyed and birdlike. “I mean I bet it's useful, especially if you sleep all the time like Zoro, but you can't really win a fight with it-”
“It isn't weak.” He almost hisses the words. Cora was so many things, naïve and foolish and honest, far too honest for his own good, so honest that he had to trick his brother with silence rather than lies. But not weak. Not the man who chased children out of Doflamingo's clutches, who stretched out a hand and pulled him out of the dark, who slipped past pirates and marines to steal Law's salvation, who stood up to die so that Doflamingo's last bullets wouldn't punch through the chest behind him and hit Law.
His eyes bore into Luffy's, and the other pirate blinks – not alarmed or intimidated, but simply confused.
A knot of words builds at the back of his tongue, and he chews them and chews them and searches desperately for a way to spit them out without it sounding pathetic, like a plea for a boon. The Devil Fruit rests between the table and the tip of Luffy's finger, and in spite of their alliance, in spite of the blood they have shed together on numerous battlefields, this is not something that Law is ever going to ask for.
“If it means so little to you,” he says at length, “then I can take it off your hands.”
“You already have a fruit power,” Luffy points out, still looking at him with wide-eyed confusion. “Unless you mean it's for one of your crew-”
“Strawhat-ya,” Law says, his voice tight. “Let me be clear. I have nothing but – well. I have respect for you. And I value our alliance. But... that fruit? I want it. And I am not asking for it.”
Luffy blinks a few more times. He takes his hand away from the fruit, glances at it, then at Law again, and back and forth, as if he's seeing some invisible string tying the two together. Law tries to imagine his response – “You're not asking for it? But I thought you said you wanted it!” – because Luffy can take a punch but he can't take a hint to save his life, and veiled threats and implied demands soar straight over his head and miss that famous straw hat by miles.
What he doesn't quite expect is a smile (though he should have expected it if only because it was unexpected) and a quiet snicker. “Oh! I get it! Sorry, Traf, you confused me for a second there. But I get it. Sheesh, you could've just said so.”
“Said... what?”
Luffy's smile eases off, but it still reaches his eyes in a way that Law's rare grins almost never do. “You knew them, huh.”
Law feels his throat tighten. “What?”
“You knew them.” Luffy glances down at the fruit again. “Whoever had this before.” He looks at Law again, and those eyes just aren't right for a pirate. They're too soft, too kind. “Did you really think I wouldn't understand?”
It's something that Law hasn't thought about in a while, something he never needed to think about – that Luffy had entirely derailed his part in the plan on Dressrosa to chase after his brother's Devil Fruit.
“They were special?” Luffy continues, worming his way past Law's defensive walls simply by disregarding their existence, still with that damnable smile on his face.
“That power,” Law says, before he can stop himself. “And the man who wielded it. They're the only reason why I lived past thirteen.” He wonders, sometimes, what might have happened if Cora had never intervened. If Cora had never even existed. Maybe the poison would have claimed him. Or maybe Doflamingo would have made good on his word, would have fed his Devil Fruit to someone else and saved his life and raised him to serve at his right hand, and there would be no Trafalgar D. Water Law, there would be no Surgeon of Death. There would just be another Corazon, another devoted puppet dancing on Doflamingo's strings. He would be a corpse, or he would be a slave. “One way or another, I would... my life would be forfeit.”
“Yeah,” Luffy says, satisfied. “He's important. So you want to keep his power safe, and make sure nobody gets his power unless they deserve it. Right?”
Law's hands are easing on the table. He nods.
“Good.” The blinding-bright grin is back. “I know you'll take good care of it, then.”
Law feels his heart skip a beat. “You mean-”
“Didn't you hear me? Half of us can't eat it and the other half don't want to, and selling it's too risky when Blackbeard's jerks are all over the place.” Luffy shrugs. “And if it's like how the Mera-Mera fruit was for me, then I definitely want you to have–” He breaks off. “Wait.”
“What?” Law eyes him warily.
“Damn it.” Luffy pulls a face and groans loudly. “This is one of those stupid things again.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Law admits. “Are we still discussing the same thing?”
“It's a stupid thing, like the thing with Usopp.” Luffy actually pouts, and Law wonders if he should ask around about the thing with Usopp. “It's the thing where I really want to do something but I can't because of how it looks, and then I have to jump through a bunch of dumb hoops and waste time so I can do what I want while also making it look right.” He scowls. “When I'm Pirate King that'll be the first thing to go.”
In spite of himself, Law raises an eyebrow at him. “You realize the Pirate King has no actual authority over-”
Luffy glares at him, and it's slightly less intimidating than Bepo. “The Pirate King does what he wants, Traf.”
Again, the sound that Law makes is definitely not laughter, nor is it anything that remotely sounds like laughter. “I think I understand,” he says, still eyeing the fruit. “Regardless of whether or not you want it, the Devil Fruit is valuable spoils of war, and if you were to give it to me simply because I told you to, it would make you look weak.”
“And then Zoro will fuss,” Luffy moans.
“Zoro-ya... fusses.”
Luffy shoots him a helpless look. “Like an old lady.”
“Hm.” Law considers this for a moment. Luffy does have a point; they are still only allies, rival pirate crews with a mutually beneficial business agreement. It is give and take, tit for tat, and if one scratches the other's back without getting scratched in return, it will make things look lopsided. “I have a solution.”
“Did you hear something?” Shachi asks out of the blue. “What's all that noise?”
“Sorry,” Bepo mutters.
“No, not you, you're fine,” Shachi assures him. “I think it's somewhere below deck?”
“Probably Franky,” Nami says. “He'll show off the Sunny's entire arsenal, given half the chance.”
The door to the kitchen opens, and Franky pokes his head out. “Oi, did you say something, Nami?”
“What?” Nami blinks in surprise. “I thought you were below deck – is something going on down there?"
As if in response, the air reverberates faintly and the occupants of the Sunny's deck are abruptly encased in the unmistakable blue haze of one of Law's Rooms. It's a big one, encompassing much of the ship; if Nami had to guess, she would say its point of origin is down below, perhaps near the library.
Less than ten feet away, a barrel vanishes, and Luffy pops into existence in its place. He hits the deck with a thud, looking rather worse for wear. He's red-faced, his clothes are rumpled, and a couple of knuckle-shaped spots are darkening over his cheekbone and mouth – someone has punched him with enough haki behind it to leave a bruise. Blood trickles from a split lip.
A moment later, Law winks into view where an empty chair had previously been. As battered as Luffy looks, Law doesn't look much better. His nose alone is a bleeding mess.
“Had enough yet?” he asks.
Luffy glares at him. “Are you kidding me? Did you even hit me with that last one? It didn't even tickle!”
“It wasn't meant to.” Law holds up a translucent cube, in which... is that...?
Luffy gapes at him, then pulls up the hem of his shirt to reveal a square-shaped hole in his midriff. “Traf, you didn't.”
“I would have aimed for your heart, but I figured you would consider this more important,” Law says dryly, holding up Luffy's stomach.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Nami protests. “What's going on – Luffy, Law, what are you two doing?”
“We had a philosophical disagreement,” Law replies, surprisingly smoothly for a man with an obviously broken nose. “And we're currently resolving it.”
“What he said,” Luffy adds.
Nami continues to gawk.
“I guess this means you win this one,” Luffy goes on, a bit petulantly. “I would've kicked your ass, but you went and got sneaky.”
A faint almost-smile plays about Law's mouth. “A touch faster and I might have missed. You lost by the skin of your teeth.” The almost-smile becomes a full-on smirk. “I did leave you some teeth, yes?”
Luffy glares at him. “Give me my stomach back.”
“How badly do you want it back?” With his free hand, Law conjures a small Room around his face and resets the bones in his nose.
Luffy blinks up at him until he finishes reshaping his broken cartilage. “...Want a Devil Fruit for it?”
“Luffy!” Nami yells.
“Deal.” Law tosses the stomach back to its owner.
Nami's fairly sure her own frustrated yelling can be heard all the way in Weatheria.
“I can't believe you just offered that up to him at the drop of a hat,” Nami is still complaining as the Polar Tang makes its descent. “After everything we went through to get it, you just-”
“We didn't 'go through' anything to get it,” Robin points out, still waving to the sinking submarine. “They gave it to us on a whim – we didn't even know they had it in the first place.”
“But still.” Nami glowers at Luffy, who blissfully ignores her to lean against the railing and watch the Heart Pirates' departure. “It was the most valuable thing we had at the moment, and he just-”
“It's not like any of us wanted it,” Usopp reminds her. “If any of us had eaten it, our pirate crew would be mostly made up of people who can't swim.”
“Devil Fruits are valuable!” Nami says, fighting a losing battle. “Paramecia or not, we could have sold it.”
“Don't be stupid,” Zoro says bluntly, and nonchalantly dodges the kick that Sanji aims for his head. “It's a Devil Fruit, not a treasure chest. Do you really want to sell something like that to the highest bidder when that Blackbeard asshole's running around trying to collect as many powers as he can?”
Nami splutters a little. “Well – I mean – it's still something I would have liked to hold on to.”
“I bet he was nice.” Luffy's voice cuts through the argument, for all that he doesn't raise it. If anything, he seems to be talking to himself.
“Who was nice?” Chopper asks.
“I don't know. But it's fine. The Nagi-Nagi fruit's gonna be fine.” He doesn't raise his head, but is still smiling and watching the Polar Tang vanish beneath the ocean. “It's right where it needs to be.”
“Oh?” Robin looks interested.
“Hee.” Luffy shows his teeth in a grin. “Don't worry. Traf will take good care of it.”
Nami sighs, irritated. “This is another one of those things again, isn't it?”
Beneath the ocean's depths, Law sits in his room and stares down at the Devil Fruit in his hands. It's taken a while, but he's finally gotten them to stop shaking.
In all of thirteen years, not even on this mysterious, capricious ocean has he ever dared dream that he would find this. Not once has he ever considered – not once has it ever crossed his mind–
And in less than a day, Strawhat has simply swooped in, dropped this priceless thing in his lap, and gone on his merry way.
Will he ever stop performing miracles? Hopefully not.
Law isn't quite sure yet, what he'll do with this fruit. Maybe he'll wait, maybe he'll see how things play out. The world may still yet surprise him.
It will have to try a little harder, if it wants to top Strawhat Luffy at that.