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Level Six was dark, dank, and full of the kind of horrors even seasoned pirates didn’t want to deal with. Crocodile would have disliked it on principle if only because of the damp. But he was trapped with seastone, without even the option to stay dry, thousands of feet below sea level.
The chill that seeped into everything he could handle.
The screams of the other prisoners, he could handle.
The damp that spread the chill and left a haze and settled wrong on Crocodile’s skin, he couldn’t handle.
He hadn’t minded the way sea salt felt against his skin until his devil fruit, and after that, Crocodile barely tolerated the way liquids in general made him feel solid in a way that he hadn’t before eating the damned fruit. Seastone made him feel that and worse, exhausted and worn out and weak in a way that he hadn’t been since his Captain had picked him up off a market street and fed him and gave him a home over thirty years before.
Crocodile was cranky and snappish and prone to irritating the guards who stopped by just often enough to see if they were still alive in this dank pit of hell.
The day started much like any other – guard checking to see if anyone had kicked the bucket, Crocodile mouthing off at the guard to cover up his sheer exhaustion, Jinbei of the fucking Sea chastising him once the guard was done having an apoplexy.
Then –
A ruckus, the sound of guards handling a dangerous prisoner that – surprise, surprise – wasn’t exactly fighting back, and Crocodile wasted some energy leaning to catch a glimpse of whoever the unfortunate bastard was.
It was Firefist. Fucking hell.
Crocodile and Jinbei shared a look between them because were the Marines insane? They had to have known that Whitebeard would be incensed at the fact that one of his many children was caught up and trapped this way. The guards dragged Firefist – dragged, because the kid could barely move – and chained him down in the cell next to Jinbei with more seastone than what they’d chained Crocodile down with, and just the sight of that much seastone was enough to make a man sick.
Crocodile whistled, a low, slightly impressed slide of sound, like sand shifting on the dunes, and Jinbei made a low rumbling noise back, a history of waves on the open sea in the tone.
Firefist hissed back, a worn-out but still angry sound that held hints of a fire crackling.
Good.
They hadn’t completely broken him.
Crocodile waited until the guards were gone to flick an eyebrow up at Jinbei. It would be better to present a united front for the kid, at least for now.
“Who gave you up?” Crocodile asked, low and easy. He quietly asked Davy Jones to lend him his captain’s strength in dealing with Firefist.
“Blackbeard,” Firefist snarled, finally lifting his head.
It was like staring at a ghost.
Crocodile paled.
Crocodile knew that expression, that facial structure.
The freckles that were splattered across Firefist’s face under a layer of dirt and grime and blood.
“Captain Portgas?” Crocodile whispered.
Evidently, it was loud enough for Firefist to hear, and he snapped, “What?”
“I do not believe that Crocodile was talking about you, Commander,” Jinbei said.
The Fishman was staring at Crocodile with something unreadable in his eyes, but Crocodile couldn’t tear his own from the way Firefist – a Portgas?! How had he not known!? – had twisted to look at Jinbei, exposing the lines and planes of his silhouette. It was almost the same as his Captain’s.
Crocodile had seen the bounty posters but hadn’t wanted to believe.
Hadn’t wanted to have hope.
“Then who?” Firefist snarled, turning his glower back to Crocodile.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“My Captain,” Crocodile started, shoulders slumping in more than exhaustion, “when I was a pirate apprentice, was Captain Portgas D. Rouge.”
Crocodile closed his eyes and took a stabilizing breath. He almost felt more than heard Firefist suck in a hitched breath, his Haki going all over the place.
Firefist hitched another breath, then another, then a sob, seastone chains rattling as he moved.
“Who else knew my mom?” Firefist cried.
Crocodile tried not to let his heart break for this kid he never got the chance to know.
He failed.
He and Jinbei let Portgas cry it out, neither of them interrupting him.
“What… what can you tell me about her?” Portgas croaked an unidentifiable amount of time later.
“What do you want to know?” Crocodile kept his voice even, his tone low. It wouldn’t do for the guards to hear them, to discover that Portgas’s mom was Captain Rouge. She wasn’t as well-known as Whitebeard or Big Mom, or, god fucking forbid, Roger, but his Captain had been infamous in her own way.
“Everything.” Portgas’s voice cracked. “Nobody knows anything about her, and if they do, they can’t tell me, so please.” He looked at Crocodile, fresh tears welling up in his eyes. “Please tell me.”
“Of course,” Crocodile promised, much the same way Captain Rouge had promised him the day they met.
It was the least he could do, for the son of his Captain.