Chapter Text
The air around the Thousand Sunny was tense; a feeling just beneath the usual mirth it held that it was almost palpable.
Sailing away from Punk Hazard had been a celebratory occasion. Everyone had made it out alive and they’d successfully evaded any shenanigans their captain had dragged them into once again. The somewhat incorrect word being “successfully”.
Things should have been normal as they left the island, but instead, once back on the Sunny, the tension that came from the presence of their newest guest was undeniable as the straw-hatted man compounded their new development to the rest of his crew.
An alliance. One with the Heart Pirates, the crew whose captain was known for cruelty and gore. The Surgeon of Death, they called him.
Despite the initial disagreement by a few of the more timid members of the Strawhats, the days following the dual captains’ mutual agreement had settled into their usual routine of nonsense, though Law himself couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
Being on a foreign ship one could expect such a thing from its crew, but this felt. . .
different.
It was as though every corner of that ship bored its gaze into him no matter where he turned.
“Traffy-kun. Do you have a moment?”
The voice that called out to him as the rest of Sunny’s crew ascended the stairs for a mid-day snack was almost velvety in its natural pitch, and when the surgeon turned, he was faced with that very same feeling he’d felt since boarding.
She stands tall before him, a few inches above his height, her every motion almost fluid with grace. Her golden eyes piercing through his very being as they stare him down, intensity mismatched with their mistress’s almost nonchalant tone, one long sharp tipped finger curling to beckon him.
“I’d like to show you something.”
The Devil's Child - Nico Robin. He knew of only the basics of Luffy’s crew, having looked them up after the Sabaody debacle, one they’d all barely escaped with their lives.
She had been the one to remind her captain of the ways alliances tended to play out when he proposed the idea, her calm demeanor both then and now seeming to be an eternal staple of her personality.
Still, there was something to the woman that unnerved even the stoic Heart Pirates Captain, something he couldn’t yet put his finger on.
Perhaps it was the way she stood almost statuesque in the background of that otherwise ridiculous crew, a soft smile always upon her lips as though nothing could truly bother her, or perhaps the way she went along with every foolish notion her Captain seemed to come up with no matter how ludicrous or dangerous it may have been.
Whatever it may have been, Law shook himself free of his inner musings, her request one he found himself acquiescing to almost on instinct, not unlike a rabbit pressing its belly low to the ground to avoid arousing a predator’s drive to kill. It was an action so unlike himself that the hairs on the back of his neck prickle in discomfort despite his feet moving to follow the archaeologist in question. She unnerved him.
It was the first time she had sought him out since he’d come aboard the ship a few days prior, the two never having spoken outside of when the crew was gathered and discussing something. Perhaps that was why he’d followed if he had to hazard a guess - his reasons both out of curiosity and the thought that it surely must be something important if this mysterious woman seemed to require his attention.
However, the mirror of those piercing eyes suddenly echoed in his mind, and all at once Trafalgar Law knew why he’d felt like he was been being watched before.
She had been studying him from the very moment he’d stepped aboard.