Work Text:
1. it takes heart
The boy is pale, thin, with his shirt torn in places that suggests it has been worn for too long and his shoes barely scraps clinging to his feet. He has dirt streaked on his cheeks and on his hands and knees, suggesting that he'd crawled. He smells, of death and rot and bitter in the same way that foxglove flowers smell bitter. Most striking are his wings - emaciated, the grey and black speckled feathers falling even as he stands still with bombs strapped to his chest.
His eyes are a striking gold that glare and glare, hollowed out anger with nowhere to turn, and like the metaphorical treasure they are Rosinante can see his brother's eagerness to dig. X marks the spot, Rosinante thinks with some wry humour, likely in bad taste, and the kid is a bright red symbol on a map if there ever was one.
There's a very dangerous thing, in a kid with everything torn away from him, with nothing left to lose, with the only goal being revenge.
The kid's name is Law. Trafalgar Law, is the surname given upon introduction. Little shit, Rosinante nicknames him, for lack of something better when a goddamn kid (not even old enough to qualify as a teenager) gets close enough to stab him. Trafalgar D. Water Law, the kid admits to his two friends - as much as people can be friends in the Donquixotes, anyway, and maybe it would be Law and Baby 5 and Buffalo, if there could be something like friendship within the crew - and a string in Rosinante's heart goes cold and subsequently snaps.
D. Water. That's not something you hear every day.
He steals Law away for that, because should Doflamingo ever find out then no matter how much his brother likes Law at the moment, no matter how much Doflamingo considers Law his protege and his apprentice, the teacher with a firm guiding hand and the wayward student, then Law is dead. Terminally ill or not, in no condition whatsoever to fight anybody and especially not Doflamingo or not, his brother would recognize that spark if it was so callously pointed out - the spark of flint grinding against steel flashing gold in Law's eyes, sparks thrown by embers beneath a forge. He who would fight the gods.
Rosinante can't pretend to himself for very long that that's why he keeps Law on a cross-oceans trip across the North Blue, hopping island to island, going hospital to hospital and being turned away at each, whether it's the white spots and the illness that peers out behind Law's paper-thin skin or his wings which are falling apart, feathers discarded carelessly as kindling (and Rosinante has to flinch every time a fistful is tossed into their fire, Law barely batting an eye) and swiftly being replaced. He gets attached to the kid, his kid. He looks at the boy with his wings full of barbs instead of soft, pliable feathers, and the vicious determination in his eyes, the kind of anger that would claw open the sky than see itself not sated, and thinks he needs to live. He deserves to live.
So he combs dead feathers out of Law's wings and ignores the cuts as he pricks his fingers and palms on the jutting barbs, wiping the blood discreetly on the tails of his hat. He pushes the Ope-Ope-no-Mi down Law's throat and makes him swallow even through a round of coughs. He sets Law into the treasure chest and tells him to wait there, to just wait for Rosinante and nothing else, and waits for the barrel of a gun.
2. it takes lungs
The unusual thing about the kid who kicks them away from the mink is that he's got no feathers.
Instead, his wings are a tangled mess of barbs and thorns, like brambles had grown in place of bone and plumage. People with unusual wings exist - Shachi's own mother had wings that were thin and jutted out at a point, not wide or strong enough to let her fly - but he's never seen anybody with wings that have no feathers.
The feathers are the important part, see. They say something about you. What does it say about Shachi and Penguin that their feathers are short and jagged at the ends, scale-rough and not giving easily beneath preening hands - not giving enough to currents of air to let them even fly?
But, the kid. He has wings that drag behind him (they must be heavy, heavy like Shachi's wings are, heavier than wings with hollow bones and light feathers), all briars and tangled weighty thorns with not a feather in sight. Not even a leaf, or a flower.
He kicks ass, though. He's one tough cookie. It's not apparent - he's small, shorter than Penguin and Shachi, with gaunt cheekbones and coughs rattling out of his lungs on every breath and a distinctive flush that says fever, he's visibly sick and looks about ready to collapse - but he moves faster than they can and targets their weaker spots, shoving a fist into Penguin's stomach and knocking Shachi's legs out from under him so he falls flat into the snow, and his eyes blaze.
He's got eyes like the swooping owls at night, hard and vicious. He's got the eyes of a bird of prey even if he can't fly. They're gold, bright unnatural gold, like the untarnished metal coins flipped between the fingers of the rich and noble, but not lifeless. When he glares at them, it's like two candle flames and his pupils are the wicks, proudly bearing fire.
It's hard to swallow that small, jagged part of their pride and say sorry, to the mink and not the kid, but the mink easily forgives them and introduces himself as Bepo. The kid, who looks marginally better (less coughing, but the fever-blush is still there), accepts them with a nod and continues cooking whatever food it is he's making.
Penguin asks if they can have some. The kid eyes them with a fox's suspicion but shoves part of the fish over. Friendship blossoms, tentative like late-winter snowdrops, over a crackling fire and fish bones sucked dry of all meat or juice.
None of them can fly. Three of them can swim. The kid - his name is Law, surname Trafalgar, and his accent is strange but he doesn't elaborate and they don't ask - can fight and has some sort of power. What a bunch they are.
Swallow Island is a tiny, fuck-off place in the middle of nowhere. The villagers don't like Shachi or Penguin, and they'll hardly welcome Law or Bepo. For the longest while, it's been Shachi-Penguin, just the two of them after Shachi's mother finally passed. Now it's two more outcast kids. Really, there's no choice but to stick together, like how men stick together on a stranded boat.
They squabble and fight over petty, dumb things. They still gather at night to stave off the cold. That's what being friends is, Shachi supposes. That's what it's like, when the people you know are by necessity. How could you learn to live with them? How could you live without them?
Forgiveness is a hand in his, squeezing warmth back to chilled nerves. Forgiveness is a handful of hawthorn berries, blood red and sweet-sour, some with the crackle of frost on their skins. Love, by contrast, is Bepo clumsily preening their wings, unafraid of the rough edges or - in Law's case - the grasping barbs. Love is the three of them gathering so they can pull burrs and brush snow out of Bepo's fur, at the back where he can't reach it himself.
This is, Shachi thinks, friendship. They're not so alone anymore, are they. Four kids in the snow, wandering the outskirts of little, nobody Swallow Island. Forcibly grounded, and the ocean never freezes but it's so cold even Bepo would freeze; it's worth it to have them by his side.
Law is the one who comes up with the idea, in the end. "If we can't go up, we'll go out," he says, in that matter-of-fact way he does, the look in his eyes the same look he had when he'd ripped apart his own damn blanket and knotted a trap together that caught five rabbits in one day, more meat than they've ever had. "We'll find or build a boat and we'll get off this damn place."
(Shachi's not dumb. The knots Law ties are sailing knots, steady and meant to weather the worst of the sea. He swears like a kid who's spent his time around boats and pirates. He carries around a damn knife and has a fruit power - he's definitely not some kid who grew up in the fuck-all middle of nowhere like they did.)
(He'll follow Law anyway, because grounded kids like them need to stay together.)
3. nothing without mesentery
The kids spilling into his shop are a surprise. It's partly because he doesn't get many customers - Silon's Swords (and more) isn't the most glamourous establishment. Some might even call it ramshackle. Rundown. Wood nailed over the windows in place of glass kind of rundown, you see.
It's also partly because they're the weirdest damn bunch he's ever seen.
Two have wings that look like they'd belong more on the fish the fishermen haul past his store at dawn, scaled and slippery in the nets. One is a bear. The last has wings that make Silon inadvertently shudder, feathers rustling - it's barbs and branches, like dead trees, not a feather in sight. Skin patchy, too, with white standing in sharp contrast to the last one's darker skin, and gold eyes that don't look human - this is a spirit of some sort who has wandered into his shop.
"Sirs, you - "
Gold eyes glance over at him. "Yes?"
It has a suspiciously normal voice for a spirit. Silon swallows. The full weight of that pinning gaze has turned to him. Fish have that sort of flat stare. Birds have it. Humans, people, don't.
"We want to get a sword, or maybe several," one of the more normal ones pipe up. "We have money. We can pay."
The beri are real, even if the customers may not be. Silon hesitates. Anything spirit-touched will haunt him. The others may also not be people - no person has something like fins, instead of wings. No person could befriend a bear.
"The long ones will work," the gold-eyed spirit says and nods towards a barrel in the back. "How much for them?"
The long ones? Nobody wants those, it's why they're so hidden away. The shorter ones make it easier to fight fast and agile, all that power compressed into one point. Long ones will mess with balance, during flight - how do you carry something like that, on your back or your side? Too much weight in one place.
Then again, spirits wouldn't be bothered by them.
"Just take them," he hurries to say. "Pick three and go."
All four spirits look at one another. "Uh, you sure?" the bear says, pressing its paws together - the bear. Spirit, that one, most certainly. "We can pay?"
"No, just take them! Spare me!"
"Jeez, is our reputation that bad?" one mutters as they cross through to sift through the barrel. "We've barely done anything."
"Who knows. Maybe they're just really paranoid?"
The gold-eyed one draws out the cursed blade, easily settling its weight over two shoulders, between a nest of thorns. Silon backs away as the spirit makes for the door, the rest of its companions following closely behind and marveling at their new acquisitions. The spirit chose the whispering blade, with its snarling voice. It's strong, definitely.
He's all too grateful when the four leave with a final thank-you thrown his way.
Ikkaku meets her future captain on a summer day as she's cleaning off her palms, hoping that none of the broken blisters get infected. Grit is stuck under her nails from the work and her hands ache from climbing ropes, but that's what she has to do.
They don't even put a ramp or anything, so she can get to the roof. Anybody else could fly, but her wings are small and can't lift her into the air, dead feathery weight on her back. It rankles, because she's the best damn mechanic in the town and probably the entire island, too - now, if only she could properly do her job without spending half an hour shimmying up and down.
It's a summer day, it's stupidly hot, all the fans would knock her off-balance because of how strong the current is, and she can't even reach the dirt stuck in her feathers. All she wants to do is get her hands clean, walk home, and sleep for an eternity.
She glares at her reddened, angry palm. If her hand gets infected, she will be furious.
"Um.... hi?"
"What?" she snaps, turning around, expecting to meet some annoying townsperson. Instead, she comes face-to-face with a bear, round black eyes big-concerned and watching her with worry that Ikkaku really doesn't need.
"Are you okay?" the bear - a bear? - asks, fidgeting. "Your, um, hand looks kinda bad... "
"I'm fine," Ikkaku grits. The skin of her palm feels raw and painful, hot in a way she doubts is because of summer. "You can go back to doing whatever it was you were doing - " what does a bear even do, in its spare time? How is it even talking? " - and I'll just go back to doing what I was doing. Cool? Cool."
She's about to very aggressively ignore this intrusion when the bear pipes up. "Uh, my captain - he's a doctor? He can help... ?"
Captain is what really sticks out to Ikkaku. Captain means marine, merchant, or pirate, and she doubts marine - there's no coat, or air of superiority that their local marines always have. The bear doesn't look rich enough to be a merchant, at all (the sunhat he's wearing looks handmade, not storebought - merchants, she's fairly sure, would be selling a talking bear instead of letting it wander about in full daylight). That leaves... pirate.
Which also leaves the question of why their town hasn't been looted yet, but Ikkaku isn't sure she cares enough about the people here to try and find an answer.
"Your captain," she repeats, dubious. "Let me guess. Pirate captain?"
"Ah! How'd you know?" the bear starts. "Um, yes - but he's nice! I promise!"
"Bepo!"
A man wearing some sort of strange jumpsuit - okay, that's definitely handmade, the stitching isn't clean like a tailor's - runs up to them. He has a frankly impressive sword at his hip. His wings look smooth, not feathery - the texture looks to Ikkaku almost like sharkskin. "Man, I was so scared! I thought we lost you!"
"I'm sorry, Penguin!"
What kind of pirates are these? Pirates, Ikkaku's fairly certain, don't hug each other in the middle of a street while worrying about each other's injuries. She would think she was wrong in her assessment, had it not been the bear essentially confirming her hypothesis - they are pirates. Not very impressive ones, but she supposes it still counts.
"Bepo," a third voice sighs and then two more people are arriving. "There you are."
"Sorry, cap," Bepo whispers. "I just got curious... "
The captain, Ikkaku assumes - he's tall, tall enough that with the sword on his shoulder he looks intimidating, tall enough that when he looks at her it's with his chin slightly tilted down. The gaze that passes over her is assessing, and sharp like a crow's, but not pitying or condescending. "Bepo, you cannot run off like that without telling one of us. You had Shachi in a near panic."
Shachi is the last one. He has strange wings - all of them do, the captain's don't even have any feathers whatsoever - and he looks to be wiping furiously at his eyes. Bepo freaks out at the sight.
"Shachi! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you - "
"It's my allergies," Shachi sniffles. "I'm so allergic to apples, you wouldn't believe it."
"Thought it was oranges?" Penguin teases, wrapping an arm around Shachi's shoulders. "There, there, we found him. Not your fault."
Bepo, Penguin, Shachi. The captain is the only one unnamed. Before Ikkaku can finish cleaning her hands and leave, Bepo is pulling away from the three-person-pile and pointing to her with one, fuzzy paw. "She has an injured hand, captain! It looks infected!"
"Does she, now," the captain says, perfectly dry.
"Oh no, she's injured? Miss, are you injured?" Shachi frets. "Don't we have, like, medicine?"
"No," the captain says, flat. Everyone's face drops wide open in surprise and the captain waits for a moment before saying, "I can manually remove the infection if there is one. You all know this."
"Oh, right!"
"Cap, can you do it, then?"
"Yeah, cap!"
This is, Ikkaku decides, the strangest day she's had the pleasure of experiencing.
"I'm fine," she says but the captain is already reaching for her and she bristles, prepared to duck and run - all he does, though, is hold his hand out, palm flat. There's a white patch creeping up into the pink, calloused skin, roughened by work. He just stands there. "Who the hell are you, anyway? What sort of pirate crew has a bear?"
It's not the most surprising part of the crew, but she's not going to be a prick and say what sort of wings are those like she's the mayor or something. It's none of her business.
"Mine," the captain says. Wow, she didn't realize. "Are you going to let me remove the infection or no?"
His accent is odd. Ikkaku's no language expert, but she hasn't heard any accent or dialect like it, not even in their port town where people from all over converge. The others have accents, too, but she's heard ones similar to theirs. Not him.
"Do not chop off my hand," she threatens. "And I'm not paying."
"We weren't selling anything," the captain informs her flatly. "Room."
She starts as a blue bubble draws open in his hand and around hers. "The hell is that - "
"Shambles."
Something blobby and strange pulls itself out of her hand, like a sort of weird film. The pain in her palm lessens. The swelling - she can see it going down.
What the -
In a smooth move, the captain shrinks the bubble down absolutely tiny, freeing her hand, and starts spinning the gathered stuff around like it's a weird centrifuge. With a practiced move, he pulls out a lighter and flicks the flame ablaze with a deft roll of his thumb, then sets the stuff on fire.
It goes up in a sputter of embers and dies out as the bubble pops, leaving nothing in the captain's palm and a steadily rising plume of smoke.
"He does this a lot," Shachi whispers. "Says it's a good way to disinfect stuff."
"Yeah, you get used to it," Penguin adds.
She looks between the pirates. The captain who is turning away, tucking the lighter back into the pocket of his jeans. Penguin and Shachi, with their strange fishlike wings, waving as they go to follow their captain. Bepo, who hangs back for a moment, fretting, then quickly goes after the rest of his crew.
"Wait!"
They pause. "What," the captain says, less like a question and more a statement.
"I'm the best damn mechanic in this town," she says. "If you're on a boat, I could help. Anywhere that doesn't need me to fly and has moving parts, I can handle."
Gold eyes latch to hers. She sees assessment in that gaze and glares back, determined to not be found lacking.
"Why are you offering?"
Why is she offering? She's lived here all her life, bad wings and all. She's climbed the walls since they can't be bothered to put anything between the floors in their storeyed buildings, and she's climbed to roofs because there's just no ramps or anything for her to get up to properly. She's been a stranger in her own home for something like eighteen years.
"I want out of this damn place."
A pause. Approval sparks in his ember-eyes, gold like the spitting embers at the bellows of a forge. "Come with us, then. I'm Law and these - " he gestures with a thumb, Penguin strikes a pose - "are the Hearts."
The Hearts. It's strangely appropriate, for a crew so full of life and pulse.
"I'm Ikkaku."
"Ikkaku!" Shachi says. "Welcome to the crew!"
"Welcome!"
"Yeah, welcome! We're always glad to have more people! It gets lonely in the Tang."
"Welcome," Law echoes, a wry quirk to his smile as he leads his odd, ramshackle, flightless crew to the harbour. "First thing you need to know about us."
He pauses in front of a beautiful vessel. She's yellow, with black paint on the sides, shaped not like any ship Ikkaku has seen before. Not designed to float, but designed to sink - it's a submarine.
"We go down," Law says. "Not up."
Down, not up. Perfect for this bunch, clearly made for the water and not for the air - perfect for her, she who has never been able to fly but who can climb, she for whom the descent has always been easiest, down ropes and down walls.
Ikkaku grins. "I can work with that."
In chains - heavy, wrought iron and steel, the alloy not breaking even beneath his strength - Jean Bart shifts and tries to get used to the lack of weight on his back, the wings cruelly removed. Bone cut down to bloodied stumps, the comforting feathers assuring his freedom stripped away.
This is, he thinks, some sort of cruel joke of fate. The captain of the Bart Pirates, with his proud falcon-like wings, torn from the skies. His crew and his beloved ship, burnt down and enslaved, some killed. The captain himself now forcibly grounded, no wings to speak of.
Humans fly. It makes Jean Bart an animal, then, to have no wings. It makes him no better than a mule, than a dog.
The darkness cracks, breaks. Light peers through, just a sliver. Something like a battering ram smashes in the doors the walls, caves them down as if punching through sheets of wet paper, and Jean Bart looks up and sees gold.
The eyes catch his notice before the wings. Bright, burning - it reminded Jean Bart of a story he'd heard of, the fox who drowned the sun. The ugly fox who took the sun by its teeth, every night, at the edge of the world, and pulled it down and tried to devour its fire. All night the sun would suffer, as the fox consumed, and when the fox finally fell asleep it would gather itself back up and rise back into the sky, having lived another day. And so the fox always ate at the sun, and the sun never burned out.
The sun drowned, in those eyes, but never would sink.
Then he sees the wings, arches of overlapping brambles and thorns, bits of plaster falling out of the net of barbs - that's what broke past the walls then, wings without delicate feathers or bones, wings that could be used as fists and maces. Wings that looked deadly, and cruel.
"Pirate captain Jean Bart," the man says, something like surprise in his voice. He drifts closer, the massive wings overtaking the entire room. Light feeds through the slim gaps.
Jean Bart finds it in himself to laugh. "Not much of a captain, now," he says, hoarse. "Not much of a pirate, either."
"For the moment," the man agrees and then the key flashes between his fingers and clicks and the cuffs fall off with a clank-clatter of metal chains. "Come with us, if you want. Or stay here."
He turns, and strides out through the hole he'd punched in, and Bart stares at the retreating back with its snarl of branches.
Standing is an ache in his legs, and back. Balancing is difficult without the counterweight of his wings, but Bart grits his teeth through it and it feels like a victory when he gets up fully, free of his chains. He stagger-stumbles out, gripping at the ruined edge of the wall for strength, and finds the man waiting outside, gold eyes watchful like an osprey's. Gold eyes that watch him.
Wordless, he stands and lets Bart lean his weight on his shoulder, standing up to the pressure. His wings are arranged in a way that they can't jab him through with its quills, but are flared out for balance, and together they make it back to the man's ship, a submarine painted yellow with a grinning face on the front, cheering him on.
"Who's this?"
"Oh, hey! Someone new! Hey, cap, who's this?"
"Shit, he's injured! Someone help!"
The man's crew is loud, and raucous, but strangely organized in their chaos. They don't comment on his lack of wings and instead support him all the way up the ramp (a ramp, most ships had no ramp, there was no need for one but, Bart realizes looking around, none of the man's crew were flying at all), onto the deck and into the submarine.
And once he's been bandaged and swallowed medicines and eaten, been fretted over by a crew (most of who look young, younger than Bart) that never flies, a bear takes his hands and very gently says, "Welcome to the Hearts, sir."
4. it takes guts
Sanji thinks Trafalgar Law is one of the weirdest pirates around. The surgeon thing is weird, the fruit he has which nobody seems to know jackshit about is weird, the accent he speaks Norden in is weird, the dialect he spits out sometimes when particularly annoyed is one he has never heard (and there were many customers, from all over, back in the Baratie, and the Grand Line has so many kinds of people from different places that he should have heard it at least once before now), and the wings. Yeah, those are weird, too.
Luffy accepts them without a second thought, because he's got weird wings too - some hell fusion between rubber and a normal wing, letting him fly and hover about in short, powerful bursts but not for as long as the rest of them can - and "Torao's wings are cool, they're all spiky!"
Yeah, that's the weird part about them. Luffy may think there's nothing strange about Law's featherless wings, and Zoro may think it's even cool to have wings that can double as bludgeons - even asks Law to show him his particular style of swordfighting, adapted for a man stuck on the ground very used to fighting opponents who can come at him via air - but to the rest of them, it's odd.
If the man had wooden feathers, Sanji might not question it as much. As it is, there are zero feathers, just prickly spines. They're not just dangerous because of the fact that someone could prick a finger, but because of how Law uses them - like battering rams, swinging them into enemies without care. Like a horrifying variant of mouse traps, snagging fliers between snarls of brambles and thorns, tearing at feather and muscle and breaking delicate, hollow bone when people are unceremoniously yanked out of the air.
It's a strategy Sanji can appreciate the brilliance of, even if the thought of getting his wings or anything caught in Law's makes him shudder. Flightless or not, you can't win a fight by avoiding your opponent. Any enemy has to go to Law, never the other way around, and as soon as they get close enough they're within range of his excessively long sword, his fruit, or his death-trap wings. A few thorns through some flight feathers and then you're grounded for the rest of the fight, and your wings may as well be dead weight, while Law's are sturdy and powerful enough to snap bone with a well-placed blade.
He never wants to fight Law seriously. He's seen the guy pull off leaps that make it look like he's flying, and tackle opponents to the ground, pinning their wings and ripping out feathers on those nasty barbs. Zoro is a madman for wanting to try, insane, and probably taken brain damage from all that swordfighting he does - then again, that's not much of a surprise, is it?
"Stop blocking," Law says for the millionth time as Zoro is knocked back by one of Luffy's punches. "He's in the air, he has gravity working with him. Start deflecting instead, and dodge more. You're on the ground."
"Luffy's airborne, that's why he's so fast," Zoro grits as he gets back up.
"No, your captain is fast because you're moving like you're in the air or trying to get there, instead of moving like you're on the ground," Law counters. "You don't have that advantage. What you do have is pivoting. It's much more difficult to turn and pivot midair than it is on the ground." He demonstrates by taking Zoro's place, easily spinning and dodging between blows with a narrow grace that Luffy can't match, until a good hard knock to Luffy's unprotected stomach throws him off course. It's easy play for Law to swing one of his wings up and tap them lightly on Luffy's and Sanji's hand clenches around his cigarette.
The sight of those wings, with their jabbing thorns and barbs, up against Luffy's - a blow too harsh and he'd rip through primaries and secondaries, possibly fracture bone. Law's wings are deadly.
But Law doesn't. He just taps Luffy's wing and then steps back, giving Zoro a look. "Use a different perspective, Roronoa-ya. Try again."
Newly motivated, Zoro throws himself back in the fight and Luffy does, too, with a whoop. Law nods approvingly when he sees Zoro duck one of Luffy's hits and swing the flat of his sword into Luffy's shoulder, flat because they're not looking to chop each other up, and Sanji can't even focus on the fight because Law is there with his wings having proven that he deserves the death part of his moniker, and Luffy and Zoro just think it's cool.
Sanji doesn't think it's his fault that he's slightly paranoid about their new ally.
Preening is a communal activity on the Sunny. Even those who don't have wings to preen, like Jinbei, sit in and help.
Sanji is brushing out the beautiful mottled blue-white-gold feathers of Nami's wings when he hears Luffy yell, across the deck, "TORAO! Aren't you gonna come?"
"To do what?" their surliest (and only) ally replies.
"Preen your wings!"
Sanji can't help his twitch of surprise, making Nami hiss as he accidentally tugs on her feathers. "Be careful!" she snaps. "That hurt!"
"I'm sorry, Nami-swan!" Sanji hurries to apologize, soothing his fingers through her wings, preening the feathers soft and shiny and she huffs but relaxes, mollified, head tipped back slightly to enjoy the sea breeze. Even so, he can't help but to glance at Law, and he's not the only one - Usopp, Chopper, and Franky all look nervously over at him. Even Robin glances up from where she's oiling Franky's part-metal wings.
"I don't know if you've noticed, mugiwara-ya," Law says, coming up to them and leaning on the railing, "but preening my wings is a little difficult." He flares one, stretches it out in its full span of prickles and brambles. "And I'm not part of your crew."
"I can preen 'em!" Luffy says, eager as always to dip his hands into danger. Law scowls, looking not unlike an offended cat - an offended, very dangerous cat who bats birds out of the air, Sanji reminds himself firmly.
"You'll injure your hands."
"No I won't! C'mon Torao, c'mon c'mon c'mon - "
It looks like Luffy's newest strategy is to annoy Law into agreeing to something and Sanji can see the beginnings of a full glare forming on Law's grumpy visage, the petty argument about to become even pettier, when Zoro says -
"Preen mine and I'll preen yours."
"Zoro!" Usopp hisses, as he's working through Chopper's small wings.
"Marimo, you'd cut your hands wide open!" Sanji says. He's being gracious and worrying over his crewmate, even if it's the one he hates the most. "And do you - "
He cuts himself off. What he'd been about to say had been rude, to say the least, and most certainly hurtful - but Law is someone who is perfectly experienced in downing fliers, and tearing out feathers, and Sanji can't imagine him sitting nice on the ground preening someone.
"What, curly?" Zoro scowls. "He's a surgeon, ain't he? He's probably got good hands."
Of death, Sanji wants to say, but Zoro is already tapping the space behind him with an expectant look. "C'mon, then, Torao. They don't bite."
Law hesitates, an unusual look for him - he's decisive in everything else. But eventually he goes over, holding his wings high and close to his sides, and sits down.
Nobody speaks except for Luffy, enthusiastically telling Zoro about the one time he fought a boar three times the Sunny's size - they're barely listening as is, too focused on how Law accepts the bottle of preening oil and spreads it over the silver feathers at the base of Zoro's wings, the motions clearly practiced and familiar. He straightens the feathers and plucks out old ones with a skilled hand, and Zoro visibly relaxes into the feeling, making a show of turning back to Luffy to listen to the story.
Right. He probably has crewmates with normal wings. He'd learn to preen from them.
Sanji determinedly focuses on finishing Nami's wings so that he can get her to preen his. He doesn't look up and at Law until he hears Zoro hiss and Law say, "Stop. I'll go - "
"No, you're staying," Zoro says and Sanji lifts his head in time to see Zoro yanking Law down by his sleeve, the two of them in a very determined staring contest, gold against brown. Unceremoniously, Law falls into Zoro's lap, ducking forwards just in time to not give Zoro a faceful of thorns and likely nasty cuts. "How the hell are you going to preen your wings on your own?"
Law gives him a look like he's an idiot and raises a Room with a single hand. A snarled Shambles and both his wings fall flat at his feet, clattering onto the deck in a mess of thorns.
Ah.
"I don't need your help," Law says like he's won this argument. "You don't exactly have bear paws. Touching my wings is dangerous with bare hands, so stop trying. I can remove debris and anything else stuck there on my own."
He has not won this argument, Sanji knows, because Zoro is a stubborn prick and he has that set to his jaw that says he'll physically fight Law in order to preen his wings - he's always been firm on the idea that preening is between friends, and never done by oneself.
"Too bad," Zoro says, predictably and reaches over to try and pick up the damn things, which Law balks at. "Preening is a community activity. You're not preening your own wings."
Damn it. Just as Sanji thought.
"Don't you and your nakama preen each other's wings?" Luffy asks, curious. He's helping Robin with hers, but he's stretched his neck so he can peer over at the squabbling pair in the center. "What's wrong?"
"Obviously, but it's safe for exactly one person to touch them without gloves or something similar - and you're not my crew, either!" Law snaps, muttering something that sounds like a Norden swear under his breath but is different enough that Sanji has no idea which one it is. "You're not slicing up your hands to preen my wings - "
"Look at my damn scars, you think I can't handle a few cuts - "
"I'm saying that it's stupid to try, go help Tony-ya or something - "
"Chopper can handle Usopp's wings on his own, put your damn wings on your back so I can preen them - "
"You're not preening my fucking wings - "
"Shut up!"
Nami's yell echoes across the deck, her frustration evident even as her fingers continue to be gentle, smoothing through Sanji's wings. She's so beautiful, even when she's annoyed.
"Sit down, Torao," Nami scowls. "And let Zoro do it already. He's not going to give up and he'll just hound the rest of us until you let him and then we'll have to deal with you two being up for like twelve hours trying to get through your wings. God, you guys are idiots," she mutters, returning focus to Sanji's wings.
There's a bit more protest, but Zoro is triumphant and when Chopper timidly says that he can help after he's finished Usopp's wings, since he has hooves and can probably manage it, Law relents. The arching wings go onto his back and the Room dissipates into nothing as he sits, looking all too annoyed about being preened.
As Nami predicted, it takes a while to get through Law's wings. Zoro sits and works patiently through the brambles, and other crewmates drop by on occasion to help for a brief stint before going back to their other business. Eventually, Sanji finds himself being dragged into assist, the two of them trying to reach through angry nests of barbs in order to clean out the wings.
It gets progressively more tangled towards the center, loops and loops of thorns and branches that Sanji has to encourage to separate, cleaning them out as gently as he can. Law is still tense, though less so than he was when Zoro started, and eventually the cage of thorns loosens enough that Sanji can see a peek of green.
Curious, he works through the interior more until he can see, between the bars, peeks of - leaves?
Not leaves. Green shoots, sprouting at the very deepest part of the wings. When he tries to touch it, brambles block him off, and Sanji has to stroke them back open so he can take a look. Yep, those are sprouts, fairly new ones if he had to guess, but further in are peeks of yellow, and white, and blue and pink.
Flowers, Sanji realizes. There are flowers at the very base of Law's wings, peering up at him. The thick brambles circling the interior are no cage - they're a shield, guarding away the fragile blooms, refusing to let anybody inside.
He pulls his hands back, glancing at Law. The other has his eyes partially closed, lidded gold and dark eyelashes - he doesn't seem to notice. He doesn't seem to care at all.
People say that wings are an extension of a person's spirit, of who they are and what they hold dear. A lot of it is bullshit, but even the most ridiculous of stories have some truth.
Zoro raises his brow at Sanji when he doesn't get up and leave, but instead sits and continues to preen Law's wings like he'd been there the whole time. "What'd you do that for?"
Law shifts, stirring. His eyes, when he looks back, remind Sanji of the ospreys that occasionally perch on the rail. Luffy tried to pick one up and it screeched and clawed until he let it go - then it flew off in a huff. "What happened? Did you injure your hand?"
He has, little scrapes and cuts on his palms and fingers, but Sanji is realizing that they're not deep or big at all. The real injury Law could cause with his wings is only when he wants to. The largest thorns, the ones that easily double as knives, are not aimed for them. It's only the smaller bristles, the ones that he can't seem to control as well.
"It's nothing," he says and doesn't think about the flowers, nestled within, nor of the little green seedlings working their way to life.
5. it takes spine
The Heart Pirates, Zoro finds out, are all just like Law - flightless, some with wings too small, some with wings not meant to air but for water, some missing a wing or without any wings whatsoever. They're a bright, raucous bunch, chaotic enough to match the Straw Hats on a good day, and they mob their captain without any hesitation.
There's a bear, and he tackles Law down beneath a full body of fur. Then there's everybody else, avoiding the thorns that make up Law's wings with an ease that speaks of familiarity, of years spent together. Of fights shared, won or lost, of injuries mended and oceans crossed. The Hearts are a crew to live up to their name, full of love that the rest of the world will not give them, grounded people that they are.
Of course these would be the people who Law chooses. Those who cannot fly are, Zoro knows, usually left behind and treated as unworthy of the help to keep going - any aid is a favour, not a right, any basic help must be earned. Air combat is important, especially on the sea where the water would bog down feathers and mercilessly drown those whose wings are not equipped for swimming. Any pirate would call Law insane.
But the Hearts have a submarine, don't they? They have a submarine with a ramp, with all the shelves and objects easily within grabbing range, with levels flowing into one another by virtue of more ramps and never just open space, so that people can walk up and down easily without needing the wings that most pirates have. The Hearts have crew members with long weapons, able to reach into the air. They have guns that don't just fire bullets but sticky, viscous oil, trapping fliers under the sudden dead weight of their own wings. They have crew members who swim and puncture hulls, bringing the fight down to the sea level where it's their advantage, not their enemy's.
They have Law, a D. who is as crazy as the rest, beneath the calm surface. They have their captain with his barbed wings and beautiful, beautiful mind. They have their captain who Shambles his crew to where they need to be, and who quietly but stonily reminds others that those who can't fly exist, and should still have the right to exist in spaces that those who can take for granted.
(It's hard to say no to an entire crew of flightless people, gathered and watching. Gathered and real.)
That's who Law is. It took a good while for Zoro's crew to warm up to him, especially with the wings and the Surgeon-of-Death thing he carries about, but Zoro noticed early on the ways that Law would accommodate them, holding his wings out of the way so they don't accidentally scrape or hurt anybody, keeping his presence contained to avoid jabbing anybody with any of the thorns in his wings. He did his part to try and make sure they were comfortable around his wings, was it not also their role to make sure he was comfortable around his?
It's why Zoro preened Law's wings, that day - preening is a community thing, a friendship thing. After Kuina's untimely death, after Zoro set out on his own, he had to preen his wings alone during cold nights. The reminder that others are there is something he will never not appreciate.
"Hey, uh... "
Zoro swigs down the last of his rum and looks up to see Law's first mate, Bepo, peering down at him. His paws are pressed together, and it's strangely cute.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for preening cap's wings!" Bepo blurts out in a rush. His eyes are brimming with grateful tears. "Not many people want to or can, and it's really so nice of you, especially cause he didn't bring any gloves with him - "
Not many people want to or can. Seriously. How dumb can that be? Plenty of people can. He's glad Law's crew aren't cowards who can't preen their captain's wings, but to all those who have looked at Law's wings and refused to touch the nest of barbs - they're idiots.
"S'no problem," he says and finds himself glancing towards Law, who is letting himself get involved in some sort of ridiculous dance, not airborne but on the ground instead, his crewmates stomping energetically and creating a rocking sort of pulse, the way that is difficult to do in the air. The firelight catches and glances off of his eyes, embers seeming to be caught within the irises, light pooling and pouring behind the membrane with every subtle movement of Law's head. His hair tints a sort of coppery brown and something stutters for the first time. "Glad he let me do it."
The cuts barely even hurt, then, and they healed easily without scarring. He doesn't get why Law was so concerned.
Zoro looks away from the party going on and gets up to refill his tankard. Somewhere between one swallow and the next, Law has broken away from his crew's merriment and sat down next to Zoro, a silent presence when Zoro looks up and sees the glint of gold, like the sun caught off the edge of a sharp blade.
"How come you're not with your crew?"
"And get sucked into doing that?" Law snorts, pointing down at where his crew is energetically spinning one another around. They're good, Zoro has to admit, more coordinated than any drunk bunch has the right to be. They're practiced. "I'd kill somebody."
Law's wings are no joke. Zoro has seen the full impact of them, shattering wingbones and walls with barbed blows, tearing out bloody lacerations from flesh and skin. He knows that people flinch away from Law's wings, the promise of danger so so clear that any sane person would not go closer than ten paces to him.
"Doubt you would," Zoro says, after a swallow. "You're too careful with your wings for that."
He gets a startled glance - seriously, did Law think he was subtle about it? Even though he's perfectly willing to bludgeon some unfortunate soul with the blunt end of a wing, he's cautious around friends and allies.
"I mean," Zoro shrugs, "the worst that would happen is some dumbass stumbles into your path all drunk, and you can't stop on time and you accidentally give them a good few cuts. No big deal. Luffy and I once almost got into a full-blown brawl after a party."
Law blinks, a beat of dark lashes. The look on his face very clearly says what the fuck, how did that happen, but he doesn't voice his confusion and just says, "A good few cuts is a nice way of saying lacerations on their face, torso, and legs, possibly hitting eyes as well, Zoro-ya."
Fuck if Law saying his name doesn't make the alcohol buzz tingle. "Eh, it'd be their fault, and Chopper would fix them up. No big deal."
"No big - " Law shakes his head with a snort, almost close to a laugh, and leans back on the ledge, showing enough of one muscled leg to be distracting. "You and your captain, I swear."
"Go dance, then," Zoro says, giving Law a playful slap to the back. "Join your crew. Spin around, get dizzy, vomit - "
"Fuck you. I don't get dizzy, unlike you flying folk," Law snorts. "You go dance, then, Zoro-ya, if you can even do it without puking all of that - " he nods at Zoro's tankard - "back up."
His ears have earrings in them. Two, twin hoops of gold, dangling in each lobe. How Zoro never noticed this detail before, he doesn't know.
"Only if you prove that you're as tough as you say," he challenges, and Law's smile is all teeth and raptor-wildness and it's never been said that Zoro is wise, as far as people go, when it comes to charging headlong into danger.
"Deal."
Zoro shoves aside his tankard and plunges.
He registers Law swinging off and down, bits of stone falling from how he digs his wings into the cliffside to make his way onto ground in long, graceful jumps. They join the fray and Law takes the lead, melting easily into the laughing dancers with a comfortable grace, the flash of his earrings distinctive. Zoro is quick to follow, though not as quickly - he's not used to spinning, and it shows. You don't spin midair, you don't pivot and twirl like Law's crew does, but something about this dance makes him feel like he's flying even if his feet are firmly on the ground.
He catches up to Law when someone - he thinks the guy's name is Clione - spins Zoro towards Law's friend Penguin and Bepo gently whirls Law towards Shachi and both of them end up spinning past their intended partners, Zoro falling into Law's reflexive grab with a dizzy laugh, his head whirling.
Law's hands are warm and solid. There is genuine concern when he asks, "Hey, you alright?" even as he guides Zoro to the sidelines, steps as light and smooth as the rest of his crew.
"Fuck, I'm perfect," Zoro chokes through his mirth, closing his hands firmly around Law's and spinning them back to life. The world rushes around them but all he can focus on are gold eyes, a solid anchor like the metal. "Absolutely fantastic."
Law snorts, the edges of his lips tipping up in a smile as they fall back into the crowd. "Good to know you're enjoying yourself."
He's in his element, here, grounded and dancing through his partying crewmates with the grace of a swordfish cutting through water. Zoro saw it the first time he witnessed Law fighting up close, on the deck, darting through Luffy's punches with a narrow agility that couldn't be matched in the air and brushing the thorned edge of a wing carefully against Luffy's (careful, because he is careful with those wings of his, so careful Zoro doesn't know how others can miss it). He sees it now, the surefooted way booted feet move across steady earth, and wings which should have been dead weight are borne proudly by those strong shoulders.
In a few days, they will reach Wano and everything will start over, but for now Zoro is happy just where he is.
Wano, objectively, is a mess. By the end of it, two emperors have been downed, the bubbling pit of magma now has a few more bodies, and Zoro's captain has become a Yonko.
(He will look back upon Wano with fondness, later. He will remember the bad but it will be distant. Instead, he will think about Hiyori and Momonosuke and Yamato. He will think about it as another one of their adventures, with conflict and troubles but with a happy end they've carved out from the earth, an end that they come out of knowing each other better. He will think of it as a precursor of sorts to knowing someone who later becomes one of the most important people in Zoro's life. It's the first brush with something Zoro knows later to be fact - Law has careful, gentle hands, and he's uniquely suited to fussing over Zoro's health.)
And, in the middle of it all, Law throws up his hands where he's trying to parse through Luffy's injuries and lets loose a small torrent of what sounds vaguely like how Sanji curses during the middle of their petty squabbles. Law ends somewhere on fuck, actually in a language Zoro understands, and flicks Luffy hard in the cheek before opening a Room and starting an operation with a frankly impressive amount of swearing.
"What dialect is that?" Sanji asks. "I've never heard it before and I've been all over."
Law, freezes. Stills, for a good few seconds, then sighs out another vaguely expletive-sounding word. "Dead one," he says.
Something falls between the lines, which Zoro doesn't really know how to read. Still, the way Law's shoulders are all stiff like he's been frosted over -
"Can't be dead. You speak it."
If anything, Law grows tenser and Zoro wonders if he's just shoved his foot in his mouth, the way Nami yells at him not to do. Then, their ally (friend, at this point - you take down a warlord, an entire government system, and a couple emperors together, you're probably closer to crew than ally) sighs and says, "I guess. Yeah."
He says something else, which Zoro doesn't understand, but some things are universal and the flash of gratitude in Law's eyes is one. Feeling oddly light, Zoro lies back and waits for someone - probably Law, since Marco and Chopper are busy tending to other patients - to come over.
By the time he wakes up from his short nap, Law is busy dressing Zoro's leg. His hands are, Zoro notes, gentle. They were gentle when he preened Zoro's wings, smoothing out feathers and pulling away worn out ones with the rhythm of experience; they are gentle now, efficient but kind, and for someone with DEATH on his hands he really is good at bringing about life.
"You really are lucky you didn't snap a wingbone," Law says, shaking his head. "Next time? Maybe land somewhere that's meant for landing and not collapsing into a ruined building., Roronoa-ya"
"Scold me when my head doesn't hurt like hell," Zoro groans, content to just lie there and breathe for a bit. Law's inhale is distinctly offended, but Chopper manages to distract him by coming over and Zoro closes his eyes.
Law really does have gentle hands, he reflects. They have callouses, skin built up and rough where they are accustomed to machinery and sword handles and other risks of the job, but it's adaptability and strength. And they're soft where it matters, distinctly careful and practiced. That's who Law is, careful and practiced. It's in everything he does.
People say Zoro is simple, but that's because they make it so much more complicated than it needs to be. The simple truth is, Law's a good guy with badass wings and a cool sword. It doesn't take much more than that for Zoro to like him.
"Also, call me Zoro," he mutters before falling asleep and missing the surprised blink Law gives him, mouth shaping Zoro's name in contemplative silence.
6. we'd be lost without the head
It is a strange twist of fate that Trafalgar D. Water Law acquires a submarine. Because, really, who would want a submarine, whose purpose is to go under? You can't fly in a submarine. Normal ships sail proudly above water, letting their inhabitants soar and touch clouds as much as they want.
But Law can't fly, and neither can any of his crewmates. So, Law gets the submarine.
"We should paint it," Shachi declares in all his brilliance.
"We should paint it blue, so it can hide in the water," Penguin agrees, laughing. "That way we can sneak up on all our enemies!"
"No," Law says, eyeing the metal hull, the sides. "I think I have a better idea."
The most eyecatching shade of yellow he can find (steal), a fuck-you to anybody who thought they would be hiding. Black, to stand out, and their jolly roger bold as brass on the side of the ship - no flags underwater, after all. A middle finger to the men who wanted Law's own people to disappear. A middle-finger to Doflamingo, to the government, to the Marines. To the villagers on Swallow Island, to the raiders who scoffed at Shachi and Penguin's wings and spat at Law's barbed ones and laughed, outright, at Bepo. To everybody who would think lesser of them - fuck off, make way, we're coming through and you get one warning.
It's a great idea, Shachi agrees, and Penguin and Bepo too, so they all paint the submarine and do their best, in all their three-teenagers-one-bear glory, to get tall enough to paint the roger on the submarine's side. Penguin names her the Polar Tang and they set sail into the North Blue.
The solution, Law finds, is always to go down. Want to tear something apart? Want to blow something up? Go down, deep as you can go. Roots, foundations, and bedrock - the most important stuff is always beneath the earth and ocean. So down they go, because it's not as though they're going up anytime soon.
They gather people, inexplicably. Ikkaku, then Clione and Uni. Hakugan, too. More join on as they sail across the North Blue, a motley bunch of four, then five. Ten. Seventeen, nineteen. Twenty.
Funny - Law never thought he would live, nor that he would want to, after Flevance burned to the ground. He was a small, pathetic, terminally ill kid with feathers dropping by the handful and his wings twisting themselves into cruel thorns to compensate - his destiny seemed to be frost-clumped dirt and a headstone, in some random island. Here lies the last child of Flevance, it would say, maybe. Here lies Trafalgar Law, perhaps, if they were nice. Here lies some random kid who nobody will remember, was the truth of it, because Law would die before he ever hit his teen years and that was just fate.
If the weak didn't choose how to die, what did it say about Law? That he'd never been able to choose his illness, and that when he dropped dead it would be from poison swallowing up his body?
But Corazon saves him, in the end. Pushes a heart-shaped fruit into Law's hands and makes him swallow down the sweet-tasting bile. Dies because of Law, dies for Law, a useless damn kid, all because he -
Hey, Law! I love you!
Killing someone can be hard, or easy. Sometimes it's the finality of it, the truth of ending a human life. And sometimes, it's like gutting an animal - all you need is a sure hand, and to ignore the smell of blood.
So what does it say about Doflamingo, then, that he shoots Corazon with the same straight arm and sharpshooter eye of a hunter aiming at a buck?
His point. Life, living, is difficult sometimes. Food can get difficult. Water can get difficult. Convincing himself that he needs either can be a damn chore, and it bears on his crew's hearts. It bears on everybody who cares about him, and that's the worst part - they shouldn't feel pain because he has enough issues that probably require more years of therapy than years he's been alive.
They get through it, though. They do their damn best. Even if Shachi and Penguin and Bepo get frustrated, sometimes - even if Law gets frustrated with his own damn self - they get up the next day and keep on trying. It's something, isn't it? That they stick together, through seas and storms. That they forgive and love, in the end.
There's the Hearts, for the longest time. There's Zoro, eventually - unafraid, blunt, stubborn as a mule and just as or twice as proud. Steady as a tortoise, set on his goals and terminally unable to give them up. Loyal, fiercely so, to all those he calls dear.
He sees straight through Law, sometimes. Straight through the discolored white patches on his skin, the dark ink sprawled over his chest and back and arms, the thicket of brambles on Law's back. He sees clearly enough to know the fault lines and weak points - cut along the dotted line, etcetera etcetera - and chooses not to.
Law has never been much of a believer in the 'wings-are-your-soul' stories (though, at the dead of night, when he accidentally tears at the coarse cloth and firm tarp that makes up his sheets and blankets because he'll shred anything weaker, his thoughts filter through more easily and he wonders, about the tangles of thorns that make up his wings). But Zoro is a winged man, a winged man who can fly and who has no reason to look at Law, trained especially to be able to defeat fliers like him, with kindness.
Zoro is a lot of things. Patient is one of them. Calm - some would call it lazy, but peace isn't lazy and hurricanes are not lazy because there is an eye at the center. He grounds Law on his worst days, and Law does his best to return the favour. To make sure Zoro knows he's loved, by his crew and by Law - to keep the reckless dumbass from flying straight into injury, because he has people to return to dammit and if Law has to bandage up a near-lethal wound again then he is going to start tracking people down like he's the bounty hunter.
Love is overwhelming, sometimes. He loves his crew. He loves his family and his home, even if the rest of the world won't. He reluctantly feels affectionate towards the Straw Hats, and he loves Zoro. Love can be so overwhelming that Law, even years later, still gets that desire to push it out and away.
They never let him, and Law never lets himself in the end. The Hearts live up to their name, in the end, and Law - like it or not - is the bassline pulse that carries blood. Who would they be without him? What the hell would Law be, without any of them?
Law preens his own wings, sometimes. A lot of the time, it's Bepo and his crewmates, piling into his room with gloves and set-jaw determination, dedicatedly cleaning the brambles of his wings with the same care that would go to feathers or fur. His wings may not be delicate, or friendly at all, but they don't seem to care.
Nowadays, Zoro likes to do it. First mate of the literal pirate king, of Strawhat goddamn Luffy, and one of his favourite pastimes is bullying Law into sitting down (or lying flat on his stomach, sometimes) so that he can dip his hands into the nest of barbs and preen Law's wings.
"Wear gloves, for fuck's sake," Law sighs every time, when he sees Zoro's hands immediately after he's preened Law's wings covered in little cuts and nicks. He always cleans away the blood and bandages the worst ones, no matter what Zoro says. "You can avoid all this through one trick. One."
"I don't give a shit," Zoro says every time. "Hawkeye sliced me clean open across the chest once, a couple cuts ain't gonna hurt me."
Or it's some other inane statement, about some other ridiculous injury Law's reckless dumbass of a boyfriend has gotten himself into. They might be older, and wiser, but Zoro is still the same stubborn idiot he was when he first wrestled Law into letting his wings be preened because it was a 'community activity' or something along those lines. He's becoming convinced that Zoro is a damn masochist.
Still. Law worries, that Zoro will accidentally slash his palm clean open on one of the larger thorns, the ones which are designed to hook and rip and tear like sickle blades. His wings are made for slicing things open, almost on purpose. A knife is still dangerous even when lying flat on a desk. Unwary hands could hurt themselves or others.
Really, it's ridiculous that Zoro is always so calm about Law's wings, as though having entire bramble bushes on one's back is perfectly fucking normal -
"You're doing it again," Zoro says and flicks Law's forehead. Law jerks out of his thoughts with a hiss. The pain is sharp but fleeting. "Shut that brain of yours up. I didn't drag you all the way out here so you could be miserable about your wings."
"And where, exactly, is 'out here', again?" Law scowls.
"A field," Zoro proclaims, and he looks so proud of himself that Law can't help but soften. "Wait, shit, this might be the wrong one - "
"Oh, give me that," Law sighs and grabs the map. The giant X on the paper has writing beneath it. It looks like they're on the wrong end of the island, somehow. "How'd you get us to... Goldenrod Field?"
"I don't even goddamn know," Zoro groans. "Get us out, then. I wanted to go there."
Yes, Law figured that much. He sighs and stretches a Room out from his palm, building a mental layout of the island as he goes. It's second thought to locate what he's fairly sure is the right field, grab Zoro's hand, and swap them with some random pebbles. "Here's the right place?"
Zoro looks around, and lights up. "Yeah. This is the one. C'mon."
He pulls Law in, towards the tree in the center. Zoro might be comically bad at directions, but when he has a goal he'll go straight for it, or in a messy path for it - same difference, eventually.
"Remember when we weren't dating and we were stupid?" Zoro says, blunt as ever as he sits and Law sits next to him, stretching his wings but careful to not damage any of the plants around them.
"Do not remind me," Law sighs. Wano has some very interesting memories for exactly that reason. "Why are you bringing up our sordid past, then?"
"No reason, just thinking," Zoro shrugs and smiles, that way which is unhealthy for Law's heart, a sort of certain wry grin. "Remember that one palace in Doerena? You said something about foundations and then blew up the entire thing. It was hot."
"I blew up the foundation because I was pissed off," Law says.
"Yeah, that's the hot part."
Law can't help but laugh. Sun warm on his skin and on his wings, his boyfriend leaning on the oak tree's sturdy trunk, eyes soft and warm, deep brown in a way that captures the light perfectly. There's no butterflies, just the solid heartbeat in his chest and in Zoro's wrist, a promise of the steady future to come. "You're just as bad. Mogaro - I almost fell into the damn sea because you started chopping up Navy ships."
"Yeah, and I was hot doing it. Don't distract from the main subject, Torao. We are hot as fuck."
"That's your takeaway from your musings on our pre-relationship history?"
"Yeah. We're hot, we're swordsmen, and we kick ass. Why did we wait again to get together?"
"We were idiots, for one."
"Oh yeah, that. You're sidetracking me, though - "
"Oh, I'm sidetracking you?"
" - because I dragged you here," Zoro says pointedly over Law's protest (it was the other way around and they both know it), "for a reason. We're sitting in the middle of a blackberry field."
Law looks around. "... yes? I noticed," he says. "Raspberries too. Did you bring us here to eat wild berries?"
"Yeah," Zoro shrugs and grabs a handful of wild blackberries off of their thorny bush without fear of contact. He pops several into his mouth, licks the juice off his hands in a way that is unabashed and certain, then grins at Law with stained teeth. "So eat some."
And here Law was, thinking it was something dramatic and important. It's like Zoro, though, to pick up the smallest things and treasure them like the grand. It's very like him, and isn't that what Law loves him for, anyway?
So he snags a few blackberries and eats them, enjoying their pleasantly sweet taste, summer-ripe and plump. The dark violet juice trickles down his fingers and before Law can do anything about it, Zoro is snagging his wrist in one calloused hand, leaning forwards to lick his fingers clean with unhurried swipes of his tongue and heat flash-ignites in Law's stomach, surprise dropping and pitting in his gut.
"Zoro-ya - "
"What?" Zoro asks, roguish and crooked grin. "We're having a date. It's romantic."
Fucking romantic, that's what he calls it. Zoro easily pulls Law towards him, so that they're intertwined with each other, arm-to-shoulder and knee-beneath-knee, legs tangled.
"I miss when you were shorter than me."
"I still am, though?"
"Not by enough," Law scowls and pops raspberries into his mouth, one by one, pleasantly sweet-sour. The sun peeks through the leaves and glints off of Zoro's eyes, off the silver-green-black feathers of his wings, proud and arching but deceptively warm and steady. Unhurried, if a wing could be unhurried - his wings are built for gliding, not to rush about.
They're both plenty strong, but it takes a lot of shoulder and back muscle to fly, and Zoro is noticeably broader. Law, while it takes strength to swing around Kikoku and his wings like that, has most of his muscle in his legs - all to keep up with fliers, and their tendency of zipping around like hummingbirds in the air. It wasn't difficult for Zoro to tug him in then, and it's not difficult now. The subtle height difference between them, only half a centimeter or so, doesn't help much.
Summer has the tendency to stretch out the hours, languid and waiting, on the edge of hopeful. What can only be minutes lingers on for days, as they sit beneath the shade and just bask in one another's presence. Zoro finds some strange pleasure in threading oak leaves and bits of grass into Law's wings, sliding them onto the thorns without much care for how the leaves get torn and mangled. He just keeps doing it, strong sword-calloused hands working in a way Law would call artful, and Law has no heart to pull his wings away, so he alternates between eating berries and feeding them to Zoro, letting teeth scrape over the pads of his fingers without complaint.
"There," Zoro says when Law's wings are more leaf than thorn, more of a bush than a bramble thicket. "Now they match."
"Match what?" Law asks, dropping one too many blackberries into his mouth. He chews, and violet juice overflows into the little crevices of his bitten lips, staining them dark purple and dripping onto his chin. The sweet flavour bursts in his mouth, seeds crunching beneath his teeth. It's the waiting warmth of sunlight, caught on his tongue.
"Your wings. You know, most people don't bother to take a look, but they're a lot more beautiful than you'd think," Zoro bluntly informs him and, before Law can do it himself, leans over to kiss the juice off his jaw. Up rough-soft olive skin, licking over Law's lips to catch even those intimate drops and then kissing him, idle and lazy and patient. Life can wait. They occupy this second, this minute, this hour - life can wait.
"Did you drag me all the way out to this field to seduce me?"
"Is it working?"
"Eat a goddamn raspberry," Law says to avoid saying yes because it's working, it will always work, and time will always stop around moments like these.
Zoro presses his lips into the palm of Law's hand, swallowing the raspberries with less care than he uses to clean the remaining juice off, dipping over the lines in Law's palm. Without looking back, he snags a handful of berries - not seeming to care about the brambles that try to catch his reaching, thieving hands - and feeds them into Law's mouth, one by one, fingers tenderly nudging his lips apart and pressing each berry into his tongue, catching him mid-heartbeat.
"Shit," Zoro sighs when Law sucks a blackberry directly off his thumb. "I love you."
The warm flush of the sunlight, the catch and hook of Zoro's hands, one on his cheek and one on his waist - Law sacrifices his inhibitions and fears and whispers, "Love you too."
It's never, he thinks, been easier.