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Crocodile isn’t with the revolutionaries because he believes in their cause.
In fact, he doubts their efforts will amount to much. He considers them dreamers who fail to take reality into account, blinded by the belief that they’re doing the right thing, as if fighting in the name of fairness and justice would be enough to turn their few numbers victorious in a hopeless battle against the might of the World Government. It’ll be decades before they can even begin to be considered a threat by the Five Elders—if they’re not wiped out before that.
No, Crocodile is with the revolutionaries simply because he enjoys fucking with Dragon.
He’s not even sure what the appeal is, really. Every little thing that irks him about the revolutionaries as a whole, Dragon has tenfold. If it were anyone else, Crocodile would have only glanced their way to look down on them, point, and laugh.
Alas.
Dragon is determined. Crocodile can value that, even if he thinks he’s very unlikely to succeed. Dragon is also not unpleasant to the eye (definitely the least unpleasant out of what the Revolutionary Army, as they like to call themselves, has to offer) and he knows what he’s doing in bed. Crocodile really appreciates that. Dragon is mysterious, a man with no surname who’s very familiar with the Navy’s inner systems, and okay, that’s probably the thing that has Crocodile hooked. It makes the affair feel a little dangerous—he likes that.
Of course, the revolutionary leaders know why he sticks around (it’s not like Crocodile has told them, although he doesn’t care to hide it either) but they don’t seem to mind. Whether he believes in the cause or not, he does participate in operations every now and then, and provides the manpower worth of a small army. He can be the most devastating of their forces—especially when a target calls him “miss”.
Ivankov keeps offering a hormone shot to change his appearance so these misunderstandings stop happening, but Crocodile keeps refusing. He likes his body as it is, even if his curves are to blame for the misgendering; plus, he doesn’t trust Ivankov’s hands anywhere near him. Besides, everyone in the army knows how to address him to avoid being maimed or killed, so it’s not that big of a problem.
Crocodile is a man whether he presents as one or not, and that’s that.
Dragon asked him once if he believes in fate. Destiny. Invisible strings that determine a person’s life before they’re even born.
Crocodile told him to shut the fuck up and go back to sleep.
The answer, by the way, is no. Crocodile believes in luck, gambling, coincidence, but not fate. He believes in free will, and that every person can choose any future they’d like for themselves, if they’re strong enough to build it.
He didn’t choose this for himself though, and if there indeed is a fate, then Fate, pardon his French, is a fucking little bitch.
“I’m what?!” he snaps at the doctor, death in his glare as he hopes, prays, that he’s misheard.
“You’re in labour,” the doctor repeats, somehow not cowering under Crocodile’s murderous stare.
“Listen here, you fucking incompetent—” Crocodile starts to threaten him, then groans and doubles in pain as another strong cramp attacks his insides. It’s worse, way worse than any period he remembers ever having—and the memories are recent, too, because he’s been having those for the last nine months.
The doctor sighs when Crocodile relays that information amidst insults and curses. “It’s an asymptomatic pregnancy. It can happen,” he tells him, and Crocodile swears he’s going to find whoever created mankind and designed its reproductive system, and he’s going to have a nice, long, lovely chat with them about it.
“So now I’m supposed to give birth? Just like that?” he yells, feeling panicky in a terribly new way, and hates hates hates the pitying look on the doctor’s face.
“At least count yourself lucky that I was around today.”
That’s right. The base is practically empty, with almost everyone deployed for a mission here and there; the only ones who remain are the doctor, Crocodile himself, and Dragon. It’s perhaps the best possible scenario inside this living nightmare, Crocodile muses, and it makes him feel a teeny tiny little bit better.
Then the doctor adds, cheerfully: “It must be a thing of fate!” and Crocodile feels murderous all over again.
Dragon is just as shocked by the news as he is, though he looks way more delighted when he barges into the infirmary only seconds after being informed.
“You motherfucking asshole!” Crocodile roars at him, writhing in pain on the bed under the constant assault of cramps and contractions. “You did this to me!”
“Now, now, darling,” Dragon tries to speak soothingly, approaching Crocodile with the same caution someone would, well, a crocodile.
“Don’t you fucking ‘darling’ me! I’ll bite your face off!”
“I understand you’re upset—”
“I’m not upset, I’m fucking fu-UUUUUH-rious!”
“—but try to see this as a moment for celebration!”
“Celebration? Celebration?!” Crocodile wheezes between pained gasps. “I’ll rip your intestines out and hang them around the room like party streamers; how's that for a celebration, huh?!”
Dragon, to his credit, stays with him throughout the entire process, despite the multiple insults and death threats sent his way. He doesn’t so much hold Crocodile’s hand more than he simply lets his own be squeezed to death, while Crocodile screams himself hoarse as he pushes a tiny human out of his body. It’s not pretty, and it’s not wholesome, and it’s probably the most traumatizing event in Crocodile’s life.
And when it finishes, when it’s over after who knows how long, Crocodile barely has time to breathe in relief before he hears the first cry of a newborn.
Oh. Oh, no. No fucking way in hell.
“Aww, Croco,” he hears Dragon coo. “It’s—”
“No,” Crocodile gasps, gathering what little strength he has to push himself into a sitting position. He can see the doctor a few feet away, his back turned to him as he presumably checks the baby to make sure everything’s fine; and Dragon, halfway between the two of them, looking back at Crocodile with a surprised expression on his face.
“No?” he repeats, confused.
“No no no no no,” Crocodile huffs and gasps as he rolls off the bed, intent on escaping even though he feels weak and nearly collapses and he’s almost certain he’s bleeding all over, “no no no no no no no.”
He gives himself twenty-four hours to recover, then leaves.
Dragon tries to approach him a few times before that, telling him to reconsider, think it carefully, give them a chance, but Crocodile is having none of it. The mere thought of staying to play happy family makes him feel sick. He wants nothing to do with the baby, which happens to be the most unpleasant surprise of his life, or with Dragon, who just so happens to be responsible for the most unpleasant surprise of his life.
(It’s probably unfair to blame everything on Dragon, yes, but at the moment Crocodile’s sanity relies entirely on having someone to blame, and so he does.)
Only after leaving the revolutionary base behind without so much a goodbye does it occur to him that he hasn’t looked at the baby even once. He doesn’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl, or what Dragon has named it.
There’s a flicker of hesitation, one second of doubt that lasts one second too long, and then Crocodile is grumbling, forcing himself not to care out of fear of developing emotions for the little alien creature.
He’s made his choice, and he commits to it.
Ivankov laughs his ass off when Crocodile appears out of nowhere, pulls his shirt up to bare his stomach, and demands: “Hit me.”
“And what made you change your mind, Crocoboy?” Ivankov asks him happily as his fingers grow into the shapes of syringes.
“None of your fucking business,” Crocodile growls, biting his lips when Ivankov stabs him.
“Did you have a bad breakup with Dragon-boy?” the revolutionary insists, wiggling his eyebrows up and down.
Crocodile doesn’t answer right away, too distracted by the odd feeling of his body changing and morphing under the effect of Ivankov’s hormones. He can’t say that the feeling of going through all the stages of puberty in the span of a few seconds is a pleasant experience, but the deep satisfaction of knowing that this new body of his won’t betray him like the old one did, oh, that more than makes up for it.
“Something like that,” he says at large, and is surprised by how deep his voice suddenly is.
“If you want someone to vent to…” Ivankov offers, nosy as ever, and Crocodile glares.
“All I want is to forget that affair ever happened.”
“Of course, darling,” the revolutionary gives in with a sigh and an eyeroll. “I’ll take your secret to the grave.”
Crocodile breaks out of prison and goes to war with the sole idea of killing Whitebeard. It’s delightfully entertaining after his time in captivity, despite Ivankov’s shameless blackmail and the brat who kicked his ass in Arabasta being the one leading the way.
Then Sengoku introduces said brat to the world as the son of Monkey D. Dragon, leader of the revolutionaries, and Crocodile’s whole world freezes for a second.
It pisses him off. It pisses him off massively. He never wanted anything to do with that child. He’s spent close to two decades convincing himself that it was all a fever dream, only for the kid to barge into his life not once but twice now, and with a vengeance.
Dragon would probably call it fate, and in turn Crocodile would remove that hideous face tattoo with his hook.
He’s so fucking angry, and angrier still when he jumps in front of Mihawk to cover Luffy, out of nothing but pure instinct. He’s fuming by the time he realizes he’s unwillingly cooperating with the Whitebeard pirates (Doflamingo’s mocking comments do not help matters) and oh, he’s boiling in rage when he throws his whole body at Akainu to stop him from catching up to Jimbe and Luffy.
He can tell no one around him understands his actions—and he can’t blame them, because he hardly understands them himself.
“It’s me.”
The Den Den Mushi is silent for a few seconds, then speaks with Dragon’s voice: “How did you get this number?”
Crocodile smiles. “Threatened Ivankov with evisceration,” he answers brazenly. “Don’t worry, the Navy can’t wire the call. It’s safe.”
The severe expression on the snail’s face relaxes almost imperceptibly, but Crocodile catches it anyway. It’s astonishing, how after almost eighteen years apart he can read Dragon’s face with such ease, even through a Den Den Mushi, and the old familiarity quells his nerves.
“Thank you,” Dragon says then, and Crocodile frowns.
“What for?”
“Saving Luffy at Marineford.”
Crocodile purses his lips. It’s been a few months since the war; months he’s spent thinking, pondering, revisiting every action, every decision, every interaction with Luffy. He found himself unfamiliarly confused, swayed by contradictory feelings he didn’t know how to manage, and after weeks of not reaching an answer by himself, he’d tracked Ivankov.
Calling Dragon was the gamble of a lifetime.
“Crocodile?” Dragon says hesitantly, and that’s when he realizes his silence has prolonged for a tad too long. “You… You do know Luffy is—”
“Yes,” Crocodile cuts in before he can finish the line, because he doesn’t think he can stomach hearing the words ‘our child’ from Dragon. “Yes, of course I know.”
“I guess thanks to Sengoku now everyone knows of my relationship to him,” Dragon breathes out somewhat humouredly. “But there’s only three people in the entire globe who know about yours.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
The snail’s antennas tilt to the side, no doubt mimicking Dragon’s head. “You don’t want him to know?” he asks, and Crocodile bites his lip at the genuine concern in his voice.
“I bailed on him practically as he was being born,” he answers evenly. “Dumped him on you and ran away.”
“Well, to be fair, I dumped him on my father,” Dragon admits. “Neither of us is parent of the century, that’s for sure.”
That gets a smile on Crocodile’s lips, but there’s a sad edge to it. “Even so—” he starts, but stops abruptly, uncertain. He doesn’t know how to explain the events of Arabasta to Dragon. He doesn’t have the words to tell him that their child antagonized him, and almost got himself killed as a result. He can’t express that there've been a handful of nights in the last few months when he’s woken up gasping for air, drenched in his own sweat, and with the phantom feeling of Luffy’s dead weight on his hook still present. “I don’t think he’ll ever be able to see me as a parent,” he finally says halfheartedly.
Dragon is silent for a moment, pensive, and it’s unbearably softly that he says: “My father mentioned Luffy was the one who actually brought you down in Arabasta.”
He knows more than he lets on. He’s giving Crocodile the chance to adhere to the official story, give the credit to Captain Smoker of the Navy, so they can both pretend Dragon believes that, and they don’t have to discuss the ugly bits.
Crocodile smiles. “You sure keep a lot in touch with your father,” he comments.
“He disagrees with my methods, but shares many more opinions than he cares to admit,” Dragon replies a bit smugly, the shit-eating grin on the Den Den Mushi the same that Crocodile remembers.
“I bet his superiors will be delighted to know that.”
“His superiors would be way more delighted to get their hands on me.”
True. It’s still baffling to Crocodile that Dragon is called ‘the world’s most wanted criminal’, after all the doubts he harboured about his cause when it was just starting. The man never fails to surprise—much like his son.
“It was Luffy,” Crocodile admits with a sigh. “Fucking brat beat the shit out of me.”
“No kidding. He has quite the pedigree,” Dragon hums. “Although, to be fair, he also broke you out of Impel Down.”
“That was a joint effort,” Crocodile protests, though he gets the feeling Dragon is mostly teasing.
“Hm, well. I think it’s curious he found his way back into your life twice,” Dragon muses, and Crocodile knows what’s coming, reads it in Dragon’s eyes even if he’s actually seeing a snail’s, and is already glaring in only partially-feigned disdain when Dragon humouredly exclaims:
“Almost feels like fate!”