Work Text:
Mihawk sits back on his heels. All of the seedlings are planted in their rows; his back is stiff but not to an unbearable degree; Shanks and Tashigi are still sparring on the other side of the plot. He’s disarmed her ten times by now, but he’s also given his word that he won’t fight dirty this time and is honoring that. Tashigi strikes; she waits too long to force her haki into the sword and it bounces off of Shanks’s blade like a grape rolling off a table onto the floor. Shanks leans into the motion, sweeping; he looks as if he’s left himself open but Tashigi doesn’t fall for the trick. She knows what he’s going for; her analysis is correct and she nearly catches Shanks at the wrong angle.
They’re moving so fast that Mihawk sees Shanks’s smile for half a moment, but it’s as brilliant as an aurora up in the north sea, splitting the air like his sword. Shanks knocks the blade from Tashigi’s hand again, but when he stops, he’s still smiling like that.
He isn’t sparing with the expression, but Mihawk doesn’t often see him quite this happy. He likes being pushed, and Tashigi likes pushing. (She hates losing, too—Mihawk isn’t going to tell her to be proud of herself. She can decide how to feel, and he won’t begrudge her either way.)
Shanks crosses the line between sleep and the waking world to the murmur of voices. Pleasant, like ducking his head below the surface of the bathwater back in the old ship with Rayleigh and Spencer talking in the next room about food prices. It’s when he starts listening to the voices here, discerning the words, that Shanks is probably more awake than he is asleep. The old ship was decades ago; his back hurts; he’s in Mihawk’s house, not as nice as the old one the Marines seized—ah, but Tashigi’s a Marine; she should get it back for him. Shanks’s mouth and eyelids are heavy, and the house may not be as nice as the castle but the furniture here is a hell of a lot more comfortable. (Someone, it has to be Tashigi, had draped a blanket over Shanks while he’d been asleep; it’s a nice feeling.)
“Swords don’t just vanish,” says Tashigi. “Either it’s locked away, or it’s lost or broken.”
“Perhaps,” says Mihawk. “But if it’s been broken, then what?”
“Swords can be reforged,” says Tashigi. “A good wielder could restore a sword’s power.”
“It won’t be the same.”
They sound like they’re in the same place. Shanks cracks one eye open, and despite the weight of his eyelid, keeps it there. Tashigi is perched on Mihawk’s lap, holding a book—perhaps one of Tashigi’s sword catalogs. Their voices are intense, chords struck on a piano with confidence. They aren’t looking at the page, though; they’re looking at each other, gazes held, and Shanks is sorry he can only see half of each of their faces. Mihawk’s mouth is turned up at the corners like a damp sheet of paper. Tashigi’s smile is fuller, fuzzy at the edges as if she’s looking at her first cup of coffee of the day.
“Every time someone new wields the sword, it changes, though,” says Tashigi.
“That’s true,” says Mihawk. “But this is often a larger change. Once a sword’s grade becomes high enough, an unskilled wielder won’t have much of an effect.”
“What if they grow with the sword?”
“That’s unlikely.”
“So is a sword having a high grade in the first place,” Tashigi retorts.
Tashigi keeps her eye on the stair with the loose floorboard, grasping the railing with her right hand. Her left is clutching the cookbook that Mihawk had asked her to find; if she drops it it’ll be no loss, but Mihawk and Shanks will hear it from the kitchen. She touches the step with her toe, then her heel. Just three more to go until she reaches the landing, and she’ll be cautious but now that she’s this close, she can hear what Shanks and Mihawk are saying in the kitchen.
“Or we could have a tournament,” says Shanks, voice muffled as if he’s pressing his face into Mihawk’s shoulder (he probably is). “You could fight the winner of the first round.”
“Not interested,” says Mihawk. “You had your chance twenty years ago.”
“Please?” says Shanks.
It won’t work, but Tashigi’s glad he keeps asking. The last time they’d fought she’d never heard of either of them; the last time they’d fought, they’d have been different swordsmen than they are now. (Tashigi wouldn’t have known enough to appreciate it even if, somehow, she’d been able to watch, and it’s stupid to regret it.) Perhaps, though, Mihawk will surprise them both, say yes and catch Shanks flat-footed, scrambling like he’s just stepped onto shore with sea legs.
“If you want to cut something, help me with the vegetables,” says Mihawk.
That’s an excuse to tell Shanks he’s doing it wrong and hold his hand on the blade. Tashigi’s reached the door by now; Shanks’s face is pressed into Mihawk’s shoulder and he’s almost hanging off of Mihawk’s back.
“I’d like to see that,” Tashigi says.
“What, me cutting vegetables?” says Shanks.
Tashigi tucks herself into his side, under his arm; Shanks brushes her hair away from her ear. “No, the two of you in a fight.”
“See, Hawkeyes? We can’t let our Tashigi down.”
Mihawk sighs, but it’s less angry than fond; he’s terrible at pretending he’s annoyed. Tashigi can’t help but hope; maybe saying this will have the opposite effect that she intends, but she can’t help it.
“I could learn so much—not that I haven’t already.”
“You could show off,” says Shanks. “I mean, you do that already, but you could show off more.”
Mihawk has no response to that, but plucks the cookbook from Tashigi’s arm, flipping it a third of the way through. A denial would be as easy for him as uncorking a bottle of wine with a knife, as peeling and chopping a potato, as disarming most foes. That he won’t give it means it’s, for once, not an outright no. Tashigi squeezes Shanks’s hand. They can be patient and wait for it to turn into a yes.