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When he asks the doctor if he has any theories on how he might have survived, the man gives him a look flatter than the plains, as if it’s the stupidest question that Pell could have ever asked. It’s entirely possible that he’s already asked - the painkillers blunt his mind and leave it foggy and dull, while memories become vague impressions near-indistinguishable from imagination - but he cannot remember, and so he keeps his expectant gaze on the man.
Pell would accept it, if the man chose not to tell him, but the doctor sighs and gestures for him to settle back into the bed from the half-raised position he’d moved into. The medication in his system is all that made the movement possible; Pell’s left side is a mess of bandages and, as far as he can tell, raw skin, stiff and tight, but they make slight movement a possibility.
“You,” the doctor says once Pell has acquiesced and laid back in the bed, propped up slightly by a thick pillow, “have asked me this question three times now.”
“I don’t remember that,” Pell says. That should concern him, perhaps; his memory is usually sharp and clear, not this mess of fog and total lack of clarity regarding any thought that manages to swim to the surface of his consciousness. It doesn’t; perhaps it’s the painkillers in his system that strip away his worry, too, as well as his ability to think. “I don’t remember waking up before now.”
“I’m aware,” the man says. “I didn’t expect you to. But each time, I’ve tried to… I have wondered what, exactly, to tell you. You were very emotional, for a while, and telling you the truth seemed like it would be a bad decision.”
Those words make sense, in a way. Pell can imagine the way he acted in the half-delirium of illness and pain. The way that telling him anything too much, anything which might make him have to reconcile with existence and some kinds of truth, would cause him to spiral down, and down, and down.
And the thing is, Pell is fairly sure that he knows, at least roughly, what the man is about to tell him. He is young, but he is not stupid. There is something different about him, and he can feel it in every breath; he has just not been coherent enough, or present enough in his mind, to think about it. Or, perhaps, he has been afraid to.
“The thing is,” the doctor says, “that you were dead. Or, you certainly seemed to be dead, when you were fully human, but your body was… shifting between forms, because of your Devil Fruit. Human, and bird, and somewhere in-between.”
Vague memory of that - subconscious influence. Hindbrain instinct, Pell suspects; the urge to survive overriding pain, and using the way his Devil Fruit contorts and cracks and mutates his body to keep the damage from ever being too extensive. He had seen the bomb and made his peace with his death. He had said goodbye, in those final seconds of flight, until all had been consumed in a burning flash of white.
(Some part of him recalls the transformations, his bones hollowing out and lengthening, the hair across his body thickening into feathers, nails into long talons. The memories are blurry and largely incomprehensible, but they explain the rips in his clothing and why some of the edges of his injury seem to be torn flesh rather than burnt.
No transformation is painless. None that he has ever known, at least; but Pell has always pushed himself through them by willpower alone, resolving to stay as stoic and regal as Chaka. Then again, he has only seen Chaka fully transformed maybe twice in his life, whereas he prefers it to the half-shaped malformed man-beast. Perhaps they hurt him just as much.)
“But you saved me,” Pell says. His voice sounds different. Hoarse, and far away. “I can’t have died, because I’m here. I’m alive right now.”
He thinks.
His lungs expand and contract. His heart beats and his blood moves in its paths around his body, and so Pell must be alive. By definition, he is alive. But his heart rate is elevated, not quite matching the rate of a hummingbird’s wings, but a rapid beat in his chest that is certainly noticeable, even though it can’t be any cause for concern, because the doctor hasn’t mentioned it.
If he isn’t alive - if this is heaven, or hell, then it’s nowhere near the beautiful afterlife that all the religions that preach of it describe. There is a constant dull pain in his body, and the sun hurts his eyes if it gets into them at slightly the wrong angle.
Yes; surely, Pell is alive. He feels a kind of disconnect from his body, but he is alive.
“Your heart stopped, once,” the doctor says. “You did die, but I’m very, very good at my job.”
How should he feel about that? Pell isn’t certain. Afraid, perhaps, or maybe it should prompt some kind of deep philosophical revelation about the importance of his life; it feels like a lead weight in his stomach, while simultaneously not surprising him at all. So he had died. Interesting.
“There isn’t much research done on these things,” the doctor is saying, two of his fingers pressed to the inside of Pell’s wrist as he measures his pulse. “Devil Fruits make the person who eats it far stronger than the ordinary man, that much we all know, but specifics are less accessible. Injuries are more likely to kill than have damage lingering, because of the extent necessary to do that damage in the first place - you could think of yourself as a special case in that, if you’d like.”
Pell would really rather not.
Pell says, “I’d rather not. You can, though. If you plan to make a study out of it.”
The doctor gives him a flat look and stays silent for a few long moments, lips moving with no sound coming out - he has never learned to lipread, or at least not very well, but he can guess from the context that he’s counting.
“Have you ever been told that your heart beats quickly?”
He could admit that he had never been to a doctor, exactly, until late into his teenage years, any illness either going ignored in the hopes it will pass on its own, or with the older residents of the little hamlet he’d been born in being consulted for some advice on herbs, or poultices, or whatever else they might see fit to use. He could tell this man, whose name he doesn’t know, how they had been too poor to pay for medicine, all of them, and how he’s still reluctant to admit to any illness even now, even though he is regarded as one of the blessed of Alabasta. Hell, he could admit that he had noticed it a few minutes ago.
Pell says, “no, never,” because he has never been able to share things with other people, and also because it’s true. Nobody has ever really checked his heart rate, though, and he had always - it feels normal, to him. He might be more aware of it than usual, which is an odd experience, but it still doesn’t feel wrong.
“Well,” the doctor says. “It does. I wonder if that might be related to your Devil Fruit…”
His voice fades into a background hum as Pell turns his eyes to the window across the other side of the room, fixes them on the sliver of sky beyond it. It’s clear, golden and red and glorious. Sunset, he surmises, because his internal sense of time feels completely shot. It must be sunset, if the wash of colour is to be believed, and he wonders how many days he has lost to recovery. He wonders if the fight is still going on.
Pell did his duty, though, so far as he’s concerned. He was willing to - he did - give his life for the princess, to keep her safe. And he has faith enough in her that the people she’d found would be able to help, that their home would be safe.
He had died, the doctor had said. He had died, which means that his Devil Fruit must be gone, and he wonders if Chaka feels the loss as something tangible, or just an impression in the back of his mind.
“Rest more,” the doctor says, as if it’s an order rather than an inevitability. “Eshe will keep an eye on you, and fetch me if needed.”
He wakes, the doctor tells him, another two days later. He - Potsun, Pell will learn - seems unconcerned by the loss of another few days, saying that “healing takes time, Falcon”, which makes Pell’s skin crawl in the way it had when he’d first been given the title.
There is little to do, while he recovers. He sleeps, holds short conversations that are overshadowed by hands measuring his pulse, or changing the dressings on the burns, or thermometers and other instruments measuring various things about him. Time passes in a blur, until one day he finds himself on his feet, half-dressed and unable to take his eyes off of the window, the horizon, where he knows Alubarna is off in the distance.
“You shouldn’t leave yet,” Potsun says. Eshe, his sister and nurse, wrings her hands uncomfortably, eyes flickering between Pell and the door, as though she plans to get between him and it, or to lock it to keep him there. “You aren’t entirely better.”
“I need to go back,” Pell says. “I should do that, at the very least.”
Potsun sighs; he doesn’t understand, Pell knows, but that isn’t important. The decision, ultimately, is his. When it’s clear his mind isn’t to be changed, Potsun sighs again, and a few minutes later he is introduced to Kareem, who leads him to a camel that stares into the distance, appearing immeasurably bored. He’s praising this camel as though it’s the greatest thing to ever live, the most impressive beast to ever stand on the desert sands, and Pell is… unimpressed.
“So…” he clears his throat and glances at Potsun, who looks fairly resigned. “Why’s this camel special?”
“That’s what the princess said,” Potsun says. “It’s apparently a candidate for the Super Spot-Billed Duck Squad.”
“But it’s a camel.”
“Yeah.” He shrugs, and gestures back towards Kareem, and Pell sighs.
“Well… thanks for the treatment,” he says. He wishes he were less awkward with gratitude, or that it didn’t feel like a debt. Talking to people has never been a particular strength of his, always content to leave the bulk of talking to Chaka, but… he thinks Potsun understands, anyway, if the slight smile he gets in return is anything to go by. There is no grudge held for his clumsy thanks, or his lack of grace with words. This is an overwhelming kindness.
He doesn’t notice that he has left his keffiyeh behind until he is too far into travel to turn back. The sun blazes, as it always does; his burns, now half-scarred rather than still red-raw, ache even through the ointments and dressings, and much of his skin feels tight with new growth. Still; Pell turns his face towards the sky, eyes closed, and the kiss of the sun’s warmth on his skin feels like a blessing. Like the gentle touch of someone who loves him.
I’m sorry, he thinks, because he believes the sky to have traded him back his life for flight. The thought of that loss aches, dull and heavy and constant.
What use is a Falcon who can no longer fly?
He will go back and say his goodbyes, he thinks; he will gather his things, those that truly belong to him, and he will take his leave once a replacement is appointed. They will not keep him, and he has made his peace with this. He will lose the title, the name. From Pell the Falcon back to just Pell, the nobody, the wanderer.
Because he had died. And those are the conditions of their powers - until death, when they are gone, when they pass to another. With the fact his heart had stopped beating, so too must the falcon have flapped its wings for the final time. He would mourn, but his emotions have been further from him than usual, as of late, like the numbness at his fingertips, in his legs.
Dead nerves, Potsun had said, or something similar. It really was quite a large explosion, you see?
Pell knows. Pell remembers, now, in clarity he wishes he didn’t have. Some parts, at least, have come to his awareness, but the pain is still distant; he knows, logically, that it must have hurt, because the burns that cover so much of his body are proof of that, but that is the part he doesn’t remember.
Still. He travels towards Alubarna, the dunes ever-shifting, his every sense on as high-alert as he can muster. He knows what could be lurking out in the sand, had seen the storms that Crocodile could command with a twist of his fingers, and he’s warier than he used to be. He stays with the small communities he finds, or in the shade of an oasis, half-unrecognisable without the usual dress of his station. All that had been saved of that outfit, Eshe had told him nervously, was the keffiyeh, the heat enough to incinerate cloth and melt gold into scorching droplets. Pell wears borrowed clothes, for now, light brown in colour, and all that marks him as the Falcon are the malar stripes on his cheeks.
They travel. It takes time.
He could go home, he supposes, to the place he came from years ago. He could see if any there still remember him as the child who had joined the Royal Guard half-desperate to make a wage that might serve to feed his mother or if, to them, he has been mythologised, and become legend. But, still, he could go home - but he hesitates, and decides against it, because that is yet another chapter of his life that has passed him by.
Alubarna rises from the sand like a mirage, bright and beautiful, shimmering and burning with light; Pell squints at it, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. The sound is caught by the wind and dissipates instantly, but something in his chest feels suddenly settled, as if this sight is what it had been waiting for.
There are no armies at the gates. There is no sound of fighting. This brings him a shock of relief, because he still hadn’t known, not really, and he takes his first steps back into the beautiful city under the cover of peaceful night.
Part of him entertains the idea of wandering and taking in the sights, but his hip aches in a way that is new and irritating in its presence, and his feet have begun to guide him towards the palace anyway. He slips into the public gardens, and sinks to his knees beside the flowerbeds, blossoming in bright colour, the air around them saccharine and still so light. It must be spring, he realises; spring, because the flowers are in bloom, and one hand reaches out to feel the silk-smooth texture of the petal between his fingers.
He picks a juniper berry and crushes it between his fingers. The scent lingers; he inhales it, deep, and blinks into clarity once again. Things are still hazy, sometimes, and sometimes the world feels like a dream. It is, occasionally, a struggle to keep his thoughts clear, and he would rather not let the gold-tinted fog overtake things for now.
Through the public gardens, the private, past the ornate wrought-iron fence. A shiver runs through him as he approaches, as it always does, and he realises only after taking the lock in hand that he doesn’t have the key. It takes him a few seconds longer to realise that it would be entirely unnecessary, because the padlock is open, and the impulsiveness he’s never fully managed to shake takes over and guides him inside.
At least, he thinks, whoever he meets here will likely recognise him.
But he meets nobody for long minutes as he wanders, raising a hand to trail the boughs of one of the trees, pressing a palm flat to feel the bark beneath it. He meets nobody as he comes closer to the centre of the garden, where the oldest tree stands, crooked and dark-wooded, fruiting only when required.
Devil Fruits, for the most part, do not work like his does. The only other that resembles it in function is Chaka’s, so far as he knows, but he has never truly worked out why.
They tend to flit to a nearby fruit when the previous individual who ate it dies, according to most published research. That is not how it works for the Guardians of Alabasta, whose Devil Fruits have only ever grown on this tree in the palace’s private garden. One for the Jackal and one, higher up, for the Falcon. The only two Fruits it has ever produced. By the seas and the skies, he knows that this is not how it’s supposed to work, but that’s how it’s been throughout all of Alabasta’s history.
It’s a subconscious urge, to see the tree. It is not a pilgrimage he makes often, but - there is someone there. Kneeling, their back to him, head bowed low in what he thinks might be prayer. And Pell would leave, he would, but he has honed his senses plenty even without the gifts from his Devil Fruit, and it’s all he can do to take a stumbling step forwards.
The other man does not react. He doesn’t seem to have noticed the presence of another at all. Any other day Pell would chastise him for it, but he parts his lips and no sound comes out.
He breathes. Licks his lips. Swallows, dry, saliva almost a solid lump going down his throat.
“Chaka,” he says, almost. It comes out like a croak in the midnight air, every sound of it dragging its way past his lips, and the Jackal’s hunched posture tightens.
“No more ghosts,” Chaka breathes, clearer and louder than the murmured prayer that Pell hasn’t been able to distinguish. “Please, I beg, no more ghosts.”
“No,” Pell says. Swallows again. “No ghost.”
He isn’t certain of his own honesty, exactly, but the next noise Chaka lets out is almost a sob before he straightens and turns to Pell, all while still kneeling. He looks a mess, his hair longer and hanging around his face, dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his eyes themselves dulled with - emotion. Grief, he will name it later.
“Pell?” Chaka asks, more tentative than he has ever heard the man before. “Is it - is it truly you?”
“I,” Pell says, because he doesn’t want to lie or give Chaka a half-truth, “have missed you more than you can imagine.”
The thing about Chaka and Pell that surprises everyone is how well they fit together, in the end.
There’s not all that much they have in common save for their role, which neither had been born into, but they fit their edges together after the ceremony. It is, perhaps, helped by the way Chaka found him once the official part is over, double over and coughing, as if that will do anything to get rid of the foul taste lingering in his mouth. He clapped a hand on his shoulder, told him it fades in a few days or so, and offered him a hip flask that, when he accepted, he discovered was filled with arak. Straight, not diluted with ice or water, and it burned on its way down. Pell had been young; Pell coughed, in a different way than he had been, and squinted up at Chaka in a way he’d hoped had been offended or accusing.
Is that supposed to help?
It takes your mind off of it. Chaka, smiling, had taken his own drink from the flask, tongue darting out to catch the last few drops that linger on his lips, and Pell had watched the movement with sharp eyes.
That first informal conversation broke past the barrier of convention, Pell has always thought, and Chaka has been a solid presence by his side since then. They exist as part of a dichotomy, equal weight on a scale; they balance each other, really, and he’s found that they temper the worst parts of one another. Chaka is more personable by far, and is better at being the public face thanks to the practice he’s had. Pell, on the other hand, earns a reputation quickly.
They say he is the strongest fighter in all of Alabasta.
When he hears this for the first time there is a kind of shame that overtakes him, crawling up his skin and burning his cheeks as it dyes them crimson. He half-expects Chaka to dismiss it or to call it excitement at the new face among the upper echelons of the Guard, but the other man laughs, one large hand on his back, and calls him promising, tells him that he’s proud, that he’s glad someone can recognise his abilities. And Pell is bewildered by how frank the praise is, but he sinks back into the touch, and smiles up at him silently.
He has a sword, ornate in design and heavy, enough to slightly strain his wrist before he adjusts to the difference between it and the blades he had used in training. With how elaborate the design is, he half-expects it to be for decoration only, as a status symbol, but Chaka encourages him into extra practice with it, until he can swing it fluidly, with power enough behind it to be a real threat.
The blade is nameless and, Pell thinks, older than he himself is. Naming it feels wrong, somehow, but he keeps the edge sharp and the metal polished, ensures there are no scuffs, no dents, no gouges.
He beats Chaka in a sparring match. He beats him again, and again, until Chaka smiles at him, wide, and Pell feels… settled, finally, in his own skin.
Once he has eaten the Devil Fruit, the changes are… interesting. Some come immediately, while others take days to fully come to fruition. He feels the power coursing through his body almost as soon as he’s swallowed the Fruit, as well as a prickling, itchy sensation across most of his skin.
The malar stripe takes a few weeks to come in fully. It started with darker-than-usual circles beneath his eyes, slowly growing, spreading down until the lines that extend from the rings reach to his jaw. Pell considers them in the mirror, pressing his fingertips to the discoloured skin while half-expecting it to feel different. He had thought, when all he had known of the Guardians was their appearance from afar, that they were tattoos, ink living below the surface of the skin.
His skin feels normal, though, when he touches it. His bones ache, and he has an overwhelming urge to head for the highest points of the palace, to the sky. Chaka finds him as he climbs the stairs, and says nothing, makes no move to stop him, but steps slightly aside to let him take the lead before he follows behind.
Have you flown, Pell the Falcon?
Not yet, Jackal.
He stumbles a little over those words, the formality of them still foreign on his tongue. He is unused to being so respectful in his address of anyone, but Chaka is kind enough not to make him feel embarrassed for it; instead simply humming, and leaning on the wall as he looks out into the distance.
Have you tried yet?
Hm? Tried what?
The transformation. Your Becoming, if that’s a word you would rather use. I only mean - it felt like freedom, the first time I tried it. I would hate for you to miss out.
Freedom? Pell buries his face in his folded arms for a second as he breaks the gaze he has held with the horizon, before he looks back up. What if it doesn’t work? He sounds childish even to his own ears, but Chaka only seems amused by it.
Then we will practise until it does.
Chaka is patient, far more so than Pell ever would be himself. For this, he is grateful.
And in the end, they fit together. Whether or not either of them would necessarily call it love aloud is debatable, partly because Pell is reluctant to use that word at all, even if referring to family, and because Chaka is so perfectly patient. Never does he push.
Sometimes they share a bed, curling up together, Chaka’s warmth seeping through their sleep-clothes and warming Pell’s skin in turn. He curls around him, far larger, his arms forming a kind of barrier. Safe. Secure.
They fit. Pell thinks sometimes that this must surprise people because Chaka had never been particularly close to the previous Falcon. He cannot explain, precisely, why they work together in the way that they do, only that they do, and that they promise every day to protect Alabasta at their own expense.
Chaka holds him, wary of the bandages visible when Pell’s borrowed kaftan shifts, but holds him nonetheless. He is big, and warm, and solid, and he makes everything feel far more real than they have for a while - since he woke up again, really. He smells of amber, as he always does, familiar and comforting. They are alone in the courtyard, and Pell tucks his face into the Jackal’s chest, as he feels a hand come up to card through his hair.
“It’s longer,” Chaka says, softly. He is not crying. Pell isn’t sure that he has ever really seen the man cry - he must be able to, for their bodies are still mostly human, but he hasn’t ever seen it - and there is a press of something against the top of his head. Chaka’s face, he thinks, buried in his hair, breathing him in.
Pell wishes that he wouldn’t. He must smell of sweat, and dust, and aloe, and sticky-sweet honey, but Chaka doesn’t seem to mind. No, he seems not to mind at all, content to hold him close.
“I suppose,” Pell says. His voice is muffled. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Perhaps at some point he should have taken the time to fully take stock of his appearance, to catalogue the differences and the similarities, but he had never found the time or an opportunity to do so. He supposes that it makes sense, his hair being longer, because he can sometimes even feel the brush of it against his skin, but for the most part he’s found himself blocking out sensations like that. Half of them, even, he’s put down to the lingering influence of his injuries, leaving him delirious and prone to hallucinating such innocuous things.
There’s a rumble in Chaka’s chest that might be laughter, might be a noise that signifies something else, but Pell has always relied on his eyes to read him properly. He has always needed, to be sure, the ability to meet his gaze and see what flickers behind his eyes. Mirth, or something else, something more complex?
He doesn’t know. All he knows is being touched, the arms wrapped around him, the solid warmth he rests on. All Pell knows is that he is held
“We mourned you,” comes from Chaka almost gently. His voice is lower than it usually is, more reminiscent of their old late-night conversations, trying to keep the words unintelligible to any trying to listen in. “There was talk of making a memorial. Pell the Falcon, who gave his life for his country. His home. His people.”
“I might have,” Pell says. “I did. My heart stopped. I died.”
That’s a fact he’s still trying to reckon with, really. He died, and came back and now he breathes in the late-night chill, but it doesn’t change the fact that his death had been fact, for a few fleeting moments. Every day he circles back to it, because how does someone move past that?
He feels himself being lowered to the ground, wrapped up in that same embrace before Chaka pulls slightly away to take his appearance in properly. There have been no mirrors; Pell isn’t sure what he looks like. The sun will have brought out the slight freckles that are scattered across his face and forearms, the skin there likely pink and red where it has been uncovered. His clothes are far lower in quality than he would usually wear, his keffiyeh absent and his hair loose because of it, bandages slightly dirtied from the road.
“Oh, Pell,” he says, tipping his head forwards so that their foreheads are pressed together. Their breaths mingle in the small space between their faces, and the intimacy of the situation is almost jarring. “Shall I call you Pell the Ghost, then? Is a better title for you the ghost bird of Alabasta?”
Pell could kiss him, and so he does; it’s the barest brush of lips, it’s nothing, really, but at the same time it’s everything. It’s the way Chaka’s breath shakes just slightly as he pulls away, saying nothing, but with one hand at the back of Pell’s head. Fingers thread through his hair, loathe to let go, to allow him to pull away.
“I should have known,” Chaka says eventually, after pressing their lips together again.
Pell makes a noise - inquiring, questioning, wondering. Known what? he asks, just with that wordless sound.
“My other half would never leave me.” He sounds so sure, comforted as he pets Pell’s hair gently, as if the whole world has fallen away save for the two of them. “I should have known you would always come back to protect our home.”