Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If you had told Law two years ago, back in Sabaody, that someday he would have his own bunk on the Thousand Sunny; he probably would have dismembered you without a second thought and left your head in the chaos behind him. Him, traveling with the Straw-Hat crew? Being anything but the Heart pirate’s captain?

Ridiculous, Law thinks, as he wraps his calloused hands around a cup of coffee. Steam rises and curls in the morning light, sunbeams falling across Law’s fingers and onto the desk below them—his desk, that he picked out to place his textbooks and his coffee, prepared just as he likes it to be. How ridiculous, that Franky made the desk and Sanji prepared the coffee, and that Law is spending his morning staring out a window on the Thousand Sunny. 

He hears exasperated yelling in the distance, and knows that the accompanying clangs of silverware mean Straw-Hat is both awake and hungry. Other crewmates are stumbling out of their rooms toward the kitchen, either skipping and cheering in excitement or grumbling about the noise. When Law boarded the Thousand Sunny for the first time, way back before Dressrosa, the unrelenting commotion had irked him to no end. Every sudden touch, sound, and movement felt like sandpaper across open wounds. Now, after a month of falling into pace with the Straw-Hat crew, he was surprised by how much comfort could be found in constant chaos—in the undeniable evidence that his allies are within reach, okay, alive. 

He has no such proof for his crew. The Polar Tang rests at the bottom of the sea, demolished by the Blackbeard pirates. Bepo had dragged the surviving members of his crew onto one of the submarine’s metal panels, practically clawing his way through the waves, swimming within sight of the Thousand Sunny by a stroke of extraordinary luck. As Law would find out when he woke in their infirmary, the end of an alliance meant nothing to the Straw-Hats; they’d treated his life-threatening injuries as though he were one of their own, and cared for his few crew members the same. Franky had rapidly constructed a make-shift living quarters for Bepo, Penguin, and Shachi—in that near-magical way of his—and Ikkaku had stayed with Nami. Sanji fed them three full meals a day plus snacks, and Chopper checked in on them regularly. For one week, the remaining Heart pirates learned what it meant to be a part of the Straw-Hat family. 

Of course, the arrangement was only temporary. When seven days had gone and passed, his crew had ambushed him outside of the infirmary. He still remembers the guilt painted across their faces, the way Penguin’s hat was clutched in shaking hands instead of on his head. Law wonders, looking back, if watching the Straw-Hats operate from behind the curtain had influenced their decision—if they had seen the incomprehensible weapon that is the Straw-Hats, all individually powerful components somehow united into one dominant, iron-willed force, and felt such a dynamic was stronger than the one they knew. If they had felt weak. 

If Law had asked them then, would things be different? Would they still be traveling together, collecting scattered pieces of the life they’d worked so hard to build? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to think about it. In the end, they had decided to mirror what the Straw-Hats had done two years ago, and take a period to grow stronger on their own. They would meet again on Winner Island in two years, and Penguin and Shachi would have procured a new submarine. As much as Law wishes he could be the one to do so, he understands his current position. Fate had willed Law to the Thousand Sunny. 

Law throws back the last of his coffee and sets out toward the library. Unfortunately, this means he must pass by the dining hall, so he peeks his head around its doorframe to make sure the crew is sufficiently distracted before speed-walking across the opening. Robin catches him mid-step—because nothing goes unnoticed on this damn ship—and she makes no effort to conceal her amusement, even lowering her spoon mid-bite to gracefully cover her mouth as she giggles. It’s a quiet sound—one that, back on Punk Hazard, he’d had trouble reconciling with the character he’d expected of her. He’d expected a kindred spirit, emotions diluted by the blood on her hands, a heart left cold and calculating; but he supposes only the Straw-Hats could have unshackled such girlish mannerisms in someone once chained by the ghosts of her childhood. Quite regularly, the Demon Child Nico Robin giggles.

“How silly!” she lilts. “Traffy, would you care to join us for breakfast? Sanji has covered a plate for you.” 

Law groans, but takes a seat at the table anyway. As promised, Sanji places a covered plate in front of him. When he first arrived, Law had stressed that he was only gluten-intolerant, and that he didn’t care about cross-contamination; Sanji had the gall to look offended, saying, “Just because you don’t care what happens to your body doesn’t mean we can’t. It’s my job as a chef to accommodate you, and I’m gonna do it right. That means no shortcuts."  So every meal-time, Law gets a special dish prepared with no shortcuts, because Sanji cares. They all do, all of the Straw-hats; they all care so much.

He doesn’t understand how they do it. How they feel so openly, unafraid to announce when something is important to them. How ready they are to challenge monsters and topple governments for the sake of a friend. How they would sooner give up their lives than abandon their ideals. Hell, he watched Luffy wreak havoc in Wano and shamelessly abandon months of elaborate planning over a bowl of rice. Independently, they’re strong-willed and selfish over all the right things, and because they’re also stubborn and selfish about each other, their dynamic works fucking miracles. Because caring to an irrational degree is simply who they are. 

⭘⭘⭘

Law spends the majority of his first weeks on the Sunny madly, unrelentingly alone. This is mostly of his own accord; of his accursed reflex to bite the hand that feeds him, to snap and snarl like a wounded animal. He finds it all too easy to slip into the old habits that were etched into his bones as he grew—warped, ingrown scars that left him settled just a little bit wrong, a little bit less stable than he should be—that he could never break from without breaking a fundamental part of himself. Habits that exist as much in memory and identity as they do action. He’d fractured them open again, and there is comfort in the familiarity of leaning on broken bones, for a little while. 

He isn’t sure what he hopes to accomplish by doing so, or if he’s truly in control of his behavior at all, and this frightens him more than he is willing to admit. The Straw-Hats are instinctively accommodating, and their frustratingly prodigious emotional intelligence is the only reason no limbs are lost. Sanji learns to place his coffee far enough that they both can reach the cup, yet neither can reach each other, because Law startles when he gets too close. Robin places books under his bunk when the men’s dorm is empty, because she knows Law is in no mood for conversation, or anyone telling him what to do, even in the form of kind-hearted reading recommendations. Even Zoro jumps into a spar, no questions asked, when Law spontaneously draws Kikoku in a rage-driven outburst and swings directly at his neck. It would be considered attempted murder on anyone else, but Zoro is too damn strong, and the most Law can do is burn in his frustration until it darkens the blade of his cursed sword.

Law knows not how to live, beyond how to burn. He burns in his anger, his sadness, spite and satisfaction, until the flames lick over his skin and indiscriminately unto that which is near. For so long he’d been fueled by revenge, the opponent ahead of him; planning meticulously to stoke the fire. None of this remains.

He is a creature of embers, with nothing left to burn but himself, so he hides away.

The Thousand Sunny’s library is extraordinary, its floor-to-ceiling shelves a myriad of colored spines, so diverse and so extensive in its  collection that the books overflow onto the furniture and floor. The range of literature—from medical textbooks and fine-print classic novels, to wire-bound recipes and hardcover children’s picture books—has an illusion of organization, in the sense that each Straw-Hat uses a system of their choice, which overlap and intertwine until there’s hardly any systemization left at all. On particularly uneventful days at sea, Luffy and Usopp stack books into castles and pretend to be at war with each other, dramatically peering over the towers to throw cannonballs made of crumpled notebook paper. The following morning, random sections of the library are always color-coded, making clear exactly which books had been borrowed for battle. 

There are small strips of paper sticking out between pages, or slipped under the spines, and Law spends many afternoons drifting between the shelves to read them. He soaks in the eccentricities of the handwritings and imagines the transfer of mannerisms from person to paper, traces his eyes along the letters and imagines the cells shed and left behind in the ink. 

More of the time, though, he merely sits on the tile floor and stares, wondering how the wooden shelves before him project an image so vividly human, reading the scratches and scuffs that say here there is life and love. 

It feels foreign.

When Law was still young, before the bounties and the bodies and the amber lead, his family had a membership to Flevance’s medical museum. He would tug his parents through the exhibits, enamored in the way that only children can be, only looking forward as he strung them along by their hands. He doesn’t remember exactly what age he’d been—because everything from before seems to exist in sand, slipping over itself and through his grasping fingers—but he had gotten separated, once. Law remembers the room he’d stayed in, waiting, testing the extent of his ordinarily juvenile patience (because you’re supposed to stay where you are, when you get lost, when you have people to come look for you). 

It had been a branch of the anatomy and pathology section, just one turn from their usual path, where the museum was featuring a temporary exhibit on the brain. At the center of the room stood a cylindrical display case. When his parents had found him, Law was standing by this case, wide-eyed in reverence—staring through the glass only a few centimeters taller than he was at the time. The contents housed inside were right at his eye-level, and maybe this was what drew him in. Perhaps it was the shared height that demanded his attention, that made the following perfectly clear; the fully preserved brain and its dangling spinal cord propped before him had once stood in flesh and bone, just as he. There used to be life there, standing in that case, just as Law was standing then. 

There was life there, on the other side of that glass, and it was not his. He feels this in the shelves of the Thousand Sunny library. 

Nevertheless, time carries Law forward when he cannot. He curses the human body's stubborn refusal to fully self-destruct, and all the failsafes coded into his genes that snap him back to attention when he brushes against death. 

He floats through the days, and doesn’t notice when they turn into weeks. He drags his fingers just a little too long across the paperbacks, watching detachedly as pearls of red blood darken into stained bronze fingerprints between words he won’t remember, the only proof that he exists as more than the amalgamation of guilt and grief he feels churning through his insides. His very being feels artificial, and he faces this with an impulsively suicidal indifference; fleeting behaviors sparked by the nascent desire to cut open his abdomen and spill his organs on the table, if only to prove they weren’t synthetic.

He dares his stomach to hunger, testing the limits of his apathy, and he chokes on rice and cold coffee when the pains become too distracting. This abates them to a dull ache, at most, before acid burns at his throat and resentment threatens to spill over. 

Law is prodding at an open callus on his palm when he hears the door open. He doesn’t bother to turn around, and they make no effort to acknowledge him either, only setting a cup of coffee on the floor near Law’s thigh and quietly strolling over to the shelves. He recognizes Nami by the click of her heels.

“They’re playing four-square on the deck,” she says, “in case you want to join.” Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet, as though she speaks not for her words to reach Law, but simply to place them in the air. It doesn’t pierce his ears like he expects it to, in the way nearly all sounds have since he woke in their infirmary weeks ago. Her tone is soft, hardly above a whisper. She flips open one of her journals as she takes her time between thoughts. “The weather is beautiful. It's not too hot or too cold, so if you want, you could just watch. Bet on Robin for me if you go out. I’ve been banned from the betting pool.

 “She cheats with her devil fruit. Robin and Luffy are practically undefeated when it comes to most games on the ship, believe it or not. Something about brains and brawn. Usopp made the squares bigger to help even the playing field, but they still win ninety percent of the time. I think it's hilarious. It's easy to bet on.

“You could sit under the mikan trees if the crew is too much for you, by the way. I trust you enough. Bellemere used to walk me and Nojiko through the rows of trees back at my home island, and we used to think it was so important to find the ‘perfect’ tree to have a picnic under. In my expert opinion, the ones on our ship are quite perfect,” Nami declares, closing the journal with one hand and reaching for another.

“You know, I still miss Bellemere, every time I smell tangerines and cigarettes. She smoked almost as much as Sanji. Sometimes, when I’m sitting by the trees and he walks by, it’s like I’m right back in Cocoyashi village. But don’t tell him I said that; it’ll go straight to his head and I will make your life just as miserable as he would make mine.” 

Law knows she would absolutely make good on that promise, but Nami’s tone has grown far too reminiscent for the threat to sound anything but fond. He hopes that Nami recognizes his silence as an invitation to keep speaking—an olive branch, of sorts—and she does. 

“Bellemere wasn’t my biological mother, and because I was young and angry, I gave her a lot of shit for that. I spent so long being angry at the world. She did so much for me, even when we had next to nothing. I can only be a pirate now because Bellemere, a marine, gave me a chance at life two times over. She took me in to protect me from pirates, and then she died protecting me from pirates. Arlong shot her right in the head.”

Law’s stomach drops. He tries not to react, but he knows this story. It's his story.

Nami twirls a pencil in her hand, still flipping through the journal as her words hang in the air, and her quiet voice doesn’t waver even once. If anything, she looks at peace, while Law feels sick and exposed. He would envy her, but the room is spinning and the floor is falling, and he can’t focus on much more than the bile creeping up his throat.

There’s a cruelty to being known. One must ask another, are you bruised where I am? When I push here, do you hurt like I do? 

At her words, Law hurts. 

“Even after everything, I know she would still approve of me being a pirate, somehow.” Nami smiles. “She was strange like that. Being on Luffy’s crew taught me that I could grow out of my anger, and I think that’s enough for her. I’m not angry anymore, and I’m not alone. I think that’s all she would have wanted.”

Nami hums, tapping her pencil against the notebook. “Do you want any tangerines? We could sneak them back here, and then you won’t have to worry about Luffy’s grabby hands. You’ll get just a touch of sunshine walking up the deck stairs, too. It’s really beautiful outside today. I know the last few days were awful, but it's all clear now. The storms have passed.”

It’s so simple. It’s a slap in the face, and it stings like everything he’s ever known and nothing he’s ever experienced. It stings like it means something. 

The storms have passed. 

The phrase unlocks his chest like a key, and he’s tumbling out, more of himself than he knows how to hold.

Law is six years old and everything is white. Everything is too bright, everything is the streets of Flevance and his sister’s smile. He’s burning. The streets are burning and the bodies are so cold, she’s so cold, Law is so, so cold. Law is wired, raging, standing before a puppeteer with bombs around his neck and ghosts on his shoulders. The ghosts are screaming, screeching at his ears, clawing at his eyes until everything he sees is stained with blood. The blood is in the snow, and it's freezing at his feet, and everything hurts and he is so, so scared, and the crunch, crunch, crunch of his boots are muffled by the sounds of a child’s cry. He is crying. He is falling. There are led bullets in his shoulder, thrown back against the warm bricks of sun-kissed Dressrosa streets. Someone is yelling, and Law thinks it's him. Or maybe it's Bepo, begging him to live, to trust that all is not yet lost. He isn’t sure; it's hard to hear over the crashing waves.

He gasps—a quick and desperate sound that echoes through the library—like he’d forgotten how to breathe, and it catches in his throat. He raises his coffee to his lips without thinking, and the liquid burns his tongue. He jolts by reflex, frowning at the drops that spill over his fingers and onto his jeans; because he feels it, how it burns, how it stings his skin and sears down his esophagus. He feels.

There is breath in his lungs, and the steady thrum of a heart beating in his chest and humming in his ears. There are hands around the coffee mug and they are his hands—moving, feeling, alive. Law is alive. It’s sudden, and it's terrifying, and it's crashing back into alignment as he is thrown to the front of himself, meeting his eyes and ears. 

Law is. His coffee burns his tongue.

Nami stares at him expectantly. Her expression is soft as she waits, studying him patiently as though she’s looking for something in particular. Law isn’t sure what exactly she’s looking for, but he nods his head anyway. She smiles gently, then, and Law thinks she understands. 

The storms have passed.

Chapter Text

The Straw-Hat crew is so lively during the day that when Law steps onto the deck in the middle of the night, a small part of him expects to find the crew running about in the moonlight. The soothing cradle of ocean below rocks left-right, left-right, with the ship in her arms, and the darkness settles over his fraying nerves as it once did through windows of the Polar Tang. He sits cross-legged on the lawn.

Running his fingers through the blades of grass—as if to remind himself that his surroundings are still real, this foreign ship is still his current home—he clears his mind of everything but the crashing waves. The stars are out, at least. 

Not long after the Heart pirates had split up, Law had sought comfort in a night sky just like this one. Around two, maybe three, in the morning, Luffy had stumbled out of the men’s quarters. He gently closed the door behind him—something Law didn’t know Luffy was capable of, in all honesty—and simply stood there for a while, his eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, staring up at the stars.

He’d hummed, his voice oddly quiet in the hollow air. “Look down, Ace. The sky is open tonight. I’m here,” he’d said. After lifting a tired wave to the stars, Luffy slipped back into the men’s quarters just as quietly as he’d stepped out. 

Law never dares to ask what Luffy meant, but he knows. He thinks about it sometimes, on nights when the sky is open, and wonders if the view is truly better from way up there. If Cora-san can see the sunken face and inked skin of the man Law has become. If he’s just as accepting of his odd appearance now, as he was then. It’s a nice thought, but a childish one. Law pretends a little part of him doesn’t wish it were true. 

He’s lost in memory when a presence sits down beside him, startling him out of the past. He turns to see Luffy and, surprisingly, Zoro, both yawning and rubbing at tired eyes. Neither acknowledge him as they look up at the stars. 

“Is she there?” Luffy asks quietly, and Law doesn’t know who he means. 

“...Yeah,” Zoro responds, “she is.” 

Luffy lays back on the grass, quiet in a way Law had never seen from him before. He would blame the hour, but the silence is intentional, almost reverent. Zoro remains sitting. Time passes.

Luffy eventually falls asleep, and Zoro carries him back to the men’s quarters with practiced familiarity. It clearly wasn’t the first time they’d gathered on the deck like this, and Law knows it wouldn’t be the last. He doesn’t know who Zoro was grieving. He knows—has known, since Dressrosa, since their defiant altruism on Punk Hazard—that all of the Straw-Hats carry on memories, whether they speak of them or not. He’s reminded of this fact in the coming weeks.

It isn’t always Luffy, though he’s the most frequent by far, which Law tries not to think about too much. Sometimes it's Nami, rolling an unpeeled tangerine along her fingers. Other times it's Brook, or Robin, both equally somber when beneath the stars. Most often, however, Law finds multiple Straw-Hats sitting shoulder-to-shoulder; supporting each other’s weight, physically and emotionally. 

The first to acknowledge Law’s presence is, unexpectedly, Usopp. The sniper is fidgeting with his hands, hesitantly sneaking glances in a way that he probably thinks is subtle. There are absolutely nicer ways to start a conversation, but Law is tired, and slightly uncomfortable, so he doesn’t think before he speaks;

“What do you want, Usopp.”

“It’s, uh. It’s going to rain.”

Law says, “No?” more of a question than anything, because he was preparing himself to talk about feelings , not the fucking weather. Also, the sky above them is obviously clear.

Usopp tucks his legs a little closer. “It is, though. I’m serious. Nami said so, and I can just feel it. I think, like, fifteen minutes of clear skies? Probably. We’re usually right about… you know. Weather stuff.”

“...Weather stuff.”

“Yeah. Like, rain. Sometimes storms. Wind falls under that category too, I believe, and also clouds. Or, sometimes, no clouds.” Usopp says. Smartass.

Law just scoffs. In the corner of his vision, he sees Usopp pulling at the grass, and he smacks at his hand. Usopp draws his hand back, grumbling, but Law sees the blades of green still between his fingers. “Rude,” Usopp mumbles. “See if I tell you any weather stories.” 

There’s a brief, miserably awkward silence before he starts up again anyway, because clearly nothing has ever stopped Usopp from telling stories. “I did actually have something to say about the weather, though, before I was spontaneously attacked by the violent Supernova Surgeon of Death. I can tell that you’re curious, because you’re shockingly bad at being sneaky for someone, you know, so obsessed with planning undercover operations.”

“Oh my god, if you don’t spit it out, weatherboy-”

“Rain,” he says, “brings the sky down to earth.” Law startles at the way his tone suddenly makes the words go heavy, like they mean something more that Law isn’t aware of, beyond the initial absurdity. “Luffy said that. It was one of those oddly philosophical declarations that he just pulls out of his ass every now and then. Have you seen him do that yet?”

Law doesn’t really understand where this is going, but he nods anyway, because Luffy does do that every now and then. Usopp continues.

“His vocabulary is like—meat, mispronounced names, and more meat, and then all the brain power that should have been put into all the other words he isn’t saying sparks into one miraculous moment of pure genius. And then it completely fizzles out again and he does something so painfully stupid that you’re left wondering if you imagined the whole thing. Sometimes I wonder if he’s even real, honestly. But that’s not the point.

“...When we met in Sabaody, after those two years, he was different. We could all tell. He tried to hide it, because he’s the captain and we just spent all this time training to get stronger so we could see each other again, but he’s a terrible liar. Lying will always be my job, because Luffy has no poker face, whatsoever.” He takes a deep breath.

“None of us were there for him when he needed us most, and we felt terrible about it. Then, we’re finally together, and we realize that only a few of us really knew how to be there for him. I spent two whole years thinking about how I would be the man my captain had needed—the friend that Luffy had needed—after the war. In my head, I had it all planned out.” His voice breaks, just a little bit. The sniper’s hands—which are always so steady, even when the rest of his body shakes with fear—are trembling around the blades of grass.

“Luffy would just get… really out of it, sometimes. He would sit on the figurehead and stare out at the ocean, and when you’d call for him, he’d turn around with this flat expression that made it seem like he wasn’t truly there. In his body, I mean. He would answer to his name, but it was like he didn’t actually register it as his name. Does that make any sense?”

“Depersonalization,” Law says. It feels less like a diagnosis and more like the blade of a guillotine—something weighted and absolute, slicing straight into the harsh reality of grief as it falls from his tongue. Acknowledging that Luffy could exist as a being any less than himself, making it real, felt damning to say out loud.

“Yeah,” Usopp sighs, “...exactly that. And he’s usually so bright, you know? Everything is so exciting to him. His eyes just light up, over nothing. So when he’d look at you and those eyes were just empty, like he didn’t truly see you… it was scary. I probably shouldn't say that, but it was. There was a disconnect, somewhere, and I couldn’t get through to him, and it scared me. 

“Then one night, everyone’s going to bed, and Luffy says he’s gonna stay out for just a little longer. That we shouldn’t wait for him, because he’s gonna go to bed soon anyway, and he’s smiling so nobody really thinks anything of it. Then when we go back to our rooms, Zoro’s suddenly all paranoid. 

“He’s being a real bitch about it, too—he actually snuck around to the girls’ quarters to get Nami and Robin before they could fall asleep. So now we’re all crammed together in one room, and he keeps saying that something is wrong, but he won’t tell us what it is, and he’s freaking us all out. And the problem is, he’s usually right about his weird gut feelings when it comes to Luffy, so we couldn’t even be angry at him.

“Then it starts raining, and we expect Luffy to come running inside, but he doesn’t. He’s just leaning on the railing, staring down at the water, like he’s totally unaware that it's pouring rain all around him. Zoro looks back at Robin, and he looks so scared, and in the next three seconds she’s grabbed us all by the ankles, and put her hands over our mouths, and Zoro is out the door. It happened so fast. It was… it was just so fucking weird. Sorry.” Usopp’s eyes are so wide, so afraid, staring out at a memory Law can’t see, that they’re nearly glowing with reflected starlight. 

“They didn’t come back inside. Zoro called for Jinbe, at some point, and he and Robin stayed with them the whole night. Robin told us not to leave the room, so the rest of us still don’t know what happened. There was something they saw in that moment that I didn’t, and I couldn’t do anything. And, like, I’m scared all the time. I’m always running away so that I don’t end up tragically killed or tortured, or taken hostage, or declared a god. You guys- you guys are all monsters. I really don’t know how I’ve made it this far. 

“But back to what I was saying—the way I felt in that room was suffocating in a way that was so much worse than staring down whatever nightmare creatures you idiots decide to provoke on a daily basis.” Usopp huffs, but when Law glances over he sees tears collecting along his lash line, threatening to spill over. Any other time Law would be scrambling, flinching away from emotion like it was the plague; but this was Usopp, and Usopp was a Straw-Hat. The same crew that shamelessly begged each other for help over the entire city of Onigashima, and sobbed openly for over nothing and everything. They felt honestly and intensely, uncaring of how others reacted, and all Law needed to do was listen. 

“Jinbe told us, though, one of the things Luffy had said once they finally got him talking again.” Usopp continues. “It wasn’t the thing, but it was one of them, I guess—one of his throwaway comments that flip the world upside down while he just keeps on walking. That when ‘rain brings the sky down to earth,’ it's easier for the people we’ve lost to come visit us. Like a conduit, basically, between us and the souls amongst the stars. We could put the pieces together after that. Luffy had dissociated while staying out there for Ace. His grief had pushed him too far, I guess, and his mind shut down.

“Luffy keeps a strange amount of secrets about himself, so we have the joy of feeling, like, totally shocked by them when he finally does share them with us—but that’s not really the point. Maybe it hit more because we were all unsettled, but that phrase started something. Those words stuck, for some reason. I don’t think Zoro even believes in souls, but we’ve all lost people we love, and it's hard. The idea that they aren’t totally out of reach, that we can look up and find a star and pretend they’re still close, still connected somehow—there’s comfort in that, even just from letting yourself feel again. You know? It's nice to feel like there’s a greater purpose to the mundane.” At that, Usopp trailed off, swiftly wiping his tears with a ‘welp, now you know,' and leaving Law alone with the echo of his words, the only proof he’d been there at all. A whirlwind, as always.

Usopp had marveled about Luffy’s strange ability to casually flip the world with his words, but Law thinks the Straw-hats are all slightly uncanny in their own ways, just as Luffy is. Like a solar system of planets with their own unique gravitational pull, spinning and dancing around their sun as he hurls them through life. 

In some universe, perhaps, their crews could have been binary stars. In this one, Law is more likely a comet to be caught and consumed. He knows, as he stares up into the space between their earth and what lies beyond, that there is truly no use in lamenting Kepler’s laws. 

No rain graces the night. Usopp has long since returned to his quarters. Certain by all his beliefs and understanding, Law is alone. He finds himself entertaining the metaphysical anyway.

Cora-san? 

Are you listening, from way up there?

Chapter Text

Law is fighting sleep on the lawn when muffled laughter carries through the kitchen walls. He doesn’t recognize the sound, but it's barely audible from his current distance. Zoro usually has watch at this hour, and though he’d tried convincing Brook to switch shifts earlier over multiple rounds of cards (yes, multiple; they are both so painfully stubborn), Law hadn’t cared enough to see who won in the end. Regardless, neither seem the type to abandon their post just to goof around in the kitchen. 

Law decides, then, that he needs a glass of water. If he happens to pass whoever is currently in the kitchen in the process, that would be mere coincidence. 

He’s surprised to find Zoro hunched over the transponder snail. There’s a high-pitched voice currently rambling on the other end, fading in and out as though they’re waving their hands about as they hold the transponder. Zoro looks up as Law walks in, giving only a small nod before turning his attention back to the snail with an uncharacteristically soft expression. 

“Hey Perona, the emo free-loader is here. Say hi,” Zoro smirks. It’s my sister , he stage-whispers. Law didn’t even know Zoro had a sister; not to mention that, of all the people on the Sunny, he was probably the last person Law expected to gossip with one on the transponder at three o’clock in the morning. 

“Really? Is he listening? Tell Traffy that his jeans are so ugly they make me nauseous, please! I saw the pictures from Wano in the newspaper. Oh, and that his hat wouldn’t be so uncute if he stopped wearing clothes with spots that don’t match!” The voice is nasally and slightly accented; she sounds nothing like Zoro. She’s giggling on the other end.

“My name is Trafalgar Law. Who told you to use that god-awful nickname?”

“My connections, Traffy. I have connections. Could I send you clothes? I make them. Actually, don’t answer that. I’m going to do it anyway. Hey dad, can we steal fabric from the clown at your next meeting? He would have some, no?”

Law isn’t given nearly enough time to process that clusterfuck of conversation before a much deeper, masculine voice joins the line, somehow just as nasally and accented as the first. “You have my explicit permission to antagonize the clown. If you could convince him the base is haunted, perhaps he would stop terrorizing the halls with his band of morons while I’m trying to work; in which case I would buy you all the fabrics your heart desires. He has a rather pathetic obsession with Red-Hair; for sooner results, I recommend you start there.”

 “I’ll make him a shell of a man before the meeting is over. He’ll be groveling at your feet, I promise!”

“He already does that. I hate him.” The last few words come out as a growl. Zoro’s dad (assuming this is Zoro’s dad, because wow, King of Hell Zoro has a dad. Law isn’t sure he’ll ever get over that) continues, “Though I do not recommend you antagonize the emo free-loader, Perona. I am not certain you could defeat him at the moment, as I would imagine he is thoroughly defeated already. It would be the sniper all over again.”

Law has no idea what the last bit is supposed to mean, but it is undeniably an insult, so he takes earnest offense anyway. “I’d kick both your asses,” he grumbles, too tired to do much more than glower at the snail.

Zoro laughs in his face. So does his sister on the other end of the line.

“You are not worth my time, boy. I could ‘kick your ass’ without ever drawing my blade,” his dad deadpans.

This sends Zoro into near-hysterics, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. Law hasn’t seen him laugh this hard since… Well, since ever. “God, Traffy, you have no idea who you’re talking to. This is hilarious,” he wheezes. “You’re telling me you don’t remember his voice at all? Not even a little ? You’re getting forgettable, old man!” 

“Hmm. It appears so. Let us hope our paths do not cross, then, and he remains oblivious. The dead do not have such a privilege.” His dad states, in that obnoxiously emotionless tone of his. Apparently the ‘insufferable asshole’ genes are strong; Zoro has laughed himself into a coughing fit, and is currently beating his fist into his chest as he sputters and chokes at Law’s expense.

“Zoro, why am I receiving death-threats from your father. Why should I care who he is,” Law says. Now that he thinks about it, though, the voice is vaguely familiar. Though, the only memories it traces back to are surrounded by memories he’s put great effort into forgetting—flashes of ice and snow, of red beating hearts, the residual scent of toxic gas. Two years of solitude, where his only interactions were between a psychopath and a group of government-approved psychopaths.

Wait a second.

“Alright Hawky, ‘Rona. I’m going to sleep,” Zoro says. Holy fuck. It would make so much sense, yet simultaneously no sense at all, for Zoro’s father to be a government-approved psychopath. Even more so, the one that desolates entire islands with one swipe of his theatrically large blade and then fucks off to who-knows-where. Do weird-ass sword techniques run in the family? Is this why Zoro’s named attacks are all ambiguously gothic? Is this- is this why Zoro is the way he is? What the hell was his childhood?

Law’s internal crisis is interrupted by a dramatic whine on the other end of the snail, which could only have belonged to Zoro’s sister. (And isn’t that fucking insane—siblings. Two kids. The cryptid that is the world’s most dangerous, cold-blooded swordsman has two fucking kids , and has kept them a secret for twenty-one years minimum . Law is having trouble breathing. Law is having trouble being ). “Whatever. It’s not like all you do is sleep anyways. I didn’t even want to talk to you today, you know. But I had to make sure you hadn’t gotten lost on an island somewhere and died. Stupid idiot.” 

“Do forgive her, Zoro. She is missing her family more than usual as of late, but is too emotionally stunted to tell you outright. She has begun sleep-floating again, so I would appreciate if you called more often. I do not enjoy having an inflated and half-sentient ghost roaming the halls of my home come nighttide.” There’s a clang in the background. “Do not throw silverware at me, you fiend. Your aim is weak.”

Zoro snorts. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll call when I can. Don’t die.”

“Don’t die,” they chorus on the other end, and the snail clicks. 

⭘⭘⭘

They’re all gathered on the grass, sipping fruity iced drinks in the afternoon sun. Usopp and Luffy are taking turns rolling a ball across the deck, and Robin is reading a novel to Chopper as he rests in her lap. 

“Hey Franky,” Usopp says, still rolling the ball back and forth. “I’ve been thinking about something for a while now.” 

Franky plops down at his side, and the three of them scoot into a triangle, adding him to their little game. “Yeah? What’s up?”

“There’s this weapon I wanna make. I mean, it's already a thing, but I wanna make an improved version. It’s kind of… personal. Zoro and Sanji would know, and Luffy too. Nami would probably know best, though.” Law isn’t quite sure how a weapon could be personal to so many distinct fighting styles, but he doesn’t bother to ask. 

“Nami! Usopp’s got an invention he wants to talk about,” Franky calls. She hardly looks up from her coloring book.

“It's about the Princess,” Usopp adds, whatever that means, and Nami’s face lights up.

“Oh! You should’ve just led with that!” She beams, at the same time that Luffy yells, “Vivi!” 

The other Straw-Hats start shuffling over; even Zoro seems interested. “Wonder how she’s doin’ nowadays.” He comments. The others hum in agreement.

“I assume you would like to improve her means of making an attempt on my life, yes?” Even Robin’s voice is fond, in that vaguely unsettling way of hers. 

They laugh, but then they all appear to remember something, and it's like the energy is sucked out of the atmosphere; Luffy, Nami, Usopp, Sanji (who seems to fall an unnaturally disproportionate degree in Nami’s direction, to no one’s surprise) and Chopper (draped over Zoro’s head, his little hooves poking at Zoro’s eyes) all collapse into a pile against Zoro. He yelps and immediately attempts to shove them off, looking comically offended, but seems to accept his fate after Sanji aggressively kicks him in the ankle a few times. 

“ Vivi… ” Luffy whines over Zoro’s shoulder. The others echo him sadly, and Robin creates extra hands to pat each of their heads, wiping tears from the fur below Chopper’s eyes as he stares sadly at the grass. Usopp mumbles something that sounds like ‘ four sword style ’ and Luffy giggles for just a second, only to immediately return to his strange, uncharacteristically silent state of mourning. It would be a funny sight—the little mountain of sadness they’ve flopped themselves into—if it weren’t so fucking weird. Law glances around to see that, of course, the others are not phased in the slightest; and he resolves to reach their level of unshakable nonchalance someday.

“If I may ask, who is Vivi?” Brook finally speaks up, shattering whatever spell the pile of Straw-Hats had fallen under.

“Oh! I can’t believe we haven’t told you guys yet! Vivi’s our crewmate!” Luffy announces proudly, and Law chokes on his drink. 

“Is that so?” Somehow Jinbe only sounds mildly surprised. 

“Yeah, she had to stay in Arabasta ‘cause she’s gotta run the country. She let us ride her duck army through the desert, and I was really tired, so that was nice. Man, I miss her! And her duck, too. What’s his name?”

“Karoo,” Nami offers.

“Yeah! That guy. You think they still fight together? I hope so.” 

“Well, as the princess, I hope she’s not doing too much fighting,” Nami says. “But I’m sure they still practice sometimes.” 

“That's good. She’s gotta be strong when she comes back.” Luffy declares, crossing his arms across his chest. Nami hums. 

Law thinks, quite often, that he is the only person with more than one Luffy-uncompromised brain cell on this entire ship. He stares at the captain, who meets his gaze with an expression so earnest that Law has to turn away. “You had this girl-”

“And her duck!” 

“-running around with your crew back in Arabasta. You took down Crocodile there, right?” Luffy nods, and Law keeps going. “Yeah. So that happens, and it’s time for you and your crew to set out, but she can’t come along, because she’s the princess of this newly-liberated country?” Law pinches his brow. “That’s lovely. You guys- yeah. That’s- that’s cool.”

Robin hums. “It sounds suspicious, but I can confirm that Nefertari D. Vivi, the princess of Arabasta kingdom, is a sworn member of the Straw-Hat pirates. It would put her in grave danger should this information be made public, however, so please keep this between us.” 

The fucking princess of Arabasta is a Straw-Hat. Because recruiting royalty is just something they do, apparently. 

“Vivi was undercover as a bounty hunter before she joined us. She’s back in her fancy princess job now, but I bet she’s still the same girl we watched beat Luffy into the sand,” Zoro grins. 

Luffy laughs. “Yeah, she got me good! Knocked my hat off and everything.”

“Vivi definitely got the pirate experience,” Nami says, smiling softly. “You know, she was next to Zoro when he tried to cut his legs off on Little Island. She also helped us recruit Chopper on Drum Island after Wapol tried to eat us.”

Nothing about any part of this conversation could be considered the normal pirate experience, Law thinks. 

“Vivi must be quite strong,” Brook comments. 

“Oh, she is, but the standards are way different in the New World. We haven’t seen each other in person for a while. That’s why I wanted to give her a stronger weapon,” Usopp says. At some point, he’d spread blueprints across the grass and had already begun sketching, with Franky at his side. The rest seem to take this as an invitation to reminisce about their time with Vivi. 

They talk of war, rebels and royal guards; of a princess screaming for peace as her country bleeds beneath her. They describe the silence as the first drops of rainfall meet the skin and swords of soldiers, and the joyful cries of Vivi’s people as their streets were finally washed clean. 

They laugh as Robin recounts “Water Luffy,” and they all poke fun at Zoro for “going north” so determinately that he went up instead. Law finds himself smiling a little as well, but the ridiculous humor of their stories reminds him that they were only children, then, dividing the weight of a broken kingdom across their shoulders. He isn’t much older than these Straw-Hats are now, and he was far younger when he hid under the corpses of his country, but the reality still catches in his chest. He didn’t miss the flash of horror on Jinbei's face as Luffy off-handedly mentions that you can use blood to hit Crocodile just as well as water, and he understands the feeling. 

They all nearly died in Alubarna, and Vivi hasn’t traveled with them for years; they’re reaching over each other on the lawn, pointing at trivial details on scattered blueprints, determined to make the best possible weapon for when she returns. Their voices carry no resentment. They keep a space for her bounty poster in the girls’ quarters. 

The Straw-Hats know, of course, that Law won’t travel with them forever. They promise to introduce him to Vivi someday.

Chapter Text

“Evil tag!” Luffy announces into the dining hall, slamming his palms onto the table. 

Sanji yells from the kitchen, “Not it!” 

Robin raises a hand. “Not it,” she smiles.

Confused, Law turns to Nami, who quickly scribbles something in her pocketbook. “Not it.”

“That makes three,” Zoro says, collecting his swords as he kicks back from the table. “Not it!” he yells, and before Law can ask what the hell they’re talking about, Zoro is sprinting out the door. The others scramble out of their seats to follow, whooping and cheering, until only Jinbe and Robin remain. 

“Sanji, would you be so kind as to pack up our lunches? Our time is nearly up,” Robin says, and Law would probably be concerned if such an ominous phrase came from literally anyone else. He’s been around the crew long enough to know, however, that her delighted expression is the real cause for concern; it's the face she makes as Luffy leads them straight into disaster, which does not pair well with the screaming he just heard outside. “Traffy, could you please watch over our plates until Sanji is done in the kitchen? I’m sure he’ll only take a moment, but I’m afraid a moment is all it takes for Luffy to make food disappear,” she says.

Law doubts anything could get between Luffy and food, but he tells Robin he’ll try anyway, because Sanji’s leg is on fire (menacingly) as he observes the interaction from the kitchen (and Law has the right to be a little scared, as a doctor, because he knows that legs should not spontaneously ignite). 

“Wonderful, we’ll be right back.” Robin pats Jinbe on the shoulder and they take their leave, laughing about something or other as they stroll into the sounds of battle. 

Law watches Sanji pack up each of the lunches, wash the dishes, and prep the ingredients for dinner while he waits for them to return. There are crashing noises all over the ship, and he swears he heard Usopp screaming about the grim reaper, but Sanji seems unconcerned so they’re likely all still alive. They are taking longer than he expected, though; the enemy must be difficult. He starts to reach for Kikoku, but Sanji strolls over to his side.

“They tell you what's going on?” he says, balancing a cigarette between his teeth. 

“No. Do you know?” Law asks.

Sanji snorts. “Eh, you’ll find out soon enough.” He clasps Law’s shoulder in a way that was probably supposed to be placating, but actually just hurts a little bit. "You should stay here though!” he says, and then jogs out of the dining hall. Not even thirty seconds later, Law hears a yell echo through the ship; “Traffy’s it!”

He is going to cut off all of their hands and throw them into the sea.

⭘⭘⭘

Law is hiding in a crawl space under the floorboards, huddled uncomfortably close to Usopp as they plan their next move. 

“I love the little man, but Chopper’s always ‘it’ the longest. I say we’ve got at least twenty minutes before he remembers he has enhanced hearing and turns into a real threat. Maybe less, if he learned from last time,” Usopp says. He’s whispering behind his hand like there’s anything around them but complete darkness.

“What happened last time?” 

“Ah, you weren’t there. Zoro went completely missing and didn’t show up for lunch break. We figured he fell asleep somewhere, but the game was back on when we started to search for him, so we couldn’t use observation haki and Robin’s devil fruit was turning up empty. Chopper was too panicked to remember he’s a reindeer.” Yeah, that checks out. “Turns out Zoro just fell asleep inside the furnace, all curled up like some sort of suicidal cat. We’re not really sure how he managed to crawl in there, or how he wasn’t prematurely cremated when Franky was working that morning. Talk about an embarrassing way to go out.”

“Also incredibly painful,” Law adds.

Usopp hums in agreement. “We tried to ban him from the weapon’s development room so it wouldn’t happen again, but he kept wandering in anyway. That's why I put a string in the doorway.” He looks entirely too proud of such a childish solution.

“And that works?” Compared to Usopp, Law can’t say he’s familiarized with the weapons development room, but he’s pretty sure they could have put a lock on the handle. Unless Zoro frequently enters rooms by breaking doors down; which, given his irrational strength and equally irrational mentality, is entirely possible. “He doesn’t get down there anymore?”

“Well, he does, but he trips on the string and tumbles down the steps first. At least one person is alerted by the sound of him falling on his ass every time, and they lug him back before he can nap his way into a fiery casket.”

It's so ridiculous, Law can’t help but snort. “The infamous pirate hunter, defeated by a ball of yarn. Like an oversized cat.” 

Usopp giggles. He tries to hide his laughter behind his hand, but the sound still echoes lightly in the confined area. “Guess what. We used to have him catch the mice that got onto the ship back in the East Blue, when it was just the five of us on the Going Merry, and Nami would say that he was our house cat.” He freezes, his eyes so wide they gleam in the darkness. “Wait. He’s a big, scary cat with three swords. So don’t tell him I said that. He’ll kill me.” 

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’m being serious!” Usopp whisper-yells, reflexively jumping up from where he’s crouched on the floor and hitting his head on the planks above them. “Ouch. He’ll slaughter me! Traffy—dammit, that hurt really bad—not one word of this conversation leaves this super secret base, or I swear, I’ll-”

“Super secret base?” Light floods the crawl space and sends a sharp pain through Law’s eyes, blinding him. When his vision adjusts, he sees Chopper peeking through a lifted floorboard. “Usopp, why didn’t you tell me we had a secret base?”

Usopp screeches. Law takes advantage of the distraction to punch out the loose floorboards, and sprints across the deck as Usopp pleads Chopper for mercy behind him. He leaps over the railing from the upper deck to the lawn, dropping into a roll to shift his momentum, and quickly dives behind the slide. 

Over the adrenaline-induced heartbeat pounding in his ears, Law hears a dramatic wail come from the upper deck. Immediately after, Chopper sounds positively delighted as he exclaims, “Usopp's it!”

⭘⭘⭘

“You’re taking this surprisingly seriously.”

Zoro grunts. “And you’re not?” 

They’re hidden in the weapons development room, wedged into the corner between the base of the steps and the wall. The sliver of space they’ve squeezed into is so small that Law’s ribs scrape with each inhale and his neck is turned awkwardly to the side. He keeps locking his knees on accident, and he isn’t sure if the recurrent vertigo is from the lack of circulation or his shallow breathing. If the space is this uncomfortable for Law’s scrawny ass, he has no idea how Zoro is still alive. 

There’s no way they're getting out of here without his devil fruit power. That was the agreement, of course, but he feels no less ridiculous having willingly crawled into a death trap. 

“...Whatever.” 

At the moment, Luffy is running frantic circles around the Thousand Sunny, evident by the rapid crescendo of his sandals pounding into the deck each time he grows near, and the subsequent decrescendo as he flip-flops right past them—over and over and over. 

Bless his freakishly strong heart; the idiot is never going to find them.

“It's good training,” Zoro finally supplies. There’s an obvious reluctance to share woven into his tone, but he seems sure enough of his words in a way that tells Law he’s not joking. “Awareness, coordination. Haki’s important, but it's really an enhancement. I got lucky that by the time Hawky slashed my eye out, I had the basics of observation down; it was like learning to move my arms all over again. You know how hard it is to suddenly have your perspective shifted when you’ve got one of your swords in your fucking mouth? It’s not like I could see much of it to begin with, but still. If anyone should know what I’m talking about, it's you, I guess.” 

The way Zoro seems to scan over everything a little more intently than everyone else, as though he’s taking everything in with one eye to tell the other. The way his reach gets a little too uncoordinated when drunk, for someone so athletically disciplined. They’re slight and well-hidden—more quirks, than anything else—but easy to recognize if you know what to look for. 

“Chopper’s a doctor too. I’m sure he could help you, if you asked.” Law is well aware of the Straw-Hats strange aversion to the infirmary—odd, considering that their doctor is a talking reindeer in a fluffy hat, but alas. 

“Yeah, Chopper was on my case as soon as I stepped on the Sunny. And I was talking more about the whole amputation-and-mutilation thing you got going on, but yeah. Being a doctor works too.”

Law can’t help but laugh. It catches him a little off guard, spilling from his lungs before he can stop himself. When did he get so comfortable he could laugh, just like that? When was the last time he laughed? Is it okay, for him to be this comfortable? His crew is dead, and it's his fault, and he’s-

Zoro snorts. He starts talking right over Law’s thoughts, as though they’re not even there. And they aren’t, Law realizes. His thoughts shouldn’t be so loud. There are no ghosts in the room, no voices whispering in his ears. Not right now. 

If Zoro’s as startled as Law, he doesn’t show it; instead, he barrels over it the same way Luffy would—unapologetically. “I was knocking shit over in the kitchen for weeks, and they were so bitchy about it,” he grumbles. “One time, I knocked Perona’s wine off the counter and it spilled all over her. The whole thing. We fought about it, and I threw a fork at her, and I fucking missed. I’ve never been so humiliated.” 

Law laughs again, and it feels less like a crime. He tries not to think about what that means. “Sounds like silverware is a common weapon of choice in your household.”

“Now that you mention it, yeah. What the fuck is that about?”

“Mihawk’s influence.”

“Runs in the family. Perona launches her stupid dinner knife over and over again, but she has both eyes and she still has shit aim. You’d think she would start using hand towels, or somethin’.”

“Its a generational curse, I think. It catches you when your midlife crisis has you weak and vulnerable, and then one day you wake with a dinner knife strung around your neck that you can’t take off because it's part of your brand.”

“God. If that ever happens, just cut my fucking head off. I’d rather die.”

“How would your captain feel about that?” 

“He’d understand.”

⭘⭘⭘

Robin is the only Straw-Hat Law is willing to play chess against. 

At the moment, Chopper is seated in his lap, his little arms holding a medical textbook on the table that Law has to reach over to move his pieces. They played once before, but seeing the reindeers’ overly expressive eyes as they’d shift from focused determination to abject disappointment at each check gutted Law so badly, he had to feign seasickness and forfeit the match. He knows he could not handle the guilt a second time.

The others aren’t particularly interested in the game. On the way to Dressrosa—which seems like forever ago, now—he’d played one singular match with Sanji, and lost miserably. His focus was elsewhere, given the circumstances, and Sanji clearly trusted him as well as they got along—one sharp kick from not at all. He had found it a bit strange that Luffy was watching so intently from his position draped over Sanji’s shoulders, but again; death was waiting for him just over the skyline, perched on a stolen throne and twisting souls around his fingers, and he could hardly entertain much else. He hadn’t realized until the very end that the fucker had been feeding pieces to Luffy while Law was turned away. Of course, the Straw-Hats found this absolutely hilarious, and Law had restrained himself from dismemberment for the sake of his plan. The usual, at the time, though they have not played each other since.

There’s a crash followed by loud, unrepentant laughter, and suddenly a pile of limbs comes tumbling down the slide. Nami has been chasing Luffy around for at least two hours now, determined to tag him and no one else; it seems she finally managed to do so.

They’re wrestling on the deck like siblings. One of Nami’s hands is tugging at Luffy’s hair, and his leg is wrapped around her bicep like a snake. She’s beating him with one of his sandals, while the other is missing—clearly forgotten somewhere about the ship. Her tank top is twisted around and slipping off her shoulder. Given the difference in strength, they’re remarkably evenly matched—each time one manages to slip away, the other tackles them right back to the ground. They’re both laughing so hard that tears are smeared around their eyes.

“Amusing, isn’t it?” Robin says. “I’m surprised they’ve gone this long without scrapping, recently.”

Law looks back over to where they’re rolling across the lawn. Neither are holding back—at the moment, Nami has Luffy in a chokehold, and he’s stretching his legs around to kick her back. They both look like they’re having the time of their lives. 

Law stares. “So this is typical for them? Luffy I’d expect, but…” He’s honestly shocked that Sanji hasn’t intervened to defend Nami’s femininity yet.

“Precisely. Luffy is her only opponent, whether he realizes it or not. I believe Zoro was once dragged in against his will, but that was an exception.”

Chopper nods sagely, but doesn’t look up from his medical book. “They knew each other first.”

Nami’s laughter rings across the deck—loud, unrestrained, and weaved into the resounding joy of her crewmates—and Law thinks of a performance floor so quiet you could hear his shoulders stiffen beneath his coat. 

He thinks of a king, a beast in more than name, declaring Straw-Hat’s defeat to thousands of desperate warriors. Of how the only voice that dared to speak through the silence and into the face of soul-crushing strength was not a samurai, fighting for the restoration of their country, but a young woman from a foreign land. How she had stared into the eyes of a beast as he taunted her, and with shaking hands and a quivering lip, said he’s lying. 

He thinks of how, in the end, she had been right. 

There’s a call of ‘time’s up!’ from the kitchen, and Nami throws her arms wide as she flops back onto the grass. “I win!”

Luffy looks positively scandalized; “Hey, no fair! You knew the game was ending!” and Nami merely smiles wider. 

Her eyes shine in the afternoon light, ringed with molten gold and forged with undeniable fondness as she looks up at her captain. “Lunch?” she says, and they’re running toward the galley, and all is forgiven.