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Law’s wounds from Hawkin’s torture have just barely stopped oozing when he makes it back to the safe house to find Penguin waiting for him.
He’s the only one there, and yet still one too many. The Hearts had cleared out when Penguin, Shachi and Bepo had been taken, standard protocol. They had promised Law they’d find a new safe house by the end of the day. He hadn’t gone with them. The alliance was a bunch of useless bastards, so Law was going to get his crew out himself. Better not to know where the safe house moved to. No matter what, the abandoned old one would offer no clues.
Besides for Penguin, who’s here and pretending to be asleep when Law enters. It’s a well-honed act—he’s leaned back against the wall, hat pulled over his face, slow measured breathing—but for Law, the casualness of the hand resting on his sword hilt is enough to give Penguin away. Combined with the way he’s favoring his left side and the simple fact he’d never be foolish enough to sleep unguarded in enemy territory—he has to be awake. Awake, aware Law is here, and waiting for something.
“Penguin?”
“Captain?” Penguin answers, his voice muffled underneath the hat, “You escaped?”
“Made a deal with Drake,” Law tells him, and Penguin’s hand tightens near imperceptibly on his sword. “He was surprisingly cooperative.”
“Weird,” Penguin says, finally sitting up, free hand pushing the hat up to its rightful place, sleeve slipping down his arm to reveal bandages stained dark. When he meets Law’s stare, he’s smiling. Too wide, like they’re newly acquainted teenagers again. Voice too chipper, like a woodsaw. “We’ll call off the rescue—start planning a party instead.”
“We are not throwing a party.”
“Oh, come on Captain,” Penguin says with a distinct lack of his usual humor. “We always throw a party.”
“Are you…” Law starts, and Penguin’s lips thin, and Law needs Shachi or Bepo—or hell, who he really needs is Penguin for this, but—but they’re off preparing a jailbreak and Law’s here with nothing but himself and his bloodied body and Penguin’s inscrutably pissed off stare. He redirects. “Do we still have a medical kit around here?”
They do. They haul it out from underneath the floorboards—the Room a waste of strength, Law tells Penguin before he even asks—and Law shucks off his blood-matted kimono to reveal the mess of injuries underneath. Penguin swears, wretchedly sharp Northern Blue, nastily enough that Law raises an eyebrow.
“What,” Penguin snaps. “You look like shit.”
Dressrosa had been worse, but Law doesn’t say that. He never will.
“They’ll heal,” he says instead, and then, quick, as Penguin draws in breath, “Help me dress them?”
“— ‘Course.”
For all his contained upset, Penguin is ruthlessly gentle with Law’s wounds. He works with an efficiency born from many years of practice—even before Law he’d been dressing Shachi’s wounds, scrapes and bruises from another, differently awful world—starting with the cuts on Law’s palms and working his way up. There’s many, between Hawkins and his lackeys and the burn of the seastone chains and even a remnant or two of Dressrosa, reopened in the fray. Penguin treats them all without comment, just the same tense silence.
This close, Law can see underneath the hat’s shadow to the furrowed brow and focused squint beneath. Penguin’s contemplating, working something over, and Law lets him, dread pooling even as the blood is wiped away. He wouldn’t know how to ask, what to ask—none of them have ever been askers, a fact Law’s always been grateful for, until these rare moments, when he’s the one on the outside. Penguin’s jaw works as he applies antiseptic to a particularly deep cut on Law’s arm and neither of them say a damned thing.
It is not until Penguin has moved to Law’s back, with the cuts tracing the lines of their Jolly Roger, that the silence cracks, Penguin swearing again like the words are being punched out of him.
“Shit, your back—fucking seas.” He exhales, too loud. “Why didn’t you leave us with Hawkins?”
“Why would I do that?” Law asks, careful.
“Captain, come on,” Penguin says, like his answer should be obvious. He wipes a wet cloth over Law’s back, for the blood, and Law forces back a flinch at the sting. He’s the captain. “We make great prisoners. We would have been a good distraction from the rest of the alliance.”
“Fuck the alliance. They wanted me to let you get tortured.”
“You should have!” Penguin snaps, and Law can only imagine the look on his face, a rare fury. They’d argued before Punk Hazard, a fight none of the other Hearts had been willing or brave enough to pick, but even then Penguin hadn’t been furious. Upset, yes. Frustrated, for certain. Undoubtedly mad, but it had all been cold and contained, an emotional wasteland. This is not. “Better us than you! We’re your damned crew! We chained ourselves to you of our own free will! Let us bear the weight for once!”
“Peng…”
“What would have happened if Drake wasn’t there to deal? If Hawkins got bored or Kaido found out or some random ass bastard with a grudge happened to pass by? What then, Captain?”
“You would have—“
“Don’t,” Penguin snarls, and Law doesn’t. He bows his head, stares at the floor, neck exposed, and waits. There’s a sigh, and another wipe of the washcloth, and another, longer sigh. “Law. All you do is protect us. Punk Hazard, Dressrosa, our whole lives. It should be our turn to fall on the sword.”
Law swallows back the protest. Swallows back the memories of snow and blood and of dark, cold gunshots.
“You know I can’t allow that,” he says instead. Penguin dabs antiseptic. The burn is simple, an uncomplicated consequence. Easy, unlike this. “I’m captain. This comes with the territory.”
“Not if you ask Hawkins.”
“Hawkins is a lunatic,” Law says, and Penguin snorts even though it wasn’t meant to be funny, not with both of them freshly cut up. “Look, Peng, what do you want me to say?”
“I—I don’t know,” Penguin admits, and starts applying bandages. “I know this isn’t going to change anything, not really. Honestly, I think I just wanted to yell at you. Hell, maybe the point will sink in some day.”
“Don’t count on it,” Law tells him, and he can practically hear the eye roll. “I’ll be winning this fight for the rest of our lives.”
Penguin laughs.
And he gets the last laugh too, because in the end, Law’s the one who escapes Blackbeard while the Hearts are left behind to face him. Bearing the weight of Law’s chains at last.