Chapter Text
Tsuru looked out across the silent expanse of snow and felt her heart sink. A growing sense of dread had been weighing on her since Doflamingo's Birdcage had enclosed Minion Island and she realized that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Now, her fears were confirmed.
It was Rocinante's body. Positive identification was easy, between his height and the coat. The snow was red around him.
She forced herself to keep walking forward, even as she wondered how she was going to tell Sengoku. Rocinante wasn't even supposed to be here, and now he was gone. She didn't even know how to begin to break it to him.
When she got close enough, she realized that Rocinante wasn't alone. There was a small figure-- tiny and fragile beside his bulk-- kneeling beside him. Too small to be anything but a child. He was weeping. At first, she thought he was crying silently. Then she saw the way his inconsolable sobs shook his tiny frame; there was no way that such violent cries couldn't make any sound. He wasn't silent under his own power. That was Rocinante's Devil Fruit.
"Get a medic!" she shouted to her Marines. "He's one of ours!" Ignoring their sudden bloom of activity, shouting and running, she got close enough to Rocinante for the child to notice her. He started, looking up at her, half-recoiling and then lunging forward to cling to Rocinante's coat, his hands making fists in the feathers. She was sure that if he wasn't under Rocinante's enforced quiet, he would be cursing at her emphatically, telling her to go away.
"I'm here to help," she tells him. "Commander Rocinante isn't dead yet. We need to get him medical attention, immediately."
The child looked at her suspiciously, afraid. He's so small, she couldn't stop thinking. Were the Donquixote Pirates really recruiting such young children? How could that be profitable for them?
Even bloodied and battered, Rocinante's face looked almost peaceful. He had to be conscious on some level, for his Devil Fruit to still be active. She squeezed his hand. "You've done well, Rocinante," she said softly. "Don't die on us. I don't want to tell your father he has to bury you."
Several of her medics ran up, shouting orders at her Marines and laying out a stretcher. She stood up, stepping away to let them work. She worried she would have to physically remove the child, but he moved away as well, watching everyone with eyes of mingled judgement, anxiety, and overwhelming grief. Tears still ran down his face, unending. He didn't seem to notice, even as he wrapped his tattered cloak tighter around himself and pulled his hat down over his face. What she could see of his face was shockingly pale; absently, Tsuru worried he might be developing frostbite.
Suddenly, the boy's sobs rang through the air, cutting off as the shock of hearing them strangled tears for a moment. Tsuru lunged forward and caught him by the shoulder when he screamed, "No!" The broken, stricken sound of his voice made her heart ache. Though he struggled, fiercely, he couldn't break her grip, only heightening her fears about the ill effects of the cold.
"He'll be okay," she soothed.
"You're lying," the boy replied through renewed sobs.
She was. She changed tacks.
"If anyone can save him now," she said, "it's my crew. They will do their best. That I can promise."
He did not look up at her. She couldn't see his face under the brim of his hat.
"I'm not going to leave him," the child said.
Rocinante, she thought to herself, how did you inspire such loyalty in this child? What did you do?
"You don't have to leave him," she said. "You can stay with him once he's out of surgery."
And though the boy still seemed to be suspicious of her-- maybe even afraid-- he nodded stoically and followed behind.
---
The two places Law never would have gone, had he the choice, were a Marine ship and any sort of medical facility. And yet here he was, willingly, in a Marine medical bay. He was also hiding under a bed.
Cora-san was finally out of his hours-long surgery. Hours, which Law had spent avoiding any medical examination. It seemed like the crew of the ship, though worried about him, were unwilling to overstep and potentially further upset him. So when Law had hidden under the examination table like a child, they had left him alone. He couldn't afford for any of them to get close enough to see the patches of Amber Lead-- especially not any of them that might be medically trained. Might recognize what was wrong with him.
The only stroke of luck he'd had was that this didn't seem to be the same ship Vergo was on. At least, he hadn't seen any trace of him, and he thought if that monster knew he and Cora-san were here, he'd come to finish what he'd started.
When they'd brought him out of surgery, the same Marine who had known Cora-san's name came to tell Law and bring him to the room they'd converted into a makeshift ICU. They'd tucked a tiny cot in the corner. The old lady Marine said it was for Law. He was forced to admit that was nice of them. It was just high enough off the ground that Law could tuck himself underneath it, so he'd done so immediately. He thought-- he hoped-- that no one suspected anything was wrong with him yet. He heard some murmurings about potential frostbite between the old lady (who was the boss, he was sure) and the nurse hooking up machines to Cora-san, so they must have seen some of his spots, but not enough to know.
So here he was. Hiding. He was getting good at that.
The nurse left the room, and Law saw the boots of the boss stop by his cot. "As long as you understand that there will be consequences if you harm Commander Rocinante," she said, calm and non-threatening, "I see no reason you can't stay here. I can't allow you free roam of my ship, but meals will be delivered to you." Something was set on the bed above him. "Hopefully this will keep you from getting hypothermia, if you won't let any of my medical personnel treat you."
Footsteps retreated, and the door closed. If he were more patient, Law would have waited to make sure it wasn't a trick, that they were really gone, but he couldn't wait.
He rolled out, stood up, and looked around. There was no one there. Other than him and Cora-san, the room was empty. He turned to the hospital bed.
Cora-san looked terrible. They had put him on a ventilator, attached him to half a dozen machines, and hooked him up to an IV. All of it gave the impression that he was only barely clinging to life. He probably was.
Law wondered where Cora-san's coat was. He wanted to hide under it.
But instead he picked up Cora's chart. They'd probably left it here because they assumed he couldn't read it. Their mistake. He flipped it open. Read a few lines. Had to close it again. He reminded himself how to breathe. He opened it again, and tried to look at it clinically, as though it were any patient.
It wasn't just any patient. He looked back over at the bed. Cora-san's makeup had been cleaned away, leaving him looking younger. His hair lay lank and dull across skin so pale as to be almost grey. The black stitches holding closed a cut along his jaw stood out painfully.
The chart said that he had coded three times on the operating table.
Gasping a small, miserable breath, Law tried not to cry.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that Cora-san had been hurt trying to save Law. And Law was still dying. If he couldn't save himself, with the Devil Fruit won at so high a cost, then it was all going to be for nothing. But Law was tired. He was so tired, and still so sick.
He remembered that the old lady had left something on the bed, and looked over to see what it was. Sitting, folded carefully, was a woolen blanket. He reached out to run a hand across it, and almost pulled back when he realized it had been warmed, slowly shedding heat.
Wrapping it around his shoulders, he lay down, curling up on the cot, only pausing to kick off his shoes. He pulled the blanket over his head. Just a little bit of sleep, and then, to work. Then he'd cure himself.
---
Something was wrong with Sengoku.
Garp had been in Marineford for a whole two hours, and he hadn't been called into Senny's office to be yelled at for the very expensive damage he'd done to his own ship in a battle with some pretty milquetoast pirates. That was out of character. Concerningly out of character.
Now, far be it from him to willingly walk into a lecture, but just this once he was going to bite the bullet and go hunt down Sengoku, because clearly something was wrong. He wasn't caught up in a meeting; Garp had asked around to make sure. By all accounts, he was just sitting in his office.
Garp crashed through the door a little less violently than usually. It splintered at the edges, but still closed behind him. He had to kick it to make it shut all the way, but that was fine.
Sengoku was just sitting at his desk. His expression was entirely neutral and disinterested. Maybe Garp would have assumed that nothing was wrong, except for the way that Sengoku was mechanically stroking the fur on the back of Rocinante's pet goat, which had taken to following Senny around after its owner had left on his mission. The goat was a comfort to Sengoku, Garp knew, the same way it had once been to Rocinante, and it looked up at him with eyes that seemed to hold an almost human worry.
"What happened?" Garp said. He didn't bother with pleasantries.
Sengoku didn't look up from the papers on his desk. "Tsuru called."
That shouldn't have been a bad thing. "What did she say?"
When Sengoku breathed in, it seemed to take a great deal of effort. "They found Rocinante."
Not "they picked up Rocinante". Not "Rocinante was hitching a ride home with them."
Blues. No.
"He was on Minion Island," Sengoku said. Every word caused him visible pain. "Something went wrong. He was nearly dead when they found him. He nearly died again in surgery, and they don't have the best equipment or doctors anyway. He's alive, for now, but--"
Garp steeled himself.
"They don't expect him to make it back to Marineford."
With the irrationality of grief, Garp's first thought was, How do I tell Dragon? As though there was any way he could contact his treasonous, traitorous son. Even if Dragon would want to know that the kid-- the poor, sweet kid-- that he'd helped to take care of, before he left, was dying.
"He's just a kid," Garp found himself saying. Rocinante was a grown adult, twenty-six now, a Marine Commander. But in his mind, he was the same tiny, terrified kid Sengoku had brought home, terrified of everyone and everything.
Sengoku's facade finally cracked, and he buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook with the effort of holding back tears when he said, "I can't bury my boy, Garp. I can't do it."
Sitting down across from him, Garp slowly poured two cups of tea, and pushed one across the table to Sengoku. He thought about all the asinine platitudes he could give. He thought about all the hopes that they'd both had for their sons. A next generation of Marines, to be better. To make the world better. Now, one son was a criminal, and the other was dying painfully, far from home.
What a world they'd given to their children.
From where his head was buried in his hands, Sengoku said, painfully, "Does it make me a monster, that I’ve been praying he lives long enough for me to say goodbye? Even if he's in pain?"
"I think," Garp replied, "it makes you human."
"Blues," Sengoku said, raising his head, "anything but that." He picked up the tea Garp had poured and took a sip. His hands shook minutely.
Caution was not Garp's forte, but he was very careful when he asked, "Do we know what happened?"
The grim set of Sengoku's jaw told him everything he needed to know, even before his friend spoke. "We have no information, yet. But we can guess."
Doflamingo, then. Or his subordinates. No wonder Sengoku was tearing himself to shreds. He'd sent his only child into the mouth of the beast, and it had swallowed him whole. Nevermind that Rocinante had set himself on a collision course with Doflamingo when he was thirteen, and nothing but a miracle could have turned him from that path. All they'd been able to do was delay his destruction.
The obituary would be bleak. A short, miserable life, filled with more pain than anyone should ever be justly allotted, and guilt that he hadn't suffered more. In reality, it would probably be even worse: just a washed out, impersonal rendition of his life for people who hadn't known him to read. A good Marine. Survived by his father. A tragedy in two lines.
"How can I help, Senny?" Garp asked. "I can take on some of your duties. Pull in a few of the other old hands, if I have to."
"No," Sengoku said. "I need this. To distract myself. But... stay at Marineford. Until they bring him home."
The please was unspoken, but still clear.
"Of course," Garp said, even as he dreaded the eventual arrival of the ship carrying Rocinante's body.
---
The next few weeks were a blur of hiding, fevers, and learning how to use the new power hiding under his skin. It was hard. As desperate as he was to cure himself, his Devil Fruit had come with no instructions, and there was no one he could ask for help. For the first few days, he could only conjure a flickering blue orb, the size of his fist. Then he started to figure out what he could do with it. From there it snowballed.
He picked Amber Lead out of his skin, bit by bit, disposing of it in the biohazard bins. He could only do it a little at a time, his stamina too shot by illness to withstand the strain of his Devil Fruit. But every gram he tore out bought him a little more time. He could feel it, the slow improvement. When he took enough of it out of his lungs, he realized he could breathe without pain again and cried for half an hour.
One day, nearly a month into the trip, he opened a Room to start working. He Scanned himself. Then did it again. It took a third time for him to believe what he could feel.
It was gone.
Every particle of Amber Lead had been removed from his body. He was still suffering from the effects of prolonged, painful illness, his body still smaller and weaker than it should be, but he was no longer being killed by poison.
Everything wrong with him now, it could be fixed. He could heal.
There were still patches of skin that had been left discoloured by the illness, like scars, paler than the rest of him. He thought that they might slowly return to normal, but there was no way to know for sure. No one else had survived Amber Lead, after all. Even if they didn't, he was almost certain they didn't look like the patches of white Amber Lead caused. Maybe he could claim they were burns.
He wasn't going to die.
He wanted to tell Cora-san. But Cora still hadn't woken up.
Slowly, Law climbed onto Cora-san's hospital bed. He sat on the edge, feet dangling off, his back to the side of Cora's chest. He picked up Cora's hand, very carefully, and held it.
He inhaled. Exhaled.
"I think I was supposed to die," he confessed. "Me, after everyone I ever loved. I was sure of it. I didn't even want to be alive anymore. What's the point of hoping to survive when anyone with any sense knows you're going to die?
"But I guess you don't have any sense, right? I thought you were just another awful bastard who couldn't give a shit. Then you turned out to be the only person willing to throw all logic and rationality away and tell me that I was going to live. I’m pretty sure you would have tried to set Death on fire, if it had come to that.
"That's absurd, you know that? It's so stupid, thinking you could do anything. Everybody else in the world just wrote me off as a dead man walking! Why couldn't you have done the same?"
There were fine scars across Cora-san's fingers, from uncertain sources. Around his wrist, there were much more painful-looking scars, years old but still angry and red.
"Except that it turned out you were right. You didn't have any good reason to try to save me-- and I still don't understand why you tried-- but you were right. I'm cured, Cora-san. I did it.
"But I'm scared that you traded your life for mine. The grown-ups are trying to hide it from me, but I've heard them talking. You're not getting any worse, but you're not getting better, either. Maybe you're not dying, but you're barely alive. If they weren't keeping you breathing and your heart beating, you'd slip away. That one Marine, the one who knows you, she said you wrote an updated will. She said they have to deliver it to your father.
"So fuck you, Cora-san. How dare you give me a reason to want to live, and a miracle cure, and then go and fucking die on me? You promised me we'd sail the world. You promised me, and you're a lying scumbag, but you don't get to break that promise.”
He scrubbed tears from his eyes. "Don't leave me alone again." Law uttered the words like a secret. "Please."
His gaze was fixed on the hand he held, so much larger than his own. He couldn't look at Cora-san's face.
"You told me that my name meant that I was an enemy of the gods, and that's why Doflamingo wants me dead. Well, if he thinks he's a god, and I'm his enemy, then he doesn't get to win. He doesn't get to kill you like this. Not when you gave me a Devil Fruit that's supposed to work miracles."
A blue sphere appeared around Law's hands, around Cora-san's hand.
"So I'm an enemy of the gods. What's Death to me, then? Either he's a god, and I'm his enemy, or he's not a god, and he has no power over me. Whichever's true, you don't get to die so easy, Cora-san. You don't get to break your promise, and you don't get to get out of me yelling at you for scaring me like this.
"You gave me a Devil Fruit that works miracles and told me I'm supposed to live. But the joke's on you, because if I have to keep living, then so do you, jackass."
The blue sphere expanded to encompass the whole room.