Archive of Our Own ^beta

Law had never really thought that much about silence before.

It had its uses, sure; the ability to stay quiet and still had saved his life back in Flevance, and his time with the Family had taught him the value of the ambush and the trap as much as the frontal assault. Another tool in the toolbox, and nothing more. And Law had spent so much of the last three years being angry and loud and unwilling to just die quietly that any importance or merit he might have ascribed to the concept once upon a time—quiet is good for healing, quiet is for peace—had long since fallen by the wayside.

But now?  

Now Law would give so much to never hear his own voice again, just because of what the reality of hearing it meant.

And the worst part of it is that he knows that all of this is going to be in vain. Cora’s—fuck—Cora’s sacrifice would be for nothing because Law would get dragged back to a place he hadn’t even realized he’d actually been looking forward to escaping. These last three years he’s spent just as much time learning to dissect the way people think as he has the human body, and he’s had far too much time—and ease, in horrifying retrospect—in thinking about how Doflamingo’s mind worked, and he can see how things are going to shake out with painful clarity.

There’s no way he would leave Law alone. Not if he thought there was even the smallest of chances he could catch him. Sure, the marines might keep the Family occupied for a bit, but Buffalo could fly, and wouldn’t be near as much a priority target as some of the other Family members. All Doflamingo would need to do is give him enough of a window to get past the soldiers, and then Buffalo could scour Minion Island at his leisure. And even if he was as dull as a box of rocks, reconnaissance was what he was trained to do. He’d know what to look for.

Pulling his threadbare cloak tighter around him, he chances stopping to sneak a glance behind him. Even with his vision blurring from fatigue and tears, it was obvious what the problem was.

The snow wasn’t falling fast enough to fill in his footsteps, and he was wobbly enough with his fever and his injuries that even an idiot would be able to tell which trail in the snow belonged to him. And there was nothing but snow here; there was nowhere Law could go that he wasn’t going to leave tracks. And stumbling into a settlement wasn’t the answer either; people would start asking questions, and it’d be like drawing a map right to his location. He was stuck.

Blearily, he rubs a chapped hand across his eyes and grimaces at how he can feel himself swaying on his feet. Logically, he needs to find somewhere to rest. He’s exhausted and injured and far too cold, and while it would be just the sort of asshole fuckery he expects from the universe to have him expire from exposure before he can use this new devil fruit to fix the thing that’s been killing him for far longer, Law will be damned ten times over before he lets himself die before he’s sorted out what to do about suddenly having a chance. Especially not considering the cost of it.

But he’s so tired.

Maybe. Maybe he can take a quick break. Five minutes, no more. Five minutes to assess his next move, that’s all.

And maybe he’ll…just rest his eyes. For a bit.

He doesn’t feel the arms that catch him before he hits the ground, just as he doesn’t notice something warm wrapping around his frozen body, too far into unconsciousness to do or feel anything, body and mind too pushed to their limits to fight back anymore.

So he never sees his footprints in the snow disappear, leaving nothing but a smooth stretch of pristine white as far as the eye could see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When he wakes up, it’s almost a surprise. 

He comes to in that slow way where every step of the process is a fight against his own mind, begging to be left to its peaceful oblivion. He’s warm for what feels like the first time in forever, and dry, too, and he wants nothing more than to ignore all of his instincts and bask in the feeling of comfort and forget everything else, if only for a little while.

But eventually, his body is forced to acknowledge his steps towards wakefulness, and every part of Law’s body comes alive with the sensations of fatigue and pain. He can feel every bruise and contusion, the sticky skin of dried blood in his hairline, the tingle of fingers and toes still recovering from a near brush with frostbite. Pain shoots through his body, and he reflexively clings to the object he can feel covering his body.

But his fingers don’t meet the familiar threadbare texture of his woolen cloak, instead brushing up against something thick and soft, with a slight musky scent that Law is only now noticing. It’s almost certainly the reason he’s so warm; his cloak was third-hand at best, stolen from some unsuspecting patron in one of the taverns Cora had ducked into to grab them a hot meal, and while it had kept him from freezing to death, it had never worked this well.

He cracks his eyes open, not sure what to expect, and is greeted by an irregular stone roof, marked with small stalactites and growing several varieties of sturdy, cold-resistant mosses. There’s the sound of trickling water nearby, echoing hollowly, and dimly he realizes he must be in some sort of cave. Letting his eyes wander a bit more, he can see the dim light of dusk filtering in through what must be the cave entrance, an indication that time has passed since he closed his eyes.

His fingers are fisted around some sort of pelt; maybe a fur seal, if he had to guess, given the color and how dense and thick it is, but animals had always been Lami’s passion, not his, and the specifics of what species is keeping him warm at the moment is less pressing than how it got here in the first place—clean and dry and warm and not like it’d just been hacked off the animal in question. Just one more answer he’s only going to discover if he gets up, he supposes.

“Slowly,” a soft voice near his head says as he begins to move, and then a gentle arm is behind his back, helping him move into a sitting position, and he wants so much to flinch away, to protest that he can handle himself, but the fact is he is weak and he is hurt and the help is not unneeded.

“Here,” the voice says, and a small wooden cup is pressed into his hands, old and polished so smooth it almost feels like bone underneath his fingers. The cup is filled with water, and he’s acutely aware of how thirsty he is, but he doesn’t know where it came from or who is giving it to him, so instead of drinking he looks up at his…rescuer? Kidnapper? To try and get some context for his current situation.

He can’t suppress the flinch that runs through him when he realizes who it is.

Law can’t ever remember being this close to her before, wary as he’d been since Cora had explained who he’d been talking to. Half of that had been distrust; old habits were hard to break, even if Law had come around to the fact that Cora really was being genuine in his desire to help him. But the other half had been sheer disbelief, because there was no way someone like Cora’s Lady was real. It didn’t matter if he’d seen her talking to him, and that Cora had talked about her even when she wasn’t there. There were types of poisons that caused hallucinations at significant levels of exposure, Law knew. Amber Lead might as well be one of them, and Cora, with how worried he’d been, probably would have kept from mentioning anything about Law behaving oddly out of some misguided desire to keep from upsetting him.

This close, she’s a fascinatingly detailed fever dream, dressed in layers of warm skirts and wrapped in a cloak of sealskin, very similar to the pelt Law’s legs are still curled up under. Extremely practical, except for her feet, which were bare, but even then she doesn’t seem too different from any other woman from any number of the many cold, northern fishing villages this close to the pole.

But it’s her face that really sells the idea that she’s not entirely human.

Her hair is just a shade too white to be the result of age, face a little too pale and smooth to be natural or healthy, and the frigid touch of her hand colder than any living being could be, but it’s her eyes that really drive the point home. Blue, but all the blues, from stygian darkness to bright ice, shifting with the light around a pupil metallic-bright. Inhuman eyes that are crying silent, very human tears, even if they do turn to ice and shatter halfway down her cheeks.

It is, perhaps, this last fact more than anything else that sets him off.

“Why are you here,” he snaps, voice grainy and strained. He really does need that water. Instead, he puts it down on the stones next to him. “Cora’s dead. You don’t need to haunt me too.”

“You’re hurt,” she protests. “You’re hurt, and you need help, and—”

“I don’t need anything,” Law shouts, tired and hurting inside and out. “You know who needed you? Cora needed you. You were supposed to be his friend.” His fingers clutch the fur on his lap so tightly he can feel the tingle of restricted blood flow. “And you did nothing.”

“I wanted nothing more than to help him,” she whispers, her voice wavering, reaching out towards him one more time. “But I couldn’t—"

“Of course you couldn’t,” Law interrupts bitterly, too tired to keep yelling. “You’re not real.” He sees the hand reaching for him flinch, and draw back slowly, and presses on. “If you were real, Cora would still be alive. If you were who he said you were, if you cared the way he said you cared, Flevance would still be alive. My family would still be alive. But you’re not real, so they’re dead. Or you just didn’t care.”

“Law—”

“Leave,” he hisses, and refuses to register the hurt in those strange eyes. “Get out of my head. Go back to whatever dark corner you crawled out of and leave me in peace.”  

He expects more protests, more crocodile tears. Hallucinations were supposed to be unreasonable things, right? This one is probably piggybacking off his guilt, anyway, so of course it would be persistent. If only he knew more about how these things worked, then he could see about banishing it all the quicker.

“Okay,” she says quietly instead, surprising him. “For now. I can see you need some time.”

Law is so focused on not looking at her that he almost misses the soft clink of metal on the stone to his left. Against his better judgement, he lets his eyes slide to the side, to see a small knife, simply adorned in a black sheath lying on the stone.

“There’s a spring-fed pool in the back of the cave that won’t freeze,” she says quietly, as if she’d heard nothing about not needing her false help. “And you should have something to keep you safe. I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow.”

And then, just like that, she’s gone, and Law is left alone in his own head.

He sits there for a long while, listening to the dripping of the water in the back of the cave, and the wind from outside as dusk turns to true night and the snow finally stops falling. Somehow, the fur and the knife and the cup don’t evaporate into thin air.

He drinks the cup of water and refuses to think about how realistically refreshing it is going down his throat. Nor does he think too hard about the warmth of the fur as he falls back into a dead sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once upon a time, Trafalgar Law would have said he understood the concept of gods.

Empirically, anyway. He understood what he was told he should feel about them; the role religion played in the human experience, and how it was (theoretically) supposed to guide your way through life. How it was something he was supposed to cherish, this one-sided relationship with an entity he could never perceive. His spiritual allegiances had been chosen for him before he’d even been born and this, he was told, was simply the way of the world.

He’d never been a fan of that part.

In truth, for all that Law could recite the words he was expected to with perfect accuracy—because any less would have been embarrassing—he was an indifferent student of religious understanding. He had never seen the point of a higher power no one could prove was even there, but he’d gone through the motions expected of him. Mostly. If copies of Sora, Warrior of the Sea (frowned upon) or a book on medicine (slightly less objectionable) made their way in-between the pages of his hymnals and prayer books, well, at least he was still in church. Physically.

The sisters had never chided him too hard for his inattention. Something about there being ‘many ways to show devotion,’ whatever that meant. And his parents had been sufficiently distracted by their own jobs to get on his case too much about any perceived religious shortcomings on his part.

Less and less time had been spent in church as Amber Lead took hold of the city, congregations shrinking by the day and orphaned children needing caring for filling the time and space of the sisters instead. Law’s family had been one of the first to stop attending services; the need for medical care had outstripped the free time to spend an hour or two praying in church. Prayers started being said by bedsides instead. And graves. Pyres.

So yeah. Law knew exactly what gods were supposed to be. Perfect beings, infallible in every way, who failed anyway. The ultimate, unknowable savior who stayed silent when it really mattered, indifferent to suffering and apathetic to need. The ultimate unfulfilled promise.

What gods weren’t supposed to be were women in blue and white homespun skirts, or flyaway curling hair. They weren’t supposed to have sad eyes, or a dimple at one corner of their mouth when they smiled a crooked smile. There shouldn’t be a crease of worry between their eyebrows, and they shouldn’t have a habit of humming under their breath when they were thinking.  

Most of all, gods weren’t supposed to cry.

She never cried in front of him. Not after that first time. But she never hid the signs that she had been, those streaks of rime trailing parallel lines down her cheeks to disappear somewhere under her chin. Streaks that were there more often than not, accompanied by deep sighs and the unconscious clenching of cold hands.

Gods weren’t supposed to mourn.

“Why do you keep coming back?” he’d asked once, on a day where even speaking to the conjurings of his own mind had seemed better than the endless solitude. The unspoken ‘I don’t want you here’ had hung in the air between them, but Cora’s Lady didn’t seem to care.

“Because I promised,” she’d said simply. “And I cannot break a promise. Not without repercussions, anyway.”

“So promise me you’ll stay away,” he’d said bitterly. “That solves everything. You don’t have to stick around, and I get some peace and quiet.”

“That would still be breaking my first promise,” she’d responded. “I’d never do that to Rosinante.”

“You can’t keep a promise to a dead man,” he’d scoffed, stinging at the reminder of Cora.

“I can if I want to,” she’d said sadly. “Is it so odd to think that I actually would? Do you truly think you are only an obligation, Law?”

Law had stopped listening to her after that, burying himself in his little bed until she’d gone on her way once more. He didn’t need to deal with a hallucination trying to make nice.

So went the first few weeks of Law’s new life on the shores of what he’d learned was Swallow Island.

He didn’t think too hard about how he got there.

He discovers, finally, how to use the devil fruit Cora had bought for him so dearly, nearly breaking down when that first sphere flickers to life, and all he can think is that the color is wrong, icy blue instead of a rich, deep purple. But silence didn’t spin from Law’s fingers, just potential, and he’d be damned if he let it go to waste, so he swallows his sorrow and gets to work.

The first incisions he makes in his body are made with a knife that shouldn’t exist, but it removes the Amber Lead all the same, and Law unwinds ropes of pitted poison from every part of his body slowly, as the days march on.

The knife, he notices with a surgeon’s eye, never dulls.

He settles into a routine; afternoons and evenings were for the Amber Lead, so he could just collapse into his makeshift bed at the end of each session, but mornings were for dealing with his persistent hallucination, and trudging around the nearby countryside for supplies. There’s precious little to be found in the forest that he can actually catch or forage, with everything buried under the snow, but on lucky days a stupid enough rabbit will stumble into his half-assed traps, and a simple fire and a stick and that same, sharp knife ensure he doesn’t starve.

On the days he comes home with nothing, there’s always a fish or two waiting in the cave pool, and he doesn’t think about how they got there or how they fill him up, just like he doesn’t think about his knife or his water cup or the fur that keeps him warm at night. One particularly productive day sees him nicking an old iron pot from a trash heap in the nearby town, with the intention of using it to store things, and the next morning a crate washes up on shore, carrying the stamp of some unlucky merchant and full of bags of rice.

It's just as filling as the fish and joins the growing list of things he’s not thinking about, but it doesn’t solve the vaguely nauseous feeling he’s been feeling in his gut lately, steadfastly refusing to simply be food poisoning.

Halfway decent food and the removal of poison from one’s system, it turns out, go a long way towards feeling a whole hell of a lot better. Just the absence of Amber Lead in his system grants him energy and strength he’d never felt before, side effects diminishing to much more manageable aches and pains. Every day he can go a little farther without getting tired, making every day one day closer to being able to make plans for the future he suddenly has.

But even though he should be well past the risk of hallucinations, Cora’s Lady still comes around every morning and evening, like clockwork. And because he doesn’t know what else to do about it, he continues to ignore her, lost on how to discourage such a persistent delusion.

Another thing gods weren’t supposed to do, he thinks one evening when he catches her lingering a little longer than normal near his cave, speaking softly under her breath, was ask the ghost of a dead man what they were doing wrong.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m pretty sure she likes you,” he hears Cora’s voice say, from a night that feels like a lifetime ago. “You’re one of Hers, after all, and she has a soft spot for kids. I should know.”

The feeling growing in his gut slowly over time, with every snub and every painfully understanding smile, is beginning to feel suspiciously like guilt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Law wakes to a feeling of utter dread.

It’s a wrong sort of feeling, misplaced and aching like a sore tooth. Like the precipitous drop in pressure that heralds the worst kind of storms; shipwreckers and levee-breakers. Killers. The kind islands build storm shelters for. The kind that would sweep a sick and injured waif of a hollowed-out kid out to sea with no warning.

He raises his head from underneath his nest of fur and stolen blankets, trying to determine the severity of what was coming, but from the mouth of the little cave all he can see is the late dawn sky, cloudless gray brightening into blue, with all the promise of an unseasonably warm and pleasant day. Not the sort of day at all to provoke such an instinctual reaction. Dimly he remembers learning that those are the most dangerous storms; the ones that lull you in with beautiful weather only to appear out of nowhere to deliver hell on earth.

She hasn’t appeared yet, though he’s seen her earlier than this before, always there when he wakes up regardless of the time, like some sort of punctual and haunting shadow. Always there with a little smile and a good morning. These days, sometimes he even talks back to her.

Cora’s Lady reminds him of sea salt and snow-smell, of the winter winds that alternately stole your breath away and made the air feel cleaner and sharper. Familiar sorts of sensations, that he’d tell himself over and over again were not comforting, even as half his brain mocked him for a liar.

But that wasn’t what he was getting this morning. Those sensations were there, but they were mixed with other, more concerning things. Like iron and blood, and the sort of electric fizzle that made the hair on the back of your neck standing on end.

It’s not worrying, he tells himself, that it feels like she’s around and yet hasn’t come to see him. It’s not that he’s gotten used to seeing her every morning or anything. It’s not that he’s worried that something’s gone wrong, or that she doesn’t want to see him anymore.

It’s not any of that, he reassures himself, even as he’s already crawled out of his little makeshift bed and turned towards the entrance of the cave, where he can feel her most strongly.

But before he can move more than a few feet, the mystery of where she’s gone is solved.

“Why are you here?”

Cora’s Lady sounds angry. Truly angry, in a way Law hasn’t heard her sound before. She’s been quiet and sad and gentle, serious and sometimes even a little teasing, but never angry. It’s…wrong, somehow.

He doesn’t like it.

“You know why I’m here,” a second, unfamiliar voice responds, and Law finds himself creeping closer to the entrance of the cave despite the prickling of his instincts telling him to stay far, far away. “You’ve been naughty! Laying claims on one of mine. Did you think I wouldn’t come to call you on that?”

“No real claim,” he hears the Lady scoff. “You have no birthright link; none of us have that for those born where he was. Just because your little web stuck on him a bit doesn’t mean you had any true connection. I asked, and he accepted, and he was and is mine, by his own free will.” There’s a crackling noise like the skim of ice on a frozen puddle shattering under someone’s feet. “And if push comes to shove I’d say there are a fair few mortal lives with better claims to him than you anyway, even if you never respected that sort of thing.”

“Maybe,” the second voice continues, but it sounds more amused than angry, and Law finally manages to angle himself enough to see who is talking.

The Lady is standing with her back to the mouth of the cave, stance wide and back straight like a spear, like she’s being challenged by whomever she’s speaking to. The sealskin cloak that’s always on her back is billowing in the wind and blocking most of Law’s vision of the intruder—and probably vice-versa, now that he thinks about it.

In the future, he’ll realize why that was, and look back at this moment and acknowledge how stupid his next decision is, but in the moment he’s too curious about what he’s seeing to think the necessary three steps ahead. The Lady had always been the hallucination only he could see, and now there was a challenger.

And what a challenger it was.

She’s tall, taller even than the Lady, spindly thin in the way that makes her seem like skin stretched over bone and nothing else. She’s wearing a homespun poncho made up of a riot of colors, and from the sash belted at her waist two slender pieces of polished wood hang. Distaff and spindle, Law’s mind supplies, dim memories of some of the sisters sitting in the churchyard on warm days with similar tools in hand bubbling to the surface. Weaver’s tools.

Her eyes are…blank. They look normal at first glance—more human than the Lady’s do, for certain—but the color is hard to pin down, and they seem to be looking elsewhere, though at what he has no idea. And he finds himself wishing it had stayed that way, as all of her attention turns to him suddenly, and he finds himself pinned under her gaze like a mouse trapped by a hungry cat.

He doesn’t see her move, but suddenly she’s standing over him in a way that reminds him uncomfortably of the way Doflamingo did when he was examining something he found amusing. Unbidden, he takes a step back.

“Why, Tani,” the strange woman purrs, looming over Law like a guillotine. “You’ve found yourself a baby stormbringer.”

A what? his brain fumbles as she leans closer, slowly closing the distance between their faces. Dimly, Law can see she’s not even looking directly at him anymore, gaze fixed somewhere above his head, as if he was twice as tall, and yet he can’t shake the feeling that she’s still looking at him.

An arm snaps out, and the looming stranger is brought up short by the Lady’s vice grip on her shoulder, so tight Law can see the tenseness of the pressure she’s exerting in her fingers.

“Not a step closer,” she whispers. “You can stand here and trade barbs with me all you want, but you will stay away from him. He doesn’t need your attention, and you’ll find nothing to interest you here.”

Rather than be intimidated, the woman just chuckles, and the sound of it sends a shiver up Law’s spine. There’s no sanity in that sound, nor any sign that she’s taken anything the Lady said to heart.

“Of course I’m interested,” she cackles. “I thought this generation set in stone! Alma slapped a blessing on the youngest one as soon as he was born, and both she and Kiva are keeping a weather eye on the older boy under her care. The rest are either dead or too cagey to give me the time of day, but you—“ Her focus turns back to Law, eyes wide and unblinking and blank. “Where did you come from? I thought your people gone from this side of the Division, boy. But you’re native-born; my sister’s mark on you is plain as day. So where have you and yours been hiding all this time, hmm?”

“If you remember nothing else that I tell you, Law,” his father’s voice sounds in his head. “Remember to never, ever tell anyone your full name. I promise I’ll explain when you’re older, but for now, please: just promise me.”

That promise had once been one of Law’s greatest possessions, a secret he could turn over and over in his head in anticipation of someday knowing the answer. He’d kept his vigil faithfully, never letting the middle half of his name pass his lips. But then Flevance had burned and everyone who could have answered his questions had burned with it, and Law had left a lot of his happiest memories on the pyre with them.

It’d be a lie to say that he hadn’t thought about the ripple effect using his full name had caused. In the moment, he’d just been tired; sick of arguing with Baby 5 and Buffalo and dying to boot. Why should he care about a promise that had already been broken with his family’s death? He had no one left to keep the faith for, so what did it even matter if he shared it?

As it happened, it mattered a whole damn lot. He hadn’t bargained for it to spur Cora to get him away from the Family, or to be wrestling with the sorts of things a heavy term like “enemies of the gods” implied. He hadn’t expected it to save his life, in a twisted, monkey’s paw sort of way. And it’d been frustrating, to say the least, that it had become such a pivotal thing, this name, and yet he still had no idea what it really meant.

But now? Now Law knew without a doubt that he was staring at the reason he was supposed to keep his name a secret.

Some primal hindbrain instinct was screaming at him to get far, far away from this…woman? Entity? She’d called the Lady her sister, which meant that, if logic followed, she was also some sort of ocean…person. But he had no idea which one, and he finds himself wishing he knew more about this sea-religion the Lady and presumably her sister belonged to, if only to know who or what he was facing.

He’s not going to pretend he has enough imagination to dream something like her up completely from scratch. Cora’s Lady was one thing; she made sense, sort of. She acted like an ordinary enough person when she showed up, he guesses. She could be unsettling, but she’d never made Law feel the desire to flee.

Unconsciously, he takes a couple more steps back.

“None of that, now,” the woman chides gently, like Law is some sort of colicky toddler, before her arm snaps out and grabs him by the collar, lifting him effortlessly to her eye level despite the impression that she’s incredibly frail. “We haven’t had a chance to talk yet, you and I.”

“You go too far,” Cora’s Lady snarls, and Law feels the temperature drop precipitously, as he struggles to free himself. It’s like fighting something made of steel cables; not even the weight of his body swinging from her spindly arm moves her even a fraction of an inch.

“I won’t hurt him,” the woman scoffs. “I know I have to play by your rules while I’m here. Besides—he’s too valuable to hurt.” She makes a considering noise. “He’s a sickly little thing, though, isn’t he?” she muses, looking at him-but-not-him like he’s nothing so much as livestock. “But your favored must have seen something in him, if he was willing to die for him. I guess you’ll just have to wait to see if it was worth it.”

Law sees red, and the parts of his brain telling him to be cautious, to not provoke this woman any further shut down. Before he’s even really thought about it, one hand has wrapped around the wrist holding him by the collar, and he’s dug his fingernails as hard as possible into the tendons and fragile bones there.

But instead of dropping him or showing any signs of the pain she should be experiencing at all, it just makes her laugh. “That is what I’m talking about,” she purrs. “Defiant to the end, like all your family has ever been and always will be. Good. You’ll have to be to survive what’s coming.”

“I have tolerated this long enough,” the Lady’s voice snaps. “I can and will make you leave, sister. And I will not be gentle about it.”

On the edges of his vision, Law can see that the shoulder of the woman holding him hostage, the one clutched in the Lady’s deathgrip, is encased in thick ice, quickly crawling up the side of her neck and down her torso.

The woman just sighs, rolling her eyes. “Well, if you’re going to be like that,” she says, almost petulantly. Law can’t tell what about this situation seems to have been the trigger to getting her to back down, given the sheer nonchalance she’s treating the ice encroaching on her body with. He doesn’t particularly care, either; whatever gets her to put him down is fine with him.

“I am going to be like that,” the Lady hisses.

The woman clicks her tongue, as if this whole interaction had simply been a massive inconvenience, and her gaze swings back to Law. “I guess I’ll be seeing you in a few years then, little one.” She cackles. “There are so many interesting things in your future, you know? For you, and the other blessed boys. I can’t wait to see them happen.”

And then just like that, she’s gone.

Law falls as the hand holding him up disappears, along with the arm and person it was attached to, and there’s the briefest sensation of vertigo before he’s caught and held close in an icy iron grip. Like the Lady didn’t trust that her sister wouldn’t come back and steal him.

For once, he doesn’t push away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They find themselves back in the little cave, after that.

Law had been carried gently all the way back to his bed, one cold hand rubbing soothing circles up and down his back. It’s comforting, and he hates it. Hates it because of how much he leans into it. Hates it because he can remember Cora doing the same, and the memory is both too recent and somehow ageless. Hates it, because her touch is cold but very much there, and he can’t keep pretending it isn’t.

Hates it, because he is scared, and he’d thought there was nothing new he’d ever find to fear.

She doesn’t leave afterwards, like she usually does, and he doesn’t ask her to. It’s awkward and hell if he knows how to address the elephant in the room, and from the glances he gives the Lady from underneath the brim of his hat, she doesn’t seem to know either. What a pair they make, he thinks.

“Are you all right?” she finally ventures tentatively.

Law screws up his face. No, he’s not all right. It’d be stupid to think he was, after a confrontation like that. But you never got anywhere in life by complaining. The world certainly didn’t care enough to take your feelings into account.

“Fine,” is all he says.

“Liar.”

“What?”

“Liar,” she repeats. “It’s not every day you have an encounter like that, and she had to bring up Rosinante on top of it. She’s never had a shred of real empathy about her, and she likes getting a rise out of people.”

“She was right, though,” he mumbles softly, remembering the strange woman’s words. “It is my fault. That he’s dead. That I’m probably not worth it.”

“It is not your fault,” she insists, and Law is taken aback by how emphatic she is. “It was never your fault. Bad luck is not your fault. Fate’s whims are not your fault. The only fault here lies in the hands of the man who pulled the trigger on that gun, may he be damned to a hell beyond his imaginings.”

Law wonders what sort of hell a purported ocean goddess believes in.

“But he would be alive if it weren’t for me,” Law protests. “He wouldn’t be…” The words catch in his throat, unwilling to be spoken aloud. As if that would change the reality of the situation. As if by refusing to speak he kept alive some small faith that it wasn’t true.

“Maybe,” the Lady says gently. “But maybe not. Rosinante was playing with fire from the moment he came back to the North. There was always the chance that he’d start one he couldn’t put out.”

“But he,” Law swallows the lump in his throat as best he can. “But he cared, and no matter how much of…how awful I was to him he didn’t hate me for it. He never got angry with me. Not real angry, anyway. And all I did was get him killed.”

There’s a short huffing noise from the Lady, halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “Frustrated with you, certainly. Angry with you? Maybe not, but he burned down dozens of hospitals for you, and you want to tell me that man had no anger in him?” The Lady chuckles, but it’s a wet sort of sound, like she’s trying not to cry again. “Don’t do him the disservice of sugarcoating who he was, sweetie. No putting him on a pedestal now; he’d hate it.”

“You told him to stop,” Law mumbles. “Because other people needed them.”

“I did. You remember that? Because as I recall, you were trying very hard to pretend you were asleep.” Her tone of voice has turned just the slightest bit more teasing.

“Cora was completely sloshed and warbling like a depressed donkey,” Law deadpans. “No one sleeps through that.”

“I suppose not,” she allows. “For what it’s worth, I had been hoping he’d tell you about me sooner than that night. I thought it was important. But Rosinante was just too used to keeping secrets, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Law mutters into his knees.

They sit there quietly for a few moments more, as Law’s head races with questions and self-recrimination and a thread of logic that he really, truly, cannot ignore anymore, no matter how stubborn he was feeling.

So he takes a deep breath. “This is so stupid."

It’s not something she seems to have expected. “Law?” she says worriedly.

“You’re real,” he blurts out finally. “I can’t. I can’t…pretend you’re a hallucination anymore. Not you and not…her.” His hand twitches unconsciously towards his collar. “I think I knew that a while ago.” His fists bunch in his lap, and as his anger spikes he turns furiously to the Lady, who is still sitting there, calm as ever, tired and concerned and waiting for him to finish his point. “And I hate it. I hate it so much. Because I don’t understand this. I don’t understand you. Not like Cora did.”

“I’m real,” is all she says. “Always have been. It just wasn’t safe for me to tell you until it was just you and Rosinante. I’m afraid you could have caused a bit of trouble in that regard, if we’d been less than circumspect.”

That brings Law up sharply. “How the hell did I have anything to do with that?”  

“Because,” she says, reaching over and playfully poking between his eyes with one gentle, cold finger. “You could always see me. People of your lineage always can, but most people can’t; even Rosinante had to say the right words before we could talk to each other. So I had to hide, because I didn’t want Doflamingo or any of his cronies to know I was around, and you weren’t ready for another world-upsetting experience just yet.” She pokes him again, and he can’t suppress the urge to wrinkle his nose. It just makes her chuckle. “All that dedication to logic swimming around up there makes you just a wee bit inflexible in the belief department, I’m afraid,” she says. “I promise the logic is consistent, though. It just requires starting from a different point than you’re used to.”

“How long did you know him?” Law says. “He seemed pretty familiar with you.”

“That depends, I suppose,” the Lady muses. “I really knew him just these last four years, when we started talking. But I first met him when he was just eight, and in need of help.”

“That long?” he says incredulously. Almost twenty years. She’d known Cora for almost twenty years, and now he was gone, and it was Law’s fault. How she didn’t blame him was beyond him.

“Oh yes,” she nods. “He was a tiny thing back then, too, all skin and bone and a mop of blond fringe that covered his eyes. He ran all the way to the shoreline to escape a nightmare, and asked me to help him leave. He gave me his tears, and I found someone to take him in in return.”

“Tears?”

“Mmm,” she hums, touching her fingertips together. When she spreads them apart again, they’re draped in a string of perfect tiny pearls, the slightest cast of blue shimmering over their surfaces. “Tears are very honest things, Law. Rosinante was scared to pieces, and yet still trusting enough to hang his hopes and his fears on a total stranger. How could I not honor that?”

The Lady gives the stones in her hands a fond look, and then turns to Law with the same expression.

“Here,” she says, reaching over and looping the string around his wrist. “Keep them safe for me, won’t you?”

Law runs one finger slowly over the pearls. They don’t feel like any pearls he’s handled before, the smooth feel of the nacre unusually cool against his skin, their surface softer and more pliable than it should have any right to be. Tears, he thinks.

“Why?” he manages to choke out. “They’re his. They’re special.”

“Because I promised to take care of you,” she says gently. “If I can manage it, I would hope that I can do more than just ensure your physical health.” She smiles. “Besides, you seem to have taken great strides in fixing that yourself. You’re looking much better these days.”

Law isn’t prepared for this. The relationship Cora and his Lady had had feels like it’s too precious for him to demand more from her, and he’s just the stone in the road that had gone and fucked it all up. He doesn’t want to talk about what he’s ruined.

But there are other things they can talk about instead.

“So, who was she? The one who was calling you her sister?”

Blessedly, she doesn’t call him out on his changing the subject. “My elder sister, sometimes called the Fateweaver. More generally known as the Grand Line.”

Law thinks of all the stories he’s heard of the Grand Line; of how dangerous a place it is, of how it’s a graveyard in all but name. The other name is one he’s never heard before, but he remembers those tools she had on her belt, and the way she seemed to be constantly looking elsewhere, and a shiver runs unbidden through his body. Yeah, he’d believe every dangerous and horrible thing he’s heard of the Grand Line, with that as its representative.

“She called you something else,” Law says, brows furrowing. “Tani?”

“My name,” the Lady says simply. “The first one I ever had. I’ve had a lot of names; you kind of collect them over time.  But that was the one I woke up knowing was mine. The four of us who are younger all have them, and we use them for each other. You probably heard a couple more of them in there, when my sister was being dramatic.”

Alma. Kiva. “She called me something too,” Law said. “A…stormbringer? Cora once said people…like me...caused storms. I think it was meant to be metaphorical, but—” he shrugs. “I’m not sure what to think about that anymore.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” the Lady muses. “It’s—“she pauses, and looks pensive for a moment, before her face screws up in annoyance. “Oh. It seems I’m not allowed to tell you. Damn.” She sighs. “I’m afraid that’s going to have to remain a mystery for now. I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean ‘not allowed?’” Law says incredulously. “You mean you could just tell me? And you won’t?”

She raises a hand to cut him off before he can really get going.

“It’s not like that, I promise. But, given where you were raised, I can understand the confusion,” she says. “I’m not omnipotent, Law. None of us are. There are very hard and fast rules that govern my existence, just as there are different ones that govern my sister’s. And one of those rules—we call them Laws, funnily enough—is that when fate has dictated something must happen, we cannot interfere. And when knowledge is not yet meant to be revealed, we cannot speak it.”

The ghost of a prior conversation dances through Law’s head.

“So when you said you couldn’t have helped Cora…” Law says slowly. “You mean you really couldn’t.”

“It’s the worst feeling,” she says softly. “When some force outside your control says you cannot save people. When you can only watch, frozen, as fate takes its pound of flesh.”  

Law remembers being locked in a treasure chest, silent and screaming and unable to do anything to halt the events he could hear unfolding just inches away.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I can see that.” He refocuses. “But that means that Cora was always going to die, right? That there was no way to save him. I—“ he swallows roughly. “We were always going to lose him.”

He cuts off as she wraps an arm around him and pulls him close to his side. Even through the cloak she’s wearing, she’s cold, but he doesn’t care. It’s been so long since he’s been held like this, and even if he wanted to, he doesn’t think he could physically make himself pull away right now.

“Don’t,” she whispers. “You’ll run yourself ragged, and there’s no way to prove one way or another. Mortal beings break fate all the time; it’s one of your greatest strengths. If my sisters and I are static anchors, you are the gears that keep fate running, and you are the ones who decide if they keep going as fate intended, or those gears get broken and reassembled into something new.” She runs a hand under the brim of his hat, threading her fingers through his hair, and despite himself, Law leans into the touch. “Rosinante made a choice. And that choice arguably did change fate. You’re alive, and that is a wonderful thing. Because you are alive because you were loved.”

“Don’t think too hard about what my sister called you,” she continues. “You’re not big enough to bring any sort of storm yet. You’re just a…stormcloud. Yes.” She smiles at him, more amused than he’s ever seen her. “I think that’s a perfect description for you: a grumpy little stormcloud.”

“’m not grumpy,” he mutters into her side.

“Ah,” she says. “My mistake.”

“But…you’re not going to leave?” he says, and hates how small he sounds. “It’s just that…even when they don’t want to, it still happens. And…I’m used to it, I guess. But…” he trails off.

“I won’t leave,” she affirms. “Until the day you decide to leave this sea, I will only be a call away. I promise. And I know I’ve told you my stance on promises.”

“Not an obligation,” Law says.

“An honor,” she whispers into the crown of his head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s less than a week later, when she finds him outside the cave in a very different sort of distress.

“Law,” she says, looking at where he’s shivering near the cave entrance. “What’s going on? You’re going to get sick. Did something happen to your warm things?”

“Someone else needed them,” he says shortly, teeth chattering.

“Someone else?” the Lady says, and Law’s shoulders are suddenly covered by the weight of another fur, produced from seemingly nowhere. He’d heard once that oceans were supposed to be where the lost wealth of the planet was located. Whether or not that was true, he didn’t care at the moment. All he cares about is getting warm again.

He walks back into the cave, and she trails after.

“I mean, I think it’s a ‘someone?’” he says, gesturing to the pile of blankets that made up his bed, which were now covering a much larger form than his own. “It’s a polar bear, but it’s wearing clothes and I think I heard it talking underneath all the crying—and it was, like, human crying and not animal crying and it just sort of let me drag him over here after I got him away from the kids who were attacking him, so I fixed him up and then he just sort of…fell asleep?” Law shrugs. It had been a weird afternoon, and he was tired and hungry and his bed was occupied by a polar bear in overalls. If he sounded a little hysterical, that was only to be expected. Really, he was doing quite well all things considered.

“Mink,” the Lady says absently, as she leans over to inspect Law’s unexpected charge.

“What?”

“A Mink. That’s what his race is called. They’re a whole race of people with mammalian characteristics.” Her eyebrows furrow a bit in concern. “I’ve only ever seen a few myself. They’re almost unheard of outside the Grand Line, though, and this one is just a child.” She frowns. “Poor dear. I can’t imagine how he got here all alone. It probably isn’t a very nice story.”

“Yeah, well, the latest chapter involved two local shits kicking the crap out of him, so it’s not going any better,” Law mutters, sitting down by the bed and wrapping his new fur closer around himself. “Except…they’re not doing it anymore, so I guess it’s bound to get better from here.” He snickers at the memory, and the Lady looks at him with narrowing eyes.

“What did you do?”

“Apparently I can teleport things with this devil fruit,” Law says cheerfully, with a giddy little laugh. He was still feeling light-headed; either from the feat or half-dragging a polar bear half again his height back to the cave. “I learned that by teleporting them into each other’s heads.”

Did teleporting have anything to do with medicine? No. But being able to teleport things was fucking awesome so he’s more than willing to ignore the total lack of logic.

Maybe he should run some tests. It would be irresponsible of him not to know the limits of his teleportation ability, after all.  

“Violent little thing,” the Lady chides, but there’s no heat to it. “Well then, I suppose I should see about getting you both something to eat. You don’t have enough here for both of you.”

“He hasn’t asked you for help, though,” Law says, confused. “Can you…do that?”

The Lady had slowly started explaining to Law how exactly she worked, elaborating more on the Laws she talked about and what applied to her specifically. So Law had, by this point, a better idea of what limitations she had—and, by extension, the uncomfortable knowledge of why those limitations no longer applied to him.

“Well,” she says, sitting down next to him. “Would you like it, if he had something to eat?”

“I mean,” Law says, not entirely sure where she was going with this. “Yeah, I guess. He’ll heal better with a full stomach.”

“And he’d be much easier to take care of, which will make this job you’ve given yourself easier?”

“Yes..?”

“Then what you are saying is it would be beneficial to you if he had something to eat.”

“In an extremely roundabout way,” Law says. Then: “Oh.”

“Loopholes, stormcloud,” she teases, ruffling his hair as he squawked at the affection and the nickname. “You can do a lot with good loopholes. Describe your new friend’s bullies to me? I’ll take a look around and see what’s going on there, too. Just to cover all the bases.”

“Stupid hats, little older than me, didn’t look particularly well off,” Law says with a shrug. “They were in the forest near the docks. Might have been stealing shit? Not sure why it matters, though.”

“Call me nosy,” the Lady says, and her eyes go distant, like she’s looking elsewhere. It’s similar to what Law remembers her sister doing, but less distressing somehow. Though that was an admittedly low bar.

“Oh,” she says with a chuckle. “Well that’s interesting, if I’m right about how this is going to shake out.”

“What’s interesting?” Law says, leaning closer.

The Lady gives him a look that’s far too mischievous for his liking. “You know, I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” she says with a grin. “I think the surprise will be much more entertaining.”

Law just lets out a huff of irritation, burying himself further in his warm fur blanket. “I think I liked it better when you were serious all the time.”

He’s not sure why she seemed to think any surprise involving two assholes from the middle of nowhere was going to matter at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What are you doing?”

“Well, Shachi and I are going fishing later, and it’s getting on towards winter, so it’d be nice if we could catch some extra to cure and store,” Penguin mutters, tongue between his teeth as he carves a thin sliver of bone from the chunk in his hand. “So I’m gonna ask the Lady for a good catch, and that means I need a gift. And you know the best gifts are handmade.”

“I don’t, actually,” Law says. “You’re really going to just throw that in the water? Seems like a waste when you could probably sell a carving for a few beri.”

“You gotta put effort in,” Penguin says sagely. “That’s how she knows you’re serious.” He squints at Law from under his stupid hat. “Are you telling me you really don’t believe in the Lady? I mean, I’ve never seen you talk about her, but you don’t ever seem weirded out when me and Shachi do, like I would have expected.”

“I believe she exists,” Law hedges, because that is not a conversation he wants to have now. Or ever. “But no, I don’t…believe. Not like you and Shachi do, anyway.”

“Huh. Weird,” Penguin muses as he hooks a curve into whatever he’s carving. “I remember my ma telling me that there were people who didn’t believe, but that’s the first I’ve heard of believing and not keeping the faith. You’re a strange one, Law.”

“So you keep telling me,” Law drawls. “Anyway, I’m going to go check on the rest of the supplies. Fish is great, but if it’s all we have to eat we’re going to get sick.”

“Mmhmm,” is all Penguin says, still focused on his little carving, and Law rolls his eyes as he trudges off.

“Gifts?” he mutters under his breath once he’s sure he’s out of earshot. “People give you gifts?” 

“It’s less about what they offer, than the effort that went into them,” a familiar voice murmurs to his right, not missing a beat.

“Are you telling me Penguin is actually right about something?” Law drawls back.

It’d taken Law a bit of time to get used to the fact that she could hear him anywhere if he addressed her. It led to these weird situations where the conversation was already in process when she showed up. It had also made him very wary; she would show up and talk to him while he was standing next to Bepo or Penguin or Shachi, or, as had happened on a few occasions, in town, and Law was then forced to scramble to make sure no one thought he was crazy talking to thin air.

He thinks he’s been successful. So far, anyway.

The Lady chuckles. “You do him a disservice. He’s quite canny, in his own way. Not a lot of people understand that particular facet of how I work as well as he does.” She glances across at where Penguin is continuing his work, whistling some sort of local folk song as he goes, and Law can’t help the twinge of jealousy he feels at how fond she looks. “I find it’s always the people of the small islands that do. The ones where life is simpler, and community is more important than money or power.”

“Do you get asked for that a lot?” Law asks. “That really doesn’t seem like the sort of thing people should be asking for, if you ask me.”

“And you’d be correct,” the Lady says with a smile. “It’s more often offered than sought, but either way, what do I care for money or the trappings of mortal power?” The Lady shrugs. “A rich man who tosses a beri into my waters risks nothing, and though it is a far more precious gift coming from a poor man, I would rather he use it to feed himself and his family than ask favors. Value is relative, Law.”

“You’re supposed to be fair,” Law whispers, as Shachi runs past with a bundle of netting. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m capable of being biased,” she chuckles, reaching over and ruffling his hair. “Think of it this way: A man could throw a fortune into my waters, asking me to ensure the death of a rival, and I would not do it. I am not an attack dog, and money is not worth the life of a person, especially when they are also one of mine. However, if another man were to weave me a crown of flowers, grown in his own garden, and ask for a good day at the fishing grounds like our Penguin here, that is something I would gladly honor. He went out of his way to gather something of his own, and I so rarely get to see flowers that aren’t seen by the shore.”

She shrugs. “Like I said: value is relative, and I decide what that value is. It’s some of the very little free will I have entirely to myself, and I choose the way the scales fall. That’s the big mistake many people make; they assume my values are the same as their own, and they assume value is static.”

“I wonder if that’s why Flevance had a different sort of worship,” Law muses. “It was greed that killed us more than anything, after all, and it went on for a long time.”

“Maybe,” the Lady shrugs. “They were no less mine for choosing to look elsewhere, and there were a few people I remember who still followed the older ways. I never faulted them for forgetting. It is just a thing that mortals do, over time.”

“Here, Law, like this—” he hears his mother’s voice say, tossing the last of the pastry she had bought at the baker’s into the harbor as they walked home. “They say it’s good luck to give the ocean the last of your food.”

“That’s stupid,” Law remembers saying. “Why would you do that? It’s just a big salty puddle.”

“Oh!” Lami had said excitedly, dipping her finger into the frosting of her cupcake and shaking the cream off into the water. “Maybe the ocean is hungry!”

“Maybe!” his mother had chuckled. Law had just rolled his eyes, and not shared any of his sweet rice cakes.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I’d believe there were people who remember. Maybe imperfectly, but…I think you were still important. Even they didn’t know why.”

“Thank you,” the Lady says to him. “It’s certainly nice to think so.” She gives him one of those searching looks she affected from time to time and taps a finger underneath his chin lightly, as if to get him to stop frowning. Law just scowls harder at her.

“Cheer up, Law,” she says. “You’re looking more and more like your nickname.”

“Your nickname,” he complains. “I never agreed to it.”

“And yet, it fits you perfectly,” the Lady chuckles. “Now,” she says conspiratorially. “What kind of fish are you in the mood for? Something tells me your friends are going to be coming back with a lot of them.”

“Salmon,” Law says. “It’s Bepo’s favorite.”

“Look at you, being such a considerate friend. That’s fine; I know what you like.”

Late that afternoon, when Penguin and Shachi come back to shore crowing about their success, if there’s a large ocean tuna sitting in the bottom of the boat, too big for two teenagers to have pulled in solo, then Law doesn’t comment on it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They hit a stride, eventually, him and Bepo and Shachi and Penguin, and Law slowly stops expecting to wake up one morning to find himself alone once more, promises notwithstanding.

Part of that definitely has to do with the fact that they’ve gotten themselves their own little ship; a small, old-fashioned little fishing trawler capable of being mostly handled by four teenagers. Law’s not much help with a lot of the heavy lifting, but he’s always been good at logistics, and between Penguin and Shachi’s knowledge of the fisherman’s craft, and Bepo’s strength, the actual handling of the boat goes fairly well.

Law’s still pretty sure the Lady is keeping them from running into anything they can’t handle, regardless.

It does mean, however, that when a certain subject finally comes to a head, there’s nowhere for him to escape the confrontation.

“Come on, Law, it’s driving us fucking nuts,” Shachi accuses one day, arms crossed and backed up by Penguin and an extremely nervous-looking Bepo. “Who are you talking to?”

“No one? Myself, maybe? Intelligent conversation is so hard to come by around here, after all,” Law says as he struggles with pulling up his half of the fishing net they’re currently hauling up over the side of the boat.

“Ha ha,” Shachi deadpans. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Law shoots back.

“We’re going to lose the fish if you keep arguing,” Bepo points out morosely, and Law redoubles his efforts with the net, but Shachi was in fine form today, and kept pressing.

“I mean it Law, I’m not gonna just let this go. And we’re all curious, not just me.” Law notes that Penguin and Bepo are trying very hard not to look at him. Traitors. “I swear, I will ask the Lady herself for help with this if that’s what it takes to open your steel trap of a mouth.”

Oh. Well that wasn’t something he’d expected to have to worry about. Fuck.

“Shachi, maybe we shouldn’t ask for something that could probably be solved with a bit of straightforward conversation?” Penguin ventures cautiously from his place at the other end of the net. “It kind of feels wrong to ask the Lady for…I dunno…someone else’s secrets?”

“Penguin’s got the right idea,” Law says, trying not sound as panicked as he felt. “Wouldn’t want to make her angry or anything.”

She’d do it. She’d absolutely do it, just like she’d done with Cora all the way back when she’d thought he should tell Law about her. Hell, she’d always told him he should tell them, that she didn’t mind. His justification was that they’d never believe him, not when they couldn’t see her without playing by her stupid laws, and he didn’t want to scare them away. Law had seen firsthand what happened when you told someone something they weren’t willing to believe, and he wasn’t willing to go through that again so soon.

“Bullshit,” Shachi spits. “You’ve never believed in her worship, why should you start caring now? Because you’re hiding something? Because there’s a chance we could find out?”

“It’s not that,” Law assures hurriedly. “It’s just…” he trails off, unsure how to explain himself.

The pause does him no favors. “It’s just what, Law?” Shachi says in a voice barely above a whisper. When no answer is immediately forthcoming, he moves to the edge of the boat. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a little limestone pebble, carved with what looks to be a simplified seal.

“Excuse me, miss,” Shachi says, holding his hand with the little carved pebble over the edge of the boat. “I realize it’s a bit of a weird ask, but our friend here is being a cagey little shit, and we’d really like to know what his deal is, because for some reason he thinks he can’t fucking trust us, and that hurts, y’know?” He shoots Law a look that’s probably meant to make him feel guilty, and Law just stares back, refusing to give any ground on principle, even though by this point, he figures he’s well and truly fucked. “So if you could see it in your heart to give us a bit of a clue on the matter, me and Bepo and Penguin would be very grateful.”

And then, with a defiant smirk, he tosses his gift over the edge of the boat.

Ah, hell.

“Hello, boys,” a familiar, only slightly smug voice announces from behind him. Because of course she’d show up right behind me, Law thinks, rolling his eyes. He feels her hands land on his shoulders, as if she expects him to flee. Where, he doesn’t know. It’s not like he can swim. “It’s so nice to finally get to meet you properly.”

If there’s any consolation to be had, it’s that the faces of his friends are wildly hilarious right now. If he’d known this was going to happen, he’d have sprung for a cheap little cameko in the last town they’d visited. Those were the sort of faces you saved for posterity.

“Law,” the Lady says, and he doesn’t even need to turn his head to know she’s all smiles. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“What the fucking fuck,” Shachi whispers.

He sighs. No getting out of this now. “All right, dipshits,” he says grumpily. “Congratulations, you got me. This is the Lady, the actual fucking North Blue, and a giant pain in my ass sometimes.” The last sentence is directed upwards along with a glare, which the Lady predictably takes with one of those enigmatic little smiles of hers and a pat on his head as if to say ‘I was always going to win this argument.’

“A pleasure,” she says happily, as if the three other teenagers on the damn boat weren’t experiencing a religious crisis. Well. Penguin and Shachi probably were. Bepo…Bepo was probably just reasonably concerned about women appearing out of thin air. Bepo had his priorities straight.

Bepo was currently hiding behind the wheelhouse.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Penguin says faintly.

Law sighs. This was exactly what he was trying to avoid. Idiots.

It takes them a few minutes—well, it takes Penguin and Shachi a few minutes. Bepo was still hiding—where the Lady doesn’t disappear, and they don’t find themselves being struck down for sacrilege or whatever other stupid thoughts are running through their heads about what they’ve just witnessed.

Law could have done with them being silent a little longer though, because predictably, once they’re over their panic attacks, they start with the stupid questions.

“Law is the North Blue your mom or something?” Penguin stage whispers, and follows it up with a fervently whispered “seas, is that even possible?”

Law is in no way expecting or prepared to have to unpack that question, and the only thing that comes out of his mouth for a few seconds are sputtering noises, as the Lady unhelpfully bursts into laughter above him.

“Law’s parents were a very lovely pair of people,” the Lady says, and Law feels her squeeze his shoulder reassuringly. “I would never want to replace them. But I am more or less responsible for him, yes, due to a promise I made to his former caretaker.”

“Which I am not going to explain right now,” Law cuts in. “You idiots.”

“So, what? Are you fucking blessed or something?” Shachi stammers out, hot on the Penguin’s heels.

“Am I what now?” Law says, then tilts his head to look up at the Lady. “Wait. Your sister said something about ‘blessed boys,’ didn’t she? What’s that all about?”

“Something that you’re not ready to hear,” the Lady responds, and Law doesn’t even need to turn his head to know that Penguin and Shachi’s mouths have shut like steel traps.

He goes to protest, but she shakes her head. “I promise I will tell you someday, but I don’t think it’s information you’re ready to hear just yet. You might think I’m looking to trap you, or restrict you somehow, and while that is the furthest thing from the truth, I would like to wait to have this conversation.” She sighs. “Extend me a little trust just this once, won’t you?”

Damn it. She’s being reasonable.

“All right,” he says petulantly. “Because you promised, I guess.” He glances over at his friends, giving them a speculative look. Maybe he could still…

“Sorry, Law,” Penguin says, dashing that hope. “You’re scary, but not ‘goddess says don’t talk about it’ scary. No can do.” Shachi nods his head fervently in affirmation.

“Cowards,” Law spits. He sighs and looks over to where Bepo is still hiding. “Bepo, you can come out, she’s not going to hurt you.”

“But that’s a sea witch,” Bepo warbles, steadfastly refusing to move.

“Seas, can you not insult her to her face?” Shachi says hysterically. “I’m so sorry…uh…miss. Ma’am. He didn’t mean it.”

“Oh no, it’s fine. I understand the confusion,” the Lady says. “Bepo is from the Grand Line. And while my sister doesn’t have people in the same way I or my other sisters do, and most people don’t know about her at all, I suppose the legendary phantom island of Zou is a place that has a very long memory. His reaction is perfectly reasonable, all things considered.”

“The stories say the sea witch will steal you out of your bed, if she finds you interesting enough,” Bepo whines. There’s an audible gulp of nervousness from his hiding place. “That you’ll never control your own life again.”

“Oh,” Law says, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah, that sounds like the Grand Line I met. I changed my mind, Bepo. Go ahead and keep being scared of that one. The Lady’s nothing like her, but the Grand Line is bad news.”

Bepo makes an affirmative noise, but still remains planted firmly on the other side of the boat. Law makes a mental note to talk him down later when he didn’t have the Lady looming over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, the Grand Line has a…has a you?” Shachi sputters in the Lady’s general direction.

“Yeah,” Law says. “And she’s totally insane. If I never see her again it’ll be too soon. Good fucking riddance.”

“Oh great, you’ve met two of them, and one of them is crazy. Great, good, fine,” Penguin mutters. At some point he’d gone and buried his face in his hands.

“Law,” Shachi says, face the color of old milk. “If I promise to never pull shit like this again, can you promise you’ll stop saying things that completely restructure my worldview?”

Law just grins.

“Absolutely not.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s a cold day in autumn when she finds him, halfway up the side of a sheer cliff overlooking the bay their boat is moored in, location purposefully chosen so that no one could follow him without growing wings.

Well, no one except one person.

“Law, the boys said you’d been gone for hours when I dropped by. That you left without saying anything this morning. What’s wrong?”

It’s unfair, he thinks, that he’s found such a good hiding spot, barely enough space for him to sit without tipping off into the void, and here the Lady comes, able to balance on a piece of loose scree that would have gone shuddering down the cliffside if she chose to have more weight than that of a squirrel.

“Right,” he says bitterly. “You don’t read the papers.” 

He gestures to the newspaper sitting precariously on the rock beside his feet, two seconds from being taken by the wind, and goes back to staring out at the horizon, knees pulled up close and his head and arms resting on top of them.

“Oh,” he hears her say after a moment. “I remember this term. ‘Warlord.’ Rosinante said it was one of his brother’s main goals. Integral to his plans for the future.”

“It means he’s untouchable,” Law spits. “It means he can do whatever he wants and the government won’t give a rat’s ass about it. And now he’s taken Dressrosa, which is exactly what Cora was trying to keep him from doing.”

“Law, please tell me this isn’t you still blaming—"

“I want to make him pay,” Law interrupts, voice as even as he can keep it. “I want to be there when all he’s worked towards comes tumbling down, and I want it to be because of something I did. Not luck, or his own decisions. I want it to be me.” He buries his head further in his arms. “And I don’t care what you’re going to say about Cora—"

“Okay.”

When Law turns to look at her, incredulous, she just gives him a sympathetic smile. “Did you think I would disagree? Leaving aside how personal his crimes are to both you and I, he dug his claws into my people for years, and took and took and took from them and theirs. Small transgressions I can let pass—everything comes due eventually, even if it takes a very long time, but the harm he has caused has greatly unbalanced things, and I need as much as want the scales to be tipped back sooner rather than later.” She levels him with an eerily blank stare. “And I, too, would very much like to be there when it happens.”

“You can’t, though,” Law says quietly, but not unsympathetically. “Not unless he comes back here. And he has no reason to, now.”

The fact that she wasn’t going to try and talk him out of his decision—that she supported it wholeheartedly, even—wasn’t something Law had expected. Sometimes he forgot that, despite how gentle she was with him, and by extension Bepo, Shachi and Penguin, that she wasn’t human. She didn’t necessarily have the same values, and with what he’d learned about her aspects over the time they’d spent together, well; her supporting the idea of revenge in this case should have been obvious.

Law’s words make her hesitate though, and the pensive look that takes over her face makes him wonder what she could be about to say. He wasn’t lying when he said she couldn’t follow him on this; not that he’d mind, but she’d been very clear that she and the other sisters who made up the Blue Seas were largely stuck within their own boundaries.

Finally, she seems to have made up her mind. “Tell me Law,” she says. “Do you remember, way back when I was introducing myself to the boys, that there was something I wasn’t ready to tell you yet?”

Law’s eyes narrow. “You insisted, yeah. I honestly thought you’d forgotten about it.” He grimaces. “Penguin and Shachi didn’t, though. Good on them for keeping your secrets for literal years, I guess. Who’d have guessed they can actually keep their mouths shut when they want to?”

“Don’t insult your friends, they’re doing their best,” she says sternly. “And I was never going to hide this from you forever,” she huffs. “Not this. But, if you’re serious about this idea of yours—and I think you are—well, you deserve to know that there is an option that would allow me to…not come with you, exactly, but…be around, at the very least.” She sighs. “And there’s so much more to it than just that but…just—let me explain. And let me get all the way through before you ask your questions. Because I’m sure that you’ll have them.”

And she starts talking.

Over the next half hour, Law learns what it means to be ‘blessed,’ and that it is so much more than he had assumed from what he’d heard Penguin and Shachi talk around when he’d tried getting information out of them. Something sacred, yes, but also a declaration of love so strong that fate only allowed one to exist for each sister at a time. It was a scary and sobering and frankly amazing thing, to be considered worthy for something like that. To learn that Cora had been the only other person in the last four hundred years to be considered.

He can see why she’d been loathe to explain the concept to him right away, though. Despite her insistence that she’d never want to trap him, she’d been right; he’d never have believed her back then. Not with the straight up admission that, traditionally, a blessed person would stay within the boundaries of their sea. Hell, even after several years of knowing her, and knowing that she wasn’t lying when she’d said she didn’t want to trap him here, the concept of being so leashed still made the hair on the back of Law’s neck rise. His distrust in power would never fully go away, he expects, but he has to admit: being told you were a candidate for such a role was…nice. Flattering, even.

“Thank you for trusting me with that information,” he says carefully when she’s finished. “I’ll…have to think about it.”

“Take all the time you need,” she says. “The offer is there until you cross Reverse Mountain, and I can no longer follow. Ask as many questions as you want; I’ll answer them all. I want this to be your decision, Law, and I want you to be able to make it with open eyes.”

“I think there’s a lot of other things I have to consider first anyway,” he says slowly, shunting this new information to the side of his brain in favor of far less emotional logistics. “Not the least of which is how to avoid Doflamingo the entire time it takes to set up his downfall. He can fly, for fuck’s sake; trying to find a way to keep under his radar is going to be a nightmare.”

“Oh, there’s a solution to that, if you feel up to some grand larceny,” the Lady says, as if she were reporting the weather.

“What?”

“Tell me, stormcloud,” she says. “Have you ever heard of a thing called a submarine?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Final checks are all done, captain. We can start the crossing whenever you like,” Ikakku’s voice crackles over the comms.

“Thank you,” Law responds. “Can you set us to idle running for a bit and gather the entire crew on deck? We have one more thing that needs doing before we leave.”

“Aye, captain.”

The climb from his quarters to the main deck was short; the Tang wasn’t terribly big and Law had since grown into the long coltish legs that late-stage puberty had granted him. Still, most of the crew were already on deck, enjoying what was likely to be their last sight of North Blue waters for a very long time. Possibly for good.

“Sure you want to do this?” Penguin whispers as he runs to catch up with Law.

“Oh, she’d kill me if I didn’t,” Law shrugs. “She’s still mad she hasn’t gotten a proper introduction to them all yet. And…I need to talk to her anyway.”

“Shachi’s betting at least one of ‘em faints, you know.”

“Of course he is.” Law turns and looks at his assembled crew, doing a quick headcount. All hands accounted for, he sighs.

“All right, Shachi,” he calls. “Let’s get this over with.”

The man in question was balancing on the railing by the bow, trying to look nonchalant in his precarious position and mostly succeeding. At Law’s words he rubs his hands together gleefully, and turns to address the ocean.

“Ma’am,” Shachi announces theatrically. “It’s been a good run, but as you know, we’re off to more dangerous waters. And while we’re sad to be leaving, we’re excited for the new adventures. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to forget you.”

“…the ever-loving fuck is he doing?” Law hears Clione whisper and suppresses a snort of amusement. Shachi was really hamming it up.

“What I’m saying, ma’am, is those of us who know you personally were hoping for a proper goodbye, and we were hoping you’d see fit to let the whole crew know how good a choice they made when they chose to follow our captain.”

“Shachi,” Law warns.

“Whatever, she loves you, don’t deny it,” Shachi snarks back, and Law can hear a murmured ‘what’ from somewhere behind him. This was getting ridiculous. Someone else appeared to agree, because a shouted ‘get on with it,’ soon followed.

“Anyways,” Shachi says with a shrug, “thanks for all your help, and the food, and the fact that we have not been devoured by a sea king or ended by our own stupidity. We’d like to ask for your good fortune going forward, and for you to get the chance to say a proper hello before we leave.”

Law can’t help but notice that the carving Shachi drops into the water is eerily reminiscent of the one that had precipitated his own introduction to the Lady. Corny bastard, Law thinks. Still, I bet she loved that.

The Lady arrives in a wave of water, instead of her normal quiet appearances. She’s still dressed in the same clothes she always is, but even Law can admit the entrance makes her look quite impressive.

“Oh, we’re feeling fancy today,” Law deadpans.

“I had to,” she said without any shame. “It’s your leavetaking. Hello boys,” she says to Bepo, Shachi and Penguin, the latter two of which looked like the cats who caught the canary. “Hello everyone,” she says with a wave to the rest of the crew. “Thank you for taking care of Law for me. I know he’s a handful.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then the deck explodes with shouting. Law’s pretty sure he can hear his own name and a lot of expletives mixed in with all the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ and ‘whats’ and fervent prayers.

Is it a bit of a dick move to be so casual while most of his crew is having a crisis in the background? Maybe. But he can hear Penguin and Shachi snickering, and Bepo sighing, and picking up on context clues is an important skill to learn. The sooner they realized nothing was going to happen to them, the better.

He does note that none of them appear to have fainted. He’s strangely proud.

“I like them,” the Lady says simply. “Quite energetic. They’ll keep you on your toes.”

“They’ll give me headaches, is what you mean,” Law snarks, but he doesn’t try to hide the fondness seeping into his voice. Idiots, the lot of them, but his idiots.

“I would have come even if you hadn’t called,” the Lady says with a smile. “But I’m glad you did. And I’ve even brought you a gift! I’ll not see you sent off unprepared.”

The sword the Lady produces from seemingly nowhere is huge, as tall as Law himself or more, and stunning, and Law doesn’t even try to hide his awe at the sight.

“How long have you had her,” he whispers reverently, fingers tracing the white crosses on the sheath. Wooden inlay, all of them, so tightly fit into the dark hardwood they appear almost painted on unless you were close enough to see the grain.

“A very long time,” the Lady says fondly. “Long enough that her name has likely been forgotten.”

“She has a name?” Law hears himself say, tugging a good six inches of the blade out of the sheath. Good strong steel shines back at him, and something tingles underneath his fingers, like the buzz of Law’s own electrical shocks.

“Kikoku,” the Lady says. “I was right; she likes you.” When Law gives her a quizzical look, she laughs. “She’s a cursed blade. You won’t find a better companion, so long as you treat her right.”

Law had heard of cursed blades before; it was inevitable when you studied swordplay. But to hold one in his hands? He runs his hands over the fur encasing her guard, marveling at the softness, and how despite knowing she must have been at the bottom of the sea for who knew how long, she looked as pristine as the day she was forged.

“How could I not?” he says. “She’s perfect.”

He swears the damned thing purrs right there in his hands, and when he slots her into the curve of his shoulder, she fits there like she was made for it, a comforting hum against his collarbone.

The ruckus behind them seems to have mostly died down—Law would bet that had more to do with Bepo than anything, Shachi and Penguin had seemed too amused to be much help—but he still knows the number of questions he’s going to be fielding for the rest of the day is going to be titanic.

Maybe something will immediately ambush them on the other side of Reverse Mountain and Law will get to punt those discussions a little farther down the timeline. One could only hope.

“I do have one more thing to give you,” the Lady says carefully. “But you have to want it. It wouldn’t be fair to give it to you otherwise.”

Law understands what she’s asking. And he has thought about it. Extensively even. He doesn’t like the idea that it might make him a target beyond the danger he’s already inviting on himself and, by extension, anyone who follows him. He doesn’t like that to some people, it would define his reputation. And he knows, even though the Lady is standing there looking as nervous as he’s ever seen her, that she wouldn’t blame him in the slightest if he said no.

But.

“It would be a shame,” he says slowly, unable to prevent the grin stealing over his face, “if Doflamingo were to fall, and you weren’t there to see it happen.”

Her smile is almost worth the concession all on its own. “Really?” she says softly, reaching over to take his hat.

“Yeah,” he admits. “It’s as much your fight as mine, after all. And…I don’t like the idea of you being stuck here alone when I leave.”

“My little stormcloud, all grown up,” she says softly, combing his hair out of his face where it’d fallen forward with the removal of his hat. “Not so little anymore, are you? I dare say you’re on the cusp of being an entire storm.”

“That would mean more if I didn’t know you could be taller than me with a thought,” Law drawls.

“I didn’t watch you trip over your own legs for two years to take that victory away from you,” she teases back, and they laugh together for a few moments until the gravity of what is about to happen sinks back in.

“Are you ready?”

Law inhales slowly. It feels as if the entire world has stopped. Even Penguin and Shachi have ceased their snickering, and a hush has fallen over the entire deck. Even if no one else knows what is about to happen, there’s something in the air that demands gravitas.

“Yeah,” he finally says. And he closes his eyes.

It’s appropriate, he thinks, that a declaration such as a blessing is done with such a simple gesture as a chaste kiss upon the forehead. There’s no grand ceremony, no trappings of religious worship, no big spectacle.

Just two people, and a promise.

The first thing he notices is the heartbeats.

Law is intimately familiar with the workings of the heart, and suddenly he can pinpoint the location of every single one of his crewmembers, save for Bepo, sight unseen. That would make sense, he muses, eyes still closed. Bepo wasn’t born here.

Beyond the Tang, the pulse of uncounted other lifelines sits concentrated in the direction of the last port town before Reverse Mountain, a good two leagues away as the crow flies. They’re much fainter, almost imperceptible, but they’re there, and Law thinks he could follow each individual thread of life to its end without any trouble.

Below his feet, the ocean is vibrant. Schools of fish, aquatic plant life acclimatized to these cold waters, even a Blues-sized sea king lurking near the Reverse Mountain entrance that he makes a note to tell his crew to avoid.

“Oh,” he breathes, and the air that rushes out of his lungs is cold and clear and sharp, like he’s breathing winter itself. The Lady’s hands where she’s cupped his face no longer feel frigid, like they always have been before, and Law wonders if his body temperature can even reach a level sustainable for a normal human anymore.

He was going to give himself the mother of all physicals the first chance he got.

“It will be less overwhelming, once you cross over,” the Lady says gently as he opens his eyes. “You’re attuned to me, and once you’re in the Grand Line, you won’t be in my waters anymore. But you will be able to tell when you meet someone who was born here. As I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Mmm,” he mumbles, still a bit disoriented.

“Also, you still can’t swim. Please don’t try,” she says fervently. “Please be smarter than the boys my sisters chose. I hear stories.”

“What, you gossip to your sisters about me?” Law chuckles, and marvels at the way his breath mists cold in the air with every syllable. “Only good things, I hope. I know you’ve mentioned before I wasn’t the only unfortunate child who found themselves an unusual babysitter, but I’d like to think I didn’t make that poor a showing of it.”

“Unironically,” the Lady says. “I might have had the easiest time of it.”

“My apologies to your sisters, then,” Law says, eyebrow raised. “Since I know I was rather difficult, to say the least.”

“You were a brat,” the Lady says flatly, but the effect is ruined by the big smile she gives him. “But you’re my brat. So I expect you to blow the whole world out of the water, at least as well as my sisters seem to expect theirs will.” Her grin turns sharply feral for a moment. “All of us agree that it’s time our elder sister saw that there are consequences for the paths of fates she’s favored these last decades. Conveniently, I think upending Doflamingo also falls under that banner.”

“Well,” Law says, with a smile of his own. “With such a request as that, how could I do otherwise?”

“A cheer for the captain,” Penguin shouts. “Who has finally done the thing Shachi and I were positive he was going to do years ago. Glad to see you finally catch up with reality, Law. Give your auntie a hug.” He claps Law on the shoulder and jerks his hand back immediately. “Fucking hell, you’re an ice cube. That’s gonna take some getting used to.”

As he is right now, Law can’t even be mad. So he laughs along, the Lady’s arms wrapped about his neck in a tight hug. Later, he’ll owe the rest of the crew an explanation, and he’ll have to spend time figuring out how to deal with the implications of what he’s just done. But just for now, on the eve of their leaving everything they know behind, he’s willing to stay in the moment.

“Don’t be a stranger,” he whispers into the Lady’s hair, as they finally say their goodbyes an hour later.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t be.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Law takes the trip over Reverse Mountain standing at the bow of the Polar Tang, every fiber of him singing with awareness. The ever-present presence of the North Blue is slowly dampened to just his own crew, and he settles a bit, feeling a little less pulled apart and a lot clearer.

As they reach the pinnacle of the climb, he looks out over the expanse of the Grand Line laid out beneath him, glittering in the early morning sun and looking for all the world like the most peaceful stretch of ocean he’d ever seen.

Law knew better.

“All right you crazy bitch,” he whispers to the air as they tip over the top and start rushing down-slope, and wills his words make it to his target, ice and all. “Here I am.”