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“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
Law pauses his chopping, staring at Robin as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. His brows furrow just a touch as he takes a moment to assess her. “...What?”
“I was just thinking,” Robin says, not having taken her eyes off the pot which she stirs. “That after having been called the Devil Child all this time, it’d be a shame not to meet one in person.”
Law exhales softly, turning his gaze back to the mishmash of green chives spread over the cutting board. “You seem certain that you’re going to hell.”
Robin chuckles, “Aren’t we all?”
“I’m more surprised that you’d entertain these kinds of notions.”
“You don’t?”
“They’re nothing more than wish fulfillment made up by the masses to indulge in a momentary comfort and ease the fear of death,” Law mutters offhandedly, deftly handling the knife in his mincing. “Heaven is for the good and Hell is for the damned. As if people can be easily divided into black and white like that. The urge to repent and be forgiven, to pray to a make believe God and fear a non existent Devil. All of it is just a way of justification. To justify their means to an end.” Law narrows his eyes. He doubts the fire of any circle of hell would have burned brighter than the ones that have already engulfed everything they’ve ever known.
“I don’t believe you’re wrong.” Robin taps a finger lightly on the ladle in her hand. “But even if these beliefs may all be born from the weakness in people, who are we to deny them if that’s what gives them strength?”
Law grunts indifferently, letting a beat of silence pass between them. His eyes flicker to Robin curiously. “Does it give you strength?”
She smiles, almost cheekily in response. “No. Not necessarily. Rather than the idea of a promised divine sanctuary or threats of eternal suffering, what comforts me the most is simply the idea of reunion.”
“You have someone like that too, don’t you?” Robin turns to meet Law’s gaze, knowing embedded in the navy of her eyes. “Someone you’d like to see again.”
A myriad of hearts framing a goofy, overexaggerated smile whirls in his mind unbidden. The red of brilliantly shining lantern lights and glistening candy apples flashes like a freeze frame as his focus is drawn to the sight of a girl with brown pigtails, so much younger than he remembers. She can barely reach his waist now. The presence of two figures ahead of them, dressed in white lab coats that flutter behind, hardly registers in his mind. The girl grasping his index and middle finger looks up at him and smiles.
He blinks back into the present. He’s stopped chopping again.
The resumed sounds of vegetables being minced is almost as telling as his brief moment of silence.
“Even if I did,” Law’s voice is quiet, strained almost, as he lets the sound of rhythmic slicing and bubbling soup eclipse his words. “It wouldn’t mean anything. The dead have nothing to offer to somebody they no longer know.”
He doesn’t think about it. Doesn’t think about what kind of expression Cora-san might have when he sees the path of piracy Law has chosen to walk down, or how much of the life that was given back to him has been consumed and single mindedly dedicated to the maddening desire for revenge. Doesn’t think about how his parents would react to his life changing ability, making him a better doctor than either of them were, and all the blood and carnage that’s stained his hands as a direct result. Doesn’t think about how with each passing week, month, year, the details of their faces are slowly fragmenting further and further until one day, they will be swallowed by white. Although, when he imagines how those he held close to his heart might look upon him now, with a lack of recognition reflected in their gazes for the boy that’s grown into a stranger, he finds that he’d rather forget them entirely than be faced with their inevitable disappointment.
“Would such a thing really affect their love?”
Her rhetorical question is thoughtful, light in its tone even as she mindfully works to unravel the knots that undoubtedly weigh heavy in his chest. Robin doesn’t expect an answer in particular and he doesn’t give her one.
“The fact that you’re here right now… isn’t that proof enough of their love? A force like that isn’t easily swayed.” Her words are kind, yet unmistakable in their meaning as they attempt in vain to etch themselves into the walls of his mind, as if she were a teacher guiding her pupil towards an answer with a firm, patient hand. For all that she is purposely and meticulously prying his feelings open to lay bare against the air and sun, her next words are even kinder yet.
“Do you truly believe that your loved ones who gave up their lives for you would love you any less now?”
For once, Law understands how it might feel to be on the other end of the metaphorical scalpel, slicing him open as the invasive operating light shines intrusively into the dark of his mind. He swallows down his reflexive answer like it’s a bitter pill, settling in the depths of his stomach and nearly prompting the need to turn his system inside out with its acidity.
“They were good people. Doctors.” It’s not a direct answer, they both know, but it’s the only way Law understands how to even begin approaching and prodding at the incomprehensible tangled yarn of his feelings that he’s left alone all these years. “Cared more about the lives of their patients than anyone else. Or, they were fighting for something greater than them.” Neither of them smoke, but he can smell the lingering scent of cigarettes regardless. “No matter how stupidly they went about it.”
“You don’t think you are one?” With her ever discerning eyes, Robin reads in between the lines effortlessly, approaching such delicate topics with an ease that makes Law feel like a bumbling incompetent child in comparison. “A good person.”
This time, he does not stop the dry response that comes out of his mouth almost instinctively, “What a pointless question.” The sound of the knife thudding against the cutting board is loud in his ears. He finds himself almost grateful that they’ve prepared the meat in advance. He thinks the sight of blood webbed over his hands would have been too laughably appropriate in such a conversation, to the point of irony. The knife thuds again. “There’s no reason to ask something you already know the answer to.”
Robin gives a light hum in reply, taking a moment longer to untangle the knots laced underneath his words. “In all fairness, I think anyone in our position would be hard pressed to call themselves a good person.” Her eyes crinkle with a different kind of affection as she smiles fondly, “Even Luffy, who’s understood by his deeds as a good person by most and even a hero by some, would never describe himself in such a way.”
Law merely scoffs, recalling with little effort how the bright eyed Captain with a smile that stretched even his rubbery face to its limits helped others without a single thought or consideration. To someone like Luffy, helping others was less a distinction of good and bad and more an instinctive impulse. Reaching out a hand to those in need came as naturally as breathing to him. At times, Law didn’t know whether he was envious or grateful for such a lack of self-restraint and foresight in aiding others. Although, he supposes that if that same stubbornly selfish optimism is what saved Robin, there must be at least some merit to it.
“We’re not heroes. No matter how much people may regale us as such,” Robin speaks in such a tone that conveys her words as factual, though Law had no intention to disagree with her. She pauses briefly, surely remembering the unexpected manner in which people had swarmed them when they had first gotten wind of their project, the sight of hopeful and expectant eyes looking up at them both unfamiliar and unexpected. Though they conduct their research and documentation in as remote a setting as possible, they know that at each and every waking moment, the world is watching them with wide eyes, waiting for the day they finally make its history known. “We’ll never think of ourselves in such a way. Even so, you don’t have to be a hero to be good. Or, to be loved.”
The thought wafts up into the air and dissipates like the steam rising up from the soup boiling away on the stove, before Robin turns down the heat slightly.
“I’ve always thought of my mother as a hero. Though it took me some time to see past the isolation her actions caused for me, I realized that at the cost of everything, she chose to pursue the truth even when the World Government condemned her.” Robin’s eyes are soft, almost hazy in their recollection of her past even as she chances a sidelong glance to Law. He doesn’t meet her gaze. “I’m sure to many people, your parents were heroes, too. As such, if people like that chose to save us, then how could that mean we were anything but loved? Regardless of what paths we choose to walk down afterwards, I’m sure they’d feel the same way even now.”
Regardless of how much of his life has been lost to blind revenge and hatred? Regardless of how much he’s chosen to destroy rather than save? The thoughts cram themselves into his mind intrusively, like uninvited and unwanted guests that do nothing but paint the walls of his mind black with doubt. And yet, even amidst the film of doubt clouding over him, he can hear the sound of Robin’s voice ringing through him as clearly as ever.
“What point is there to deprive a grown plant of water that you’ve spent time nurturing simply because it may not have borne the fruit you desired?”
Law swallows. He’s seen enough facades in his life to recognize an affectation of love when he sees one. And given the choice between witnessing that pitiful sort of expression on Cora-san and his family and burning in the depths of hell, there’s simply no fire in existence that could burn savagely enough to make him choose the former.
“Where do you draw the line between obligation and love?”
Robin’s reply is quick and sound. “You don’t. Sometimes they overlap to the point where they’re indistinguishable… and other times they don’t touch at all. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that one gives rise to the other, either.”
Don’t try to find a reason for somebody’s love. Again, the words of another flash within his mind unbidden. Although she purposefully leaves it unsaid, Law knows much of the same can be applied to their own relationship. As two like minded individuals with a shared goal of documenting history, they have a mutually invested obligation to support each other through their work and processes. However, he’s more than aware that the impulsive urge to touch her whenever she’s near and the twisting and pulsating within his chest at the sound of her voice or the flash of her smile most certainly isn’t born out of a sense of obligation. And yet…
“Even without a distinction between love and obligation,” Law mutters, aimlessly moving to grab an onion and cleaving it cleanly in half. The doubt in him rears its ugly head. “There’s a limit. There always is.”
This time, Robin stays silent for a couple beats longer, turning over his words in her mind. “If there is a limit, I suppose I have yet to find it. Perhaps one day, when I see my mother and everyone else again, I’ll ask,” She says softly, turning to smile warmly at him. “You should too. I’m sure they have the answer, even if you don’t.”
.
Does he even want an answer?
Robin gently places a lid over the pot, wiping her hands down on her apron as she turns to take a few steps towards the hallway. Despite himself, he can feel the knots within him easing with every step she takes, eager to put this conversation behind them, until he hears the sound of her voice again.
“It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but at the very least,” He isn’t looking at Robin, but he knows her well enough to feel the glance she casts at him, emitting a kindness that makes the edges of his heart bleed.
“I believe they’d be proud of you, Law.”
He hears her footsteps recede further and further into the hallway, and against his will, Law pauses in his chopping, tightening his grip on the knife and expelling the slight tremble of his hand with the same kind of force that suddenly grasps at his heart as if he’s used his own power on himself, closing up his throat and making it harder to breathe.
Left alone in the quiet of their kitchen, Law finds it easy to pretend that the sulfenic acid of the onion is the reason for the stinging behind his eyes.