Chapter Text
Rosinante crammed the fruit down Law’s throat, his own desperation drowning out the little cries as Law struggled to breathe.
Eat it.
Law was so nearly dead. Barely even able to walk more than the length of the boat for the last few days, fever burning high on cheeks splashed with that horrible, horrible white spread as it crawled further over his skin and choked him from within.
Quick, please. Eat it.
Seas, everything hurt. There were one, two, four? pulsing fires where a bullet had torn into him but it didn’t matter because he had gotten it. Please, please let this be just enough time for him to cure himself. Though, what a cruel task to shoulder him with.
Law swallowed awkwardly, coughed, breathed, shivered.
Yes.
They’d done it.
They’d done it.
Oh he’d overdone it. Oh the snow was cold. That was nice actually because everything burned. He could rest now, right? No, wait. They needed to leave.
Need to get Law away.
Pirates are looking for them.
The Marines are here.
Doffy is waiting.
How long until Doffy realises?
They need to go.
He needed to rest just a moment. Maybe close his eyes.
“What… Cora? Cora… Cora-san!” Seas, his voice sounded awful. They were so almost too late.
Rosinante wanted to laugh. Law was alive. Law would live.
Hands reached to his sides and he couldn’t help but hiss as he was turned roughly onto his back.
There was a man crouched over him.
For a brief moment, the rage that ran through him was so intense he forgot every hurt on his body and every sensation of cold or tired or weak. It was enough to trick his body into lunging forward to grab hold of the man, tight by the throat, thumb ready to press in and break because where in every cursed hell was Law? The man didn’t even seem to react to the hand on his throat beyond glancing down as if assessing him. Checking his strength perhaps? Believing him no threat because of a few injuries would be a mistake.
“Where. Is…”
Except.
Rosinante looked into eyes that appeared almost gold and the shock was enough to loosen his grip even in the midst of such panic.
The rage faded in a chopped staccato as he glanced around the little wall they’d barely hidden themselves behind, as he scanned the man in front of him and found the same goddam fluffy hat. The man’s eyes were bloodshot, ringed with dark circles and all of this was jarring and so, so familiar. There are dark sideburns striking down his jaw and a rough, clipped beard all drawn in bold, dark lines and there were no white splashes visible on his skin. But he was wrapped in the same ragged grey cloak Rosinante had bundled Law in the moment they’d crossed into a winter climate. And Rosinante knew this face.
“Law?” he managed to whisper out.
Emotion flashed across the man’s face far too fast to catch.
“Cora-san?” The man’s eyes were glassy, voice hoarse.
Oh God. Oh this was Law. This man is Law.
The cocktail of relief and uncertain fear cleared out the rest of his anger and he remembered that far too much of his blood lay outside of his body. What strength he’d borrowed from himself vanished and he’d have fallen right back to the snow if there weren’t suddenly hands on his shoulders guiding him down slowly.
“We need to get out of here. Now.”
“Are you really Law?”
The man held his gaze and Rosinante realised that whoever he was, he was breathing hard, ragged, as if he’d been the one to run down the mountain, as if he was the one about to lose his mind. Maybe they’d both gone mad. That would certainly explain all this. “It’s me. I…” The man’s eyes drifted to where red was pooling out into the snow and a raw fear painted over his face.
A hand reached to the fake pocket on Rosinante’s leg where one of his knives was always strapped.
“What are you doing?”
Funny, a minute ago he’d tried to strangle the man and now he found there wasn’t even a trace of distrust as he watched his weapon get stolen. Or maybe he really was just too tired to care.
“I can’t properly treat this right now but I can stop the bleeding. Brace yourself, this is going to feel strange.”
Stop the bleeding? With a knife?
“Room. Scan.” The air took on a blue sort of haze as the man passed the knife over the length of him, jaw clenching in displeasure. The knife flashed and Rosinante stopped breathing as he watched his body come apart in front of him. A part of his brain told him to start screaming from the pain but he only got as far as a quick gasp before realising he could still breathe just as normal and it didn’t make sense but there wasn’t any more pain than before. The man’s fingers flicked like he was playing some grotesque, horror-shop instrument and Rosinante got to watch as six bullets rose themselves into the air and dropped neatly into the bloody snow.
The Op-Op fruit.
Holy fuck this was really actually properly Law because it had to be because Rosinante had just stuffed that fruit down the kid’s throat. Law was using his devil fruit powers. Masterly, perfectly in control and completely aware of what he was doing. Law had gone from a thirteen-year-old kid on death’s own door to full grown man in less than a minute and somehow, impossibly, incredibly, he had time travelled back to this moment because how else would he know what he was doing?
“We’ve got to go.” Then there were hands slipping under his knees and shoulders and holy shit Law was adult sized. Apparently, Rosinante had been put back together again and he hadn’t even noticed. Law had done… something? He still felt awful but maybe slightly less awful. Maybe.
“I can walk.”
“Absolutely not.”
Rosinante laughed. Wow, that hurt. He laughed again.
“Shut up, idiot. Do you have any idea how hard it is to stop this much internal bleeding without any medical supplies? You are barely held together right now, laughing too hard might kill you.” And that fear flashed over his face once again. Oh. This was all new for the both of them. What had happened the last time? When little Law had no idea how to use his powers yet and they both were too weak to do anything?
Fear suddenly gripped Rosinante sharp enough to turn every limb to ice and spur him to grab once more at the collar of the man carrying him. Law didn’t stop but glanced down with a concerned, “What’s wrong?”
It had to be fine. Law was alive. Exhausted, by the look of it, but breathing. “Is it gone?” He realised he was staring, searching the skin at the neck for where the white stains had first crept up and he could see them couldn’t he? He’d just missed them before, there they were, still on his skin they had to do something, get help, he had to get up and go-
“Cora-san.” Up and those golden eyes were locked onto him. They’d stopped. “It’s gone. You were right, you saved me.”
He knew he was going to get told off for laughing again but he didn’t even care. Law’s angry hiss sounded beautiful because it worked.
They set off again, Law scanning around as if he’d forgotten the route they’d both walked just a few hours ago. Of course he had. How many years ago was it for him?
“You saved yourself. I knew you could do it.” The fingers holding onto him clenched tighter. Rosinante smiled. “I can’t believe how many tattoos you’ve gotten.”
“THERE HE IS.”
Fuck. The pirates had found them. Crawling over the hillside in a desperate search and, without even knowing, cutting off their route back to the boat. Rosinante found himself on the ground and quickly began to fumble for his gun.
“Stop moving. If you ruin my work on your insides, I’ll kill you.” He looked up and froze. Oh, he realised, Law was no longer thirteen and dying. This man looked dangerous.
He’d been dangerous already at ten, angry and bitter and desperate to burn himself out and burn the world down with him. Now though, now there was an anger colder than the air around them etched into his face and Rosinante wondered what kind of man he had become.
Seven, eight, ten pirates were walking towards them, guns drawn and faces sneering. Then five more faded in from the trees. Hells.
Law snarled and it was familiar and so, so different to what he knew.
“Room.” The world shimmered blue.
The stolen knife flashed once more and every single pirate surrounding them fell to pieces.
Three more pirates appeared from the trees as the disembodied, floating heads began screaming. Rosinante threw up a wall of silence on reflex, desperate to not attract any worse notice than this.
“Shambles.”
Suddenly Law was behind the three new pirates and there was a branch where his feet had just been.
“Injection.”
Law thrust out, quick with the knife as if he was still an alley rat trying to stab the pirate’s eye out and Rosinante, as well as every floating head, watched in horrified fascination as the pirate flew backwards as if they’d been shot point blank. The other two still with all their body parts fell the exact same way before they could even process where the enemy was coming from now. Seas he was fast. With a simple twitch of his fingers, Law had every floating head swoop to the ground at his feet and then he was crouching, hands braced against the snow in front of his macabre trophies and with one growled, Counter-shock, each face twisted into a silent scream as all of the discarded body parts began to spasm.
Then Law jogged back to where he’d propped Rosinante against a tree stump, heaved him back into his arms and staggered backwards.
“Woah there. Law, put me down.”
“We need to go.”
“You need to breathe, holy shit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. Your nose is bleeding and you look half a second from passing out. Does using your powers exhaust you?”
“This much is fine, I…” Law did actually set him down at that, looking like he was about to throw up for a moment before steeling himself and wiping his face clean of emotion. God, Rosinante had always hated that habit, how lovely to see it was still well and thriving. “I was overusing them before. Whatever happened… I can’t think about that right now. I’ll rest when we’re out of here.”
Then Law hauled him back into his arms as if he wasn’t clearly long past breaking, put one foot down in the snow after the other, and slowly, painfully, Law and Rosinante fled from Minion Island.
#
Later, when they are huddled in a tiny boat and hiding behind the waves, Law will crumple to the floor of the boat in just the same way kid-Law had done for the last week as he began to teeter over death and Rosinante will feel his heart freeze. He’ll tie the tiller to a course in case he, too, falls unconscious as they sail, and then he’ll fuss over this adult-Law in just as much desperate uncertainty as he had with the child he knew.
When they finally make it to a tiny island two days later, he’ll open every wound he has carrying Law to a cave hidden above the beach.
And then, when Law wakes up some hours later and sees the blood, he’ll scream blue murder at Rosinante for ten minutes straight. Only once Law has treated Rosinante as properly as he can with scraps of supplies and the damp conditions of the cave, and only once he’s shown Rosinante properly that, yes, all that’s left now of the awful poison is a few faint and patchy scars, over limbs that have grown strong and under the artwork he lived long enough to choose to paint himself with, only then will Law finally let himself break. He’ll cry and throw up everything in his stomach and pass out for hours before waking in a daze and then not speak for the next week.
Law is not the catalyst of this story, despite the fact he’s there, right at the moment something magic happens, and despite the fact the magic could never have happened without him. It might be more accurate to call him the heart, both literal and figurative.
It is unfortunate, then, that most good stories tend to break your heart.
When Law gets here, when they arrive at the cave (and this should already be in the past, it would be if only Law hadn’t mixed it all up), he’ll lie still and feel the chill of the rock seep into him and know that the sun can die. And Rosinante, who just barely got this traumatised child to accept affection two months ago, will realise that the child he’s come to love is gone. He’ll understand that Law has grown.
Quite a pair they’ll make, each untethered and somehow, miraculously alive.
#
Law shivered in the flickering light, huddled under Rosinante’s thick jacket and far too still for his liking.
Every so often as Law slept, his fingers would clutch at his chest and a whimper would slip out.
Every hour, Rosinante pressed a palm to his brow, wishing he knew what the unnatural chill could mean. Then he pressed two fingers to a wrist and counted as Law’s pulse seemed to drag and limp to the next beat, slow and weak.
Rosinante wasn’t a doctor. Didn’t know anything about medicine, really. He knew first aid to the level that every marine recruit knew (the bare minimum), and he knew how to treat a fever and ease a cough because he’d done it once as a terrified child at his mother’s bedside and because Law had told him off and then showed him how to do it properly when they’d first started sailing together. Still, even he knew the heart was supposed to beat more than four times a minute and that something very bad had happened to Law in the seconds and minutes before he’d appeared in his thirteen-year-old self’s place.
The head in his lap stirred and Rosinante ran his fingers through sweat soaked hair as Law’s breath hitched and caught. He didn’t know this man, not really. Didn’t know where he came from, what ailed him, why he grieved. Still, he took note of the chill of his skin and the dark, bruised exhaustion that wasn’t helped by a fitful sleep.
A new branch smoked and caught as Rosinante stoked the fire higher, hissing as the action pulled one of the numerous bullet holes in his back.
You are barely held together right now, laughing too hard might kill you.
Each time Law had woken so far, he seemed unaware of where they were and unresponsive if Rosinante tried to talk. All he had done was check over Rosinante’s wounds in a robotic, disconcerting kind of focus before slipping back into a listless daze.
We need to get out of here. Now.
Rosinante had too much time to think and too high a fever to limit himself to rationality. He wanted to grab at this man and demand answers, demand he explain what had happened last time, where his child had gone and if he was alright (if he had been alright, if Law had been okay without him).
You were right, you saved me.
Rosinante knew that he had died to get Law that fruit, that this Law had lived and Rosinante had succeeded but there was a version of this where he never left Minion Island. And despite himself, despite every other grief this man held tight within his frame that Rosinante didn’t know about and the fact everything hurt and that he wanted to cry and grieve and scream at the sky for every awful part of it, Rosinante was glad of his choice.