Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was loud and bubbly inside the bar in the way that laughter has the habit of drifting through the air, all contained, right before bursting. Here and gone again, the little remnant speckles ringing out over all the surfaces.

Shanks was laughing because of course he was. The drinks Makino kept drawing out of the air were getting worse as the days went on as she delved into the older and more obscure barrels that had lain around for too long and there was just something uniquely wonderful about drinking truly awful booze in good company. The gleam in her eyes whenever she served a new barrel was only mildly terrifying and the laughter she didn’t bother hiding as they all spluttered and swore at the first fresh gulp was only a mild kick in the teeth. Apparently Shanks’ poker face still needed some work.

It was all okay though, supposedly they were only a handful of days out from the next shipment and the promise of the good stuff, enjoyed in a bar like this, was more than enough incentive to help clean the out-of-date stock for cheap. Limejuice had expressed concern over the matter of whether out of date alcohol was likely to be more or less alcoholic than usual but, when given the alternative of having to deal with the rest of them sober, even he had decided that such intellectual queries were better left to wonder and wonder alone.

Shanks was a lovely tipsy drunk, which was a point in favour of less alcohol over time, but it was early yet, and there was no telling where the day would lead them. Especially now he’d just had the last bottle of the half-decent sake they’d been rationing poured all over his person by a man worth 8 million beli.

East Blue, Shanks thought to himself, was utterly fantastic. No one knew anything beyond the waters around them and life was, not easy, exactly, but so refreshing for it. Although, listening to Luffy scream down from his barstool made something clench in his stomach. The kid was a firecracker but it wouldn’t hurt him to learn a little about when and where to throw around that quick temper of his. Adorable the tantrums may be around good friends like these but if the kid wanted to be a pirate, a proper one, then Shanks might as well give him a lesson in making yourself known. He could still remember a certain straw-headed captain laughing as Ray tore into Buggy and a much younger version of himself after they’d taken it upon themselves to ‘defend the crew’s honour’ and had ended up needing rescued from a marine armada. Hard to make angry scary when it can’t yet get itself off the ground.

Hadn’t the boy just been begging to join his crew? Now listen to him, you’d think Shanks had just shot his pet in front of him. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Luffy managing to follow a single order, never mind respecting someone else enough to call them captain.

Not a man.

Not a pirate.

Oh boy. He was going to get himself killed like this. Shanks sent a panicked glance at Makino but she had nothing more to offer than a helpless smile, well used to this, clearly, and still no better off for it. Seas, that was worse, wasn’t it? Who had given him these ideas in the first place? Who else was there around here for him to learn and fail and cry with?

“It’s not worth it Luffy. Ach, look, I know you’re frustrated yeah? He just spilled some booze on me, no one got hurt. And I don’t mind if…”

But Luffy had already jumped down off his stool and begun marching out the door.

“Oi, Luffy,” Shanks jumped up and grabbed the angry hand as it stormed past him but the skin felt strange under his grip and he didn’t want to clasp too tight in case, didn’t want to bruise but he could feel it slip past even as he squeezed and Luffy’s wrist and arm and skin it began to st r e t c   h  

#

See, this isn’t actually a story about Shanks. Not that it couldn’t be, we love Shanks. And in another world, he would be every bit the main character. Powerful and charismatic enough to pull you in, life filled with danger and adventure. It wouldn’t be a bad story. But see, here’s the thing, pretty much anyone can make a good story and Shanks is one whose life is filled with people who have their own tales and sagas and unbelievable dreams. The thing about Shanks is… well, Shanks has a knack for getting under your skin and becoming the something that feels like a rival and a friend and a mentor and sometimes, underneath all that, an unbreakable thing like family. And Luffy, the little boy filled with frustration and dreams big enough to spill out over the space around him, well, he wormed his way in quickly and latched sticky fingers around Shanks’ heart, and it just so happens that the laughing captain is someone right here and right there at this particular almost innocent moment. See, in another world, Luffy is every bit the main character, and despite what a wonderful story that is, this one is a bit different. In this story, it’s not that Luffy’s not a main character (and gosh isn’t this getting all twisted and jumbled) only that it’s more accurate to call him a catalyst. Yes, that’s better. The main catalyst. Like a sun. Glorious and powerful and blindingly bright. And suns are mortal, sure. One day our sun will die. But that day is far from now and the world will already have become something new by then, so let us not worry overly about that day for now. Instead, let us bask in the warmth of all that is possible simply because today there is a sun in the sky.

              Let us instead to the story. For that, unfortunately, those last words will have to turn temporarily to lies because we need to go briefly to the moment the sun dies. Or the moment that it didn’t die. Or the moment that death arrived and then something else happened instead. Yes, sorry. This has stretched out longer than intended.

              Shanks was there at the moment the story started, except that time was a different story, and now we’re at the beginning of something new.

#

The world burned. Someone was screaming. Everything was hot in the way that melting things want to fall apart and maybe that was it, maybe it was just too hot too much too bright and so everything, everyone was falling apart. Luffy’s feet were on the ground and he was falling in every direction and it was all so overwhelming. Like, you took a really good punch and all the air just laughed right out of you and wasn’t that funny his whole body was laughing except. Except they were screaming as loud as he was laughing and he knew, as funny as all this was, he couldn’t do this anymore. This was it. And so he gripped onto the only thing available to him and he pulled. Tug. St r  e    t      c       h

#

In a bar, air bubbling with spilt alcohol and shattered wood, Shanks, Makino, and the whole horrified crew watched as their favourite little shit stormed his way to the door while one arm stretched back, all the way to where his wrist was held in a desperate grip.

Benn Beckman, loyal first mate and general partner-in-crime to Shanks’ everyday chaos, felt his stomach drop out below his feet at the sudden realisation that Luffy had gotten into the chest with the devil fruit. The seven-year-old’s head had just gained a flashing beli sign in the eyes of the world government. That particular brand of panic didn’t last for long though. No, because then they all got to watch in horror as Luffy’s arm pulled tight, buckled, and, with the only steady point of contact being a frozen Shanks, snapped back towards the bar at half the speed of a cannon, ‘landing’ by crashing through the bar top and making a dent in the wall behind.

On reflex, and truly without realising he’d done it, Beckman drew his gun.

Shanks, noting this, realised that his own hand was hovering just over the handle of his sword.

Luffy had stretched. Luffy had eaten the fruit. Luffy was a goddammed idiot and a headache and gone where was he because who the fuck was that.

Tension rippled across the room as everyone held themselves just on the side of readiness, not quite yet an outright attack.

There was a figure lying in the broken splinters of the bar where Luffy had moments ago been sitting. If they’d done something to the boy, Shanks was going to kill them.

Fingers gripped at his sleeve and he remembered that, whatever was unfolding now, Makino had also watched as Luffy disappeared. If something had happened to the boy, she was going to kill Shanks.

Dust was decorating the air and slats creaked from where they’d bowed under missile impact. The figure, the man, it looked like, was heaving as if he’d just run the length of the island, yet the breath was leaving him in giddy wheezes as if he’d been laughing all the while. The space around him seemed unsteady or shaking or warping or maybe all that dust was just still settling down but whatever it was set Shanks’ teeth on edge.

Beckman stepped forward, gun held out but pointed down, and the man snapped upright in an instant.

Beckman faltered.

Makino’s grip tore a small hole in Shanks’ sleeve.

Shanks tensed his toes to stop himself from keeling over as his heart decided to miss several beats.

The man was poised and tense, ready to fight on a trigger, but it was the face and features that shocked the room. Dark shaggy waves reached down to his ears, large eyes scorched across the room as he took everything in, assessing them without a flicker, and there, underneath the left eye, a curved scar, years healed and a mirror to the one Shanks himself had stitched only days ago. This man looked something like he might have imagined Luffy to look in ten or twenty years, if the boy could last that long without picking a fight with the wrong asshole and meeting an early grave.

“Who are you?” Shanks asked. Mentally, Shanks congratulated himself for how perfectly calm he managed to sound. “Where is-”

“Where’s Torao gone?” The voice sounded rough, scraped raw.

He caught Beckman’s confused glance back. Nope, neither of them knew a Torao.

The man staggered, Beckman moving forward to steady him on a reflex no one expected but then there was a hand gripping the front of his shirt and pulling him in close and that was bad because there weren’t many men in any blue who could get the jump on Benn Beckman.

“Where is Torao?” Someone who wasn’t but looked almost like Luffy growled.

“We don’t know a Torao,” Shanks offered. He didn’t like this.  

“Zoro. Where’s Zoro?”

Well, this was going swimmingly.

“Don’t know Zoro either,” Beckman offered warily, not making a move towards the fingers clenched very close to his throat. “Who are you?”

The man frowned, pupils dancing in and out of focus, and that was maybe a concussion but that was a problem for later. He seemed to register that he was holding someone by the collar, then there was a moment when something like recognition flit past.

“What are you doing here?”

What.

Beckman was released and the bar collectively relaxed just one inch.

The man had turned his focus past Beckman and in an instant lost all presence of threat with just the word, “Shanks.” The air became a little easier to breathe.

There was no way this was Luffy. Surely.

“Shanks, you’ve got two arms.” Then the man turned, retched, coughed up an unpleasant amount of blood, and promptly passed out where he stood.

And, for at least one moment, everything was quiet and calm and still.

“What the actual fuck just happened. Anchor, what… What happened to Anchor?” Generally, Shanks was proud of the fact he was pretty hard to faze but at that precise moment even he would admit to feeling more than a little stressed.

“Chief,” Yasopp, his ever faithful, ever observant sniper croaked up from where he was standing, wide-eyed and shocked like the rest of them. “That’s not… that’s not Luffy. Right?”

Shanks stared at the scar his hands had carefully sown shut and tried really hard to believe it was an entirely unrelated coincidence.

“Chief.” He looked up to see Beckman, more shaken than he’d seen him in years. “You have two arms, he said.”

Shanks looked down without thinking, confirming yes, two arms attached and accounted for as he would have expected.

“Well… he’s not wrong.”

Beckman snorted. Yasopp laughed sharp and quick. Some bubble burst and the room eased back to some version of regular and it was Makino who was brave enough or coherent enough to step forward to check the man was still breathing collapsed on the floor and oh yes what the shit had just happened.

“Shanks.” Makino’s tone had all of them back on edge in an instant. “That’s Luffy’s shirt.” And she was right, while the shorts on him were unfamiliar and fitted to size, the t-shirt was clearly a child’s top, stretched and warped near to bursting over the man’s larger torso with little blue letters in front of an anchor.

“Time-travel ain’t real, right chief?” Yasopp didn’t quite sound like he believed himself.

“We’re in East Blue,” the practical Lucky Roux pointed out helpfully. “There’s no way time-travel happens in East Blue.”

“Limey.” Limejuice froze at the edge to his captain’s voice. “Rubber, you said. The Gum-Gum fruit.”

Limejuice couldn’t do anything with his nerves except laugh, “Well, he did stretch.”

“Motherfucker.”

This sort of general confusion continued on for some time until Makino started yelling at them to at least help her take the unconscious man that might be Luffy up to a spare room. There was a fear in her voice that was echoed in all of them whenever they caught sight of where the bar had caved in. Hard to hide the evidence of that had just happened, even if no one knew what that was. Even if the only thing that was clear was that Luffy, the little boy that had wormed his way into all of their hearts was no longer here.

Chapter Text

They decided, Shanks and Beckman, that it was safest to stay in the room with the man they were deliberately not calling Luffy until they had proof, because who knew what he’d do when he woke up. What they were certain of already was that each of them had felt the level of danger spike and crash in waves through that brief encounter, and that was enough to set them all on a dull edge for now. The crew had taken themselves back to the ship, just one or two staying in shifts at the bar so they’d be close enough to hear any sudden yelling and far enough away to escape Minako’s warpath while she stress baked.

That the captain and first mate had seemed familiar to the man was reassuring and terrifying all at once by itself but, as he’d calmed at just the sight of them, there was a hope that waking up to the two of them present might avoid some unnecessary fight.

So that’s what Luffy woke up to. Red-Haired Shanks and Benn Beckman sprawled over the floor and perched on a sill between the hand-sketched drawings of windmills and sailboats that lined the walls. And wake up he did.

Both Shanks and Beckman had been half-alert for the whole seventeen or so hours that Luffy had been asleep, and so, as he sprung out of bed and promptly keeled over to the side, they were at least able to catch him on the way down and set him back to sit on the bed. Touching his skin made little electric shocks skitter up their palms and, for just a second, Shanks could have sworn the floor began to buckle like the sea. The pulse beneath their fingers raced as the man shook his head, trying to get them away or maybe clear his head or who knew what was happening. They let go and stepped back, wanting to give him some room and wanting to steady their feet against the solid floor and wanting desperately for him to speak to confirm or deny what they already knew, that they knew exactly who this was.

A firm grip lashed out and attached itself to Shanks’ arm, keeping him exactly where he was, and Beckman clamped down on the need to remove it, his captain was more than capable of protecting himself and they were not trying to escalate this.

“Shanks.” Well, that wasn't a fluke then. Hopefully they were a little more coherent after the extended nap. “What the hell are you doing here?” The grip tightened as the man shook his head again, hair flowing strangely out for a second before settling back down. “And why do you have two arms?”

“What's your name?” Beckman asked, calm as an easy day’s sailing.

“That’s mean,” the man pouted. It was kind of cute, and a little difficult to remember the level of danger, threat, power held in his frame only yesterday. “Hey Beck, where’d your scar go?”

Okay at this point, the time-travel theory was gaining an upsetting amount of traction.

“Oi.” Beckman and Shanks both jumped. The man narrowed his eyes and leaned in a bit too close, “You both look really young.”

Shanks spluttered. Beckman sighed.

The man laughed, “Did I time-travel or did you? Never mind that, Shanks you have your arm again!”

Shanks whined, “Why do you keep saying that? What happened to my arm?”

“A fish ate it.”

Surely not.

Beckman howled, ignoring Shanks’ glare with a practiced ease.

“Beck. Beck. Shut it.”

“A fish…” he dodged the punch that swung for him without bothering to look and oh boy Shanks wasn't going to hear the end of this for a long time.

A bright laughter pulled them back to the man in front of them. The man who clearly was in fact-

“Monkey D. Luffy.” Luffy grinned, wide enough that it should have been unnatural but the ease of it was just joy. “Beck didn’t know me ‘cause you only know little me.”

Of course it was Luffy. Fucking hell, this was a full grown, adult Luffy.

“Where’s Torao?”

Luffy was looking around as if he expected someone to be hiding behind a dresser. This was going to take some adjustment.

“We don’t know any Torao. Not yet, I guess.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” It most certainly did not, Shanks and Beckman thought in sync. “You don’t know anyone. I guess I travelled then. Torao’s gonna be pissed. Nami’s gonna be super pissed. Where is here?”

Aging, they realised together, had done nothing to make Luffy’s thought process any slower or easier to follow.

“We’re upstairs from Party’s-”

“Makiiiinooooo.” They watched dumbstruck as hands shot out past their heads, gripped the doorframe and Luffy launched himself forward and down and out of sight like a catapult.

“And he’s gone…” Shanks felt a little like someone had just dropped a mast on top of him.

“Limey might have been right about the rubber, you know.”

Shanks turned to his first mate and closest friend with a look of betrayal. “Ah yes. Rubber, famous for its aging qualities and the tendency for time-travel.”

“Well,” Beckman thought out loud far too calmly. Shanks was beginning to resent him for it. “We don’t know what this Luffy was doing in his time, maybe this isn’t actually anything to do with the fruit. Or at least, it might not be simply because he ate the fruit. Hell, this is Luffy, maybe he got into a fight with someone he shouldn't have and we're just seeing the collateral.”

Shanks laughed. Then realised that Beckman’s theory actually made a lot of sense and laughed again a little more hysterically.

More laughter spilled up the stairs towards them as Luffy began to wreck a familiar and entirely new kind of chaos downstairs.

“Ah, we should go.”

#

“Makino!”

Shanks and Beckman rejoined the bar to the sight of their favourite bartender being twirled around while elastic looking arms wrapped themselves around her in a human coil that was honestly quite disconcerting. “Hey! Hey! Do you recognise me? I haven’t seen you in years. Makino, it’s me!”

For her part, Makino seemed shockingly unfazed by the whole ordeal. “Luffy! You grew so big I can’t believe it!”

“I know! I’m as tall as Sanji now!” Who on earth Sanji might be, no one bar Luffy had any idea at this point.

“Well,” Shanks grinned, “It sounds like you’ve got some stories to tell us Anchor. How about we have some drinks and see if we can figure out what’s going on?”

Yasopp, the only crewmate currently still waiting in the bar, piped up to question if Luffy could even drink seeing as he’d been seven just yesterday.

“I was twenty-three yesterday,” Luffy laughed, “you guys are just behind.”

Makino ruffled his hair and it was the soft look on both of their faces that really sold it to everyone that, yes, this was Luffy. Little Anchor. This was the boy they knew and loved.

“Twenty-three, hm? You sure grew up fast.”

Luffy beamed, every bit the sunny child he’d been. “Makino looks exactly the same as I remember.”

Makino looked sad for a moment, and Shanks wondered if he should let them catch up by themselves until she laughed, hiccupped, and wiped her eyes. “You hungry?” She asked with some kind of determined air, like she’d rearranged her world in a moment, had already figured out what all of this meant and was ready now to keep going forward.

Luffy beamed. “Always. I missed your cooking.”

Then he unwrapped himself from his overenthusiastic hug, staggered hard into the side of the bar just next to the broken gap where he’d flown straight through and everyone remembered that yesterday he’d magically aged sixteen years, coughed up a hunk of blood, and then passed out for a day.

“Luffy!” Shanks found himself at the boy’s side (because he still seemed like a boy now that he knew exactly who it was) and threw an arm over his shoulder, fully intending to take him back upstairs except… Except now they were pressed close like that he could feel Luffy’s heart through the thin stretched fabric going a mile a minute like it was trying to escape from his chest and fly out the door. And Shanks might not be anything near a doctor but he did know that was not in any way safe. “Yasopp. Get Hongo, now.”

“On it.”

Then Shanks remembered what a nightmare this boy was when he laughed and ducked and shrugged him off, wandering over to one of the still-standing barstools. “Ah, I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m just hungry.”

Hunger didn’t generally cause one to cough up blood, so it definitely was not just, but it wasn’t like there was anything any of them knew to do without their doctor present. Makino cursed at them and vanished off to procure a meal while Yasopp bolted off towards the ship. And so it was once again Shanks and Beckman left alone with their new arrival, coming now to sit either side of the bigger than usual gremlin.

It was strange. Very strange. Luffy sat and kicked his heels back and forth just like he’d done yesterday and all the days before. Childlike, you might say. Carefree. Except now his sandals were sweeping the floor and it was a different thing to be carefree as an adult than it was at seven.

“First question.”

Luffy quirked a brow and then his whole being fixated on Shanks. Gods he was as intense and expressive as ever.

“Do we think this is permanent or is the littler Anchor coming back?”

The man in question hummed. Beckman sighed, walked himself around the bar and grabbed three glasses and a bottle of something that was probably going to be pretty vile. “I’m more interested in what the hell you were doing that got you thrown back here. Can’t make sense for it to be eating the fruit, unless you remember all this happening years ago.”

“Hmmmmm.” Luffy seemed to think on it and then get lost in his head.

Those were two big questions to have out in the air and the cozy bar felt too heavy and still in the wake. Beckman sat back down and poured three healthy glasses of something that looked a bit like rum but with legs almost thick enough to crawl back out the glass. Cautiously Shanks picked one and chanced a sip.

“Hm,” he said. “More gritty than anything I can place but, honestly, an improvement overall in taste.”

Beckman drank deeply and immediately pulled a face like he regretted it, “I think your standards have fallen to a new low.”

“I think it’s permanent.”

The words were a little bit of a death sentence. It meant the boy from yesterday was truly gone.

This Luffy clearly had years of growing up and they might be the same but... But. 

Luffy hummed once again. “This hasn’t happened before I don’t think.”

Shanks could only laugh, the alternative wouldn’t taste nice. The treacle? rum? alcoholic jam? went down more uncomfortably the second time. “You sound pretty sure there’s no return. What happened?”

Any lingering levity that had sprung from the exploration of the absurd vanished. A strange beat began to tap itself through Luffy’s fingers onto his collarbone. Lightly, like his thoughts were telling him something that needed translated.

Luffy looked old, Shanks realised. Not old old, not physically even as old as Shanks was now, but still. He looked like he’d lived already.

“I don’t know.”

Beckman sighed, scrubbing his face and reaching for the black tar bottle. “Well, there’s no point ruling-”

“Torao was screaming.” Luffy’s hand shifted down to clench over his chest and Shanks felt once again that thread of alarm. Hongo better hurry up.

Having not given any sign of noticing the drink before, Luffy suddenly grabbed his glass and downed the whole thing. “Torao-” His fingers flexed around the glass. “It’s all stretchy still.”

Shanks turned fully to face him. “What do you mean, stretchy?”

“Everything.”

Concerned eyes met over Luffy’s tilted head.

“Is this to do with the fruit?”

It was at least reassuring that he was still responding to them, although neither of them liked the kind of spacey quality that had taken over his voice.

Big brown eyes met Beckman’s frown, “The fruit?”

Beckman’s jaw clenched. “Yeah, Luffy. You ate a devil fruit.”

“Oh. Well yeah. Oh, is that now?”

Shanks knocked himself over the head. “Seas. Of course this is all years ago. Sorry.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m now.”

“Hah?” Shanks offered eloquently. “Why what’s now? You mean your now or this past now.” Shanks downed his second glass. “Well this is a nightmare.”

“You mean, you think you landed in this here now because this is the point you ate the fruit? I wondered about that.”

“Maybe.”

Well thank the stars and any God who happened to live among them for Benn Beckman, apparently a master linguist and translator extraordinaire.

 “Okay.” Shanks pressed in between his eyes and for once was glad he had stopped drinking around noon yesterday. “What did you mean ‘everything is stretchy’? Is that because of the rubber?”

There again was that flash of something serious. “I think,” Luffy started slowly, sounding out the thoughts as they came. “I pulled everything stretchy at the same time Torao mixed it up.”

Beckman filled his glass a third time and then passed Shanks the bottle.

“Might be because I died.”

Shanks dropped the bottle.

“What?”

“Hmm no. Can’t have. Must have still been dying?” Luffy seemed to be puzzling something over to himself, arms crossed and leaning back in his chair and entirely unaware of the horrified observers either side of him. “That explains the screaming.”

Shanks felt sick.

Luffy was seven and then he was gone. Luffy was twenty-three and dangerous and coughing up blood and carefree and dying. Luffy was sitting at a bar sixteen years ago from the moment he should have been dying.

Torao was screaming. Yeah, Shanks thought, that sounded about right. Mystery Torao had the right idea.

That was when Hongo and Yasopp decided to burst through the doors and Shanks had a moment where he wished for simpler times, like when bandits used to come and pour alcohol on his head. Yesterday. That was yesterday afternoon. Less than twenty-four hours ago even.

“Wow,” Luffy beamed. “Yasopp you look just like Usopp like this.”

Quite rightly, Yasopp screeched to a halt, dropped his jaw and shuttered at the thought of his little baby boy grown up to the same point of the adult Luffy in front of him. “You know Usopp? You met him? Is he-”

And Luffy laughed again and it was like he’d forgotten the bombshell dropped, just moments ago, on the others’ heads. “Of course! Usopp’s my sniper.”

Yasopp very calmly grabbed Hongo by the shoulders and near throttled him in his excitement. “Did you hear that my kid is a sniper as well does that mean he’s a pirate by the seas I’m so proud I knew he’d make it does that mean you sail together this is wonderful Shanks did you hear that Usopp’s a sniper I’m so happy Luffy tell me what he’s like when did you meet-? Wait hang on.” Hongo managed to detach the long limbs from around his throat and throw Yasopp to the far end of the bar. “You a captain, Luffy?” He asked upside down from the ground.

Luffy turned to grin at Shanks and it felt like a challenge. “Of course.” A playful challenge. But still a challenge.

“Is everything alright?” Hongo stepped up to the bar and ran his eyes down the man in front of him.

Unfortunately, it would appear Luffy hadn’t gotten any more cooperative in the matter of receiving medical treatment over the years because he then proceeded to refute all of Shanks’ claims that something was wrong with the assurance of don’t worry about it, I’m just hungry. Dealing with a seven-year-old had been easier, at least then they could just put a hand on his head and he’d be stuck until Hongo had checked his wounds were taken care of.

“Don’t listen to him, H. He’s near falling over whenever he stands and his heart’s been going fucking mental since he woke up.”

Luffy huffed, “It’s fine. S’not my heart that’s going crazy.”

Four heads turned as one to stare, each one tasting dread at the back of the throat in anticipation of what horror was going to come out of Luffy’s mouth next.

“Anchor.” Shanks took a moment to check if the conversation he was having out loud was actually real. Sadly, the answer seemed to be yes. “What exactly, and I mean in the plainest possible terms, do you mean that it’s not your heart.”

“Is this a fruit thing? Please just say this is a fruit thing.” Beckman looked a couple of strong words away from walking out.

And then, of course, Luffy lifted up the poor over-stretched ‘anchor’ shirt he still was sporting and revealed not only a jackrabbiting heartbeat rapid enough to show visibly through skin but also a scar in the shape of a cross that stretched across his chest in two deep scores, almost collarbone to bottom rib.

“It’s Torao’s heart.”

The theories that ran through the gathered audience in response to those words ranged from cartoon-esque to downright horror.

“It’s a relief. Mostly,” Luffy continued in his own perpendicular realm of understanding.

Hongo looked like he might cry. Shanks wouldn’t blame him. Might even join him in all honesty.

Eventually, Shanks managed to pull one question out of the panicked static of his inner thoughts, “Why is… Why is this a relief?”

“If Torao’s heart is here, that means he came back too, right?”

And with that, the four gathered Red-Haired Pirates came to the understanding that Luffy was perhaps not the only time-traveller to appear from this mess. At varying rates, each of them realised that, actually, this wasn’t a mess at all. This was, in fact, a reshuffling of the world as they knew it. Something major was happening, had happened, would have happened years from now and so was happening for the first time back in this new-that-was-once-old now. Today was suddenly a very different place from both yesterday and tomorrow.

“I have a question,” Yasopp announced, picking himself up from the floor. “Who the fuck is Torao.”

Luffy smiled that blinding smile that Shanks was starting to suspect was another of those rubbery stretches because holy hells that was wider than his actual face.

“Torao’s Torao. We’re married.”

Shanks threw the bottle cap into the wastebin that Makino kept behind the bar and took a swig that clearly had all the grit that had previously been sitting at the bottom, choked on it, then immediately hacked up a lung. “Beck please,” he begged as soon as he’d caught his breath back an inch, “please see if you can find any more booze.” Good man that he was, Beckman staggered off behind the bar once more.

Yasopp was screeching again. Hongo was getting that twitchy look that he always got when any of the crew appeared back from shore leave with mysterious new injuries and vague, unclear stories, and was now eyeing Luffy’s torso like he wanted to please get him onto an examination table and maybe attach some medical equipment or else some heavy restraints. And Shanks was stuck playing those words from before over in his head, wondering what, exactly, had happened just before all this chaos was triggered.

Torao was screaming.

Luffy was married.

Luffy had been in the middle of dying in front of his partner before getting flung backwards in time and into their panicking laps.

“I’m kind of worried though,” Luffy frowned as he rubbed at his chest. “Torao doesn’t usually panic like this so I don’t know what’s happening wherever he is.”

“I think this counts as extenuating circumstances, let’s give the man a pass.” Shanks would also like a pass, so it seemed only fair to give this guy one.

Luffy frowned but didn’t object any further.

“Hold on,” Hongo objected. “We’re not moving on yet. Why or how is your… husband? Husband. Why is your husband’s heart inside your chest?”

“He put it there.”

The poor doctor turned helplessly to his captain with a desperate look in his eye. “I don’t get it. Is this a romance thing? Is he being literal? Shanks, this kid is insane. Please tell me he didn’t marry a madman who tore open his chest, somehow transplanted a heart inside and then, what? Cauterised it shut?”

Shanks passed Hongo the remnants of the mystery bottle which by that point was just alcoholic sludge.

Realising how uncomfortable his childhood t-shirt was on his adult body, Luffy simply took the thing off and tossed it aside, laughing at Hongo’s despair as he choked on the monstrosity that Shanks had just passed to him. Thankfully, at that point, Beckman remerged from below the bar with something that looked a similar colour to water and had what looked like a warning symbol on the bottom. Excellent. There was a strong chance of it being cleaning alcohol and therefore likely to make them forget this whole disaster.

Maybe Luffy took pity on them at this point, maybe he didn’t realise what he was doing to any of them and just ploughed on ahead anyway. “No, Torao didn’t do this,” he waved generally at the mass of scarring. “Oh, well, I guess he did actually. Torao’s a surgeon, he saved my life once, back when we didn’t really know each other and I was pretty much dead, but he’s amazing so he managed to keep enough of me together and that’s what that is. We did the hearts later. When our alliance was supposed to end, I told him I wanted his heart and offered him mine instead. So since then, I can tell little bits of what’s happening. Torao says it’s a pain because I get excited about everything and my heart’s always jumping around in his chest.” Luffy laughed, and it felt like he’d been laughing since he arrived and each laugh was like a crashing wave and just as unpredictable. “He’s funny, he threw Bepo off the Tang when he told me how Torao sometimes just clutches his chest and smiles throughout the day when we’re apart. I told him he’s not getting it back ever and his face got all red and he threatened to throw me off as well.”

Luffy wasn’t just married, Shanks realised. Luffy was head over heels in love. With a crazy surgeon who could transplant hearts? Apparently?

“Okay but how is his heart in your chest,” Hongo begged once again. “This is literal. We’re not in some badly worded metaphor. This is literally another man’s heart, yes?” Poor Hongo was not having a good time.

“Oh, Torao ate the Op-Op fruit. He’s a surgeon but he’s also a surgeon.”

“Right…”

“He can make a room and control anything inside so he could cut off your head without killing you or give you alligator legs. An he can take out your heart in a box kind of thing? I don’t really get it but it’s super cool. An he’s super smart. But so we swapped.”

Hongo sat himself on the floor. “Somehow so much better and yet also worse than I was imagining.”

“Alligator legs?” Shanks wondered aloud.

“Yeah, he was cool.”

“Anchor’s married,” Beckman reminded everyone.

“His heart isn’t in this room,” Hongo pointed out.

“My son’s a sniper!” Yasopp added, much more cheery than the rest.

“Well,” Shanks realised it was up to him to summarise, “I think we should have a party to celebrate all that.”

Luffy cheered before Beckman chimed in with the reminder that the booze delivery wouldn’t be coming in before tomorrow and the cleaning alcohol was all that was left.

“Fuck.”

Chapter Text

For the next few days Luffy consistently ate everything in sight and then passed out almost immediately afterwards. By the end of the third day back in time he could manage to stay on his feet for roughly five minutes without collapsing but, after crashing into poor Gyoru’s fish stall and breaking a table, was threatened by Hongo that he was going to get handcuffed to one of the crew if he tried to leave the bar unaccompanied before his ‘time-travel-hangover’ had eased off. The threat didn’t seem to do much, sadly, but they discovered it was still almost as easy to distract adult Luffy with food and stories of adventures as it had been with the smaller model.

The new shipment had come in and everyone was at least in fine spirits, Makino for one more than happy to give the treasure-heavy pirates free reign, herself siting back, joining in the stories and meeting Luffy all over again. She, out of everyone, seemed the least phased by all of this, which Shanks put down to having been exposed to Luffy’s brand of unpredictability the longest. Although, after seeing the town’s mayor accept what was happening with just a single glance from the barmaid, Roux had quietly voiced a theory that East Blue was actually just home to real crazy motherfuckers and the only reason the reputation of weakness had lasted this long was because it was only the weak ones that made loud fools of themselves.

Shanks was quietly worried about repercussions and effects, but what else could they do except wait for Luffy to… what, heal? He wasn’t injured according to Hongo. Felt fine according to Luffy himself. Still staggered sometimes, still clutched his chest and got a hazy look across his face. Yet his laugh pulled them all in just like a few days before when he was still seven, and soon everyone was tripping over themselves to retell the stories they’d told last week, only now with all the gruesome details left in.

There hadn’t seemed like much point in talking about the future, the new future that was beginning in this here moment, because Luffy hadn’t really brought up the question of leaving the island or what happened next. Hadn’t mentioned any other details about what might have killed him. Hadn’t even mentioned anything about wanting to see his apparent husband who they were all just assuming was also in the past but only god knew where. So they were just waiting. Beckman was getting a little antsy, Shanks could tell. Mainly because an antsy Beckman was an irritated Beckman and an irritated Beckman meant Shanks’ glass would mysteriously empty itself on the regular. And maybe also because for three days, they’d watched as Luffy spoke with everyone and somehow managed to say nothing.

Today was day four since Luffy ate a fruit and then crashed backwards sixteen years and something was coming. Shanks could feel it in the prickle along his nape. A disaster, a warship, an otherworldly revelation, it was hard to tell.

Something was on its way.

After the initial shock of the large scar carved into Luffy’s chest, Makino had found and altered a shirt that could fit his adult frame which he’d taken to wearing open like he was displaying himself for everyone to see. Maybe he was. In some ways Luffy was every bit the same boy as the child they all knew. In others, there was some aura bigger than his frame that had started to tug them all in close. A confidence and a steady thrum that was hard to reconcile with the little kid who threw tantrums as quickly as he threw his fists. And despite the fact he so clearly hadn’t changed past the core of himself, there was a melancholy the Red-Hairs couldn’t help but feel over the fact they’d all expected him to grow slowly, to come to learn who they all were through rumour and whispers as his eyes were slowly opened to the world. While he was growing, he’d have to reconcile false reputation with the warm memories from here in a small seaside town, and they, in turn, would catch fragments of the first of his stories as he built a reputation for himself. And maybe that had happened, before. Maybe Luffy had grown at pace that made sense to him, but they’d missed it. And this time would be different. This story wouldn’t get Luffy at ten, or fifteen, or twenty. So, yes, melancholic.

Shanks found himself tripped out of his musings as Luffy sprayed cider over the counter, slapping his knee and almost falling sideways at some ridiculous tale spun by Yasopp and Limey. Something loosened at the cozy scene and for a moment he let himself dream of what could have been if he’d said yes when Luffy had asked to join the crew. Would it look something like this? Or was that a lazy idea, would that have created someone other than who sat here now? What stories might Luffy be holding that had shaped him into who he was now?

For just a moment, he wondered if Luffy might ask him once more.

If he did, thought Shanks, if Luffy turned around right now and grinned that stupid smile he’d say yes.

Let me join your crew.

It would look like this, bubbly and bright. He’d fit right in and maybe this was how it was always supposed to happen.

Except.

Shanks still couldn’t imagine Luffy ever following a single order, couldn’t picture him standing behind another figure, couldn’t see him now in any outline other than Captain.

Something was coming.

The air was stiffening.

Maybe he was jumpier than usual after the craziness this week had brought but this felt like danger in a way that East Blue wasn’t supposed to do danger. Then again, maybe that was a lie because he, like every pirate in the bar, knew how to survive on all of the world’s seas, how to read the prickle of instinct and East Blue had something hidden to it. Maybe he should have wondered more at the magnetic pull that a year ago had teased him into its grip. Maybe there was a limit to how many times he could brush things off before he learnt.

Fast, too fast, whatever was coming changed to here and then the door slammed open on its hinges and there, silhouetted in the evening shadow, stood a figure.

Party’s was a bar that tended towards bright even in the nighttime, cheerful on the damp days, and warm in the cold. This was something rougher cut. The figure was tall, coat adding a layer of bulk to intimidate and weapon held out and ready. Piercing eyes glared out across the room from under a wide cap brim and every pirate in the room understood what threat was in the room without any need for details. Shanks did not mind getting booze poured over himself by some cocky upshot who was just looking to make a mess and stamp his little feet, but right now he was ready to draw his sword in a heartbeat.

It only took a moment for the stranger to lock eyes with Luffy before he was snarling, rage and whatever else was fuelling him taking over. It took just as long for everyone in the bar to clock as his grip tightened around the oversized sword to something white-knuckled.

Now, logically, Shanks knew that Luffy could most likely handle himself now. However. Shanks had also spent the last few days trying to convince the idiot to rest and recover from whatever the hell was wrong with him, only to have him pass out twice on his shoulder, once directly in his lap, and another few times somewhere in the general nearby vicinity causing him to dive for and catch the boy at the last second. So, logical or not, he found himself shifting ever so slightly in front of his friend and breaking that furious stare by putting himself in line of sight.

Except the room shimmered blue one moment and then Shanks was staring at Luffy from the door as the man appeared in the exact spot Shanks had just been in and Luffy was slammed against the bar and the man’s hands were on his shoulders or his neck. And Luffy may seriously be about to die but the idiot wasn’t fucking doing anything to stop it. Just held himself still, eyes on this shaking stranger who was moments away from tearing him apart. Then the stillness broke as Luffy’s hands rose to grasp at the wrists that clung to him and something in the room was about to snap for sure.

“Law,” was whispered.

And the man surged forward as if that was the final straw, as if this was it, he was really going to kill him. Then the sword clattered to the ground and Luffy was pinned to the bar as the stranger kissed him.

Collectively, internally, the Red-Hairs lost their shit. 

Luffy was currently having the life kissed out of him by a tattoo covered stranger wielding a sword almost as tall as he was, apparently with the ability to short-distance teleport. Actually, hang on a minute.

Alligator legs, Shanks’ brain told him.

Shut up brain, Shanks thought.

The two had stopped for breath and now were clinging to each other with a desperation that did honestly still look like it could break into a fight.

Beckman appeared suddenly at Shanks’ side with a whispered, “Torao?”

“I’m going to assume so,” Shanks offered back, watching in fascination as ‘Torao’ traced long fingers slowly over the large, cross shaped scar before coming to a rest over where supposedly his own heart beat inside of Luffy’s chest. Watched as the other hand, with a matching stamp of ‘DEATH’ printed into the skin of each finger, came up to cup at Luffy’s jaw. He still looked wild and half feral but as he leaned in once more to steal a kiss this time there was something soft in the action, something less snarled and angry and more relief relief relief as the kiss ended and all his weight seemed to sag in a stutter.

Torao was screaming, Shanks remembered. Yeah, he thought again, no shit.

One of Luffy’s hands came up to tug at a tuft of hair poking out of Torao’s hat and the little action earnt a huff and then a breath and somehow seemed to give him the strength to move back a touch and settle into himself.

There was a minute or so of stunned silence as everyone digested the scene in front of them before Shanks found the wherewithal to stagger back to his barstool. Luffy was back to grinning and now was playing with the long, tattooed fingers that had grabbed so desperately at him. The mystery(ish) newcomer was braced hard against Luffy’s stool, breathing like he’d run here straight from the beach (which he very likely had).

Shanks took it upon himself to bring everyone back, “So. You must be Torao.”

Luffy giggled as the man scowled and flicked him right on the nose.

“Could you not at least tell people my actual name once if they have to meet me all over again. Oi. Stop laughing, asshole.”

Shanks and Beckman exchanged delighted grins, Luffy’s husband was grumpy. Wasn’t that hilarious. A pair made from sunshine and a rainy day.

Tall, dark, and irritated finally turned towards them and Shanks bit back a wolf-whistle, Luffy had found quite the guy. “Trafalgar Law. Nice to meet you once again, Red-Hair-ya.”

“Did I threaten you yet?”

“Yours was one of the better ones, I liked the psychological aspect.”

Shanks hummed, appraising this ‘Law’ as he leant back deliberately into Luffy’s space. Dark brows and long sideburns painted his features in sharp, bold lines. Stubble and a strip of goatee making him so much rougher than the ball of sunshine incarnate kicking their feet next to him. And the tattoos certainly made an impression, what few corners poking out they could make of them curling up his neck and punching impact on his fists. Torao’s a surgeon, Luffy had said. Our alliance was supposed to end, a line they’d never got round to questioning. Luffy had found himself a rival pirate captain then, that much made sense to look at him. One cocky enough to poke at Red-Haired Shanks and strong enough to put his whole crew on guard.

“You also married us,” the smug bastard added.

Huh.

A true smile crept over Shanks face, that titbit held quite the amount of information of their various relationships. He imagined a little Anchor, grown but not quite this grown, coming and telling him about this Torao and asking if he would marry them. That wasn’t a small thing to be given. “Well then,” said Shanks with his mind pretty much already made up. “I’m sad I seem to have missed it.”

Luffy pulled on the hand he’d stolen for himself and hooked his feet around Law’s leg for attention. As if he needed to struggle for that, thought Shanks, as he watched the man tilt his head a few tiny millimetres and fix his whole being on the spot of sunshine next to him. “Hey Torao, we should get married.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Lu-ya. We’re already married.”

Beckman turned to laugh into his glass at the clearly faked irritation. Less than five minutes in and it was clear this man was wrapped around Luffy’s fingers.

“Married but it also hasn’t happened yet, so not entirely married.” Classic Luffy logic, that, sounded insane but with an annoying amount of sense. “We can have another party! And Shanks doesn’t even remember, so-”

“Fine.” Law glared at Shanks for the snigger that crept out. Man was too easy.

“Yeah?” Luffy beamed ever brighter than before.

“Whatever.”

“Yeay!”

Something painful flashed over Law’s face, “But this time-” He looked to his feet, the shadow of his hat giving some mockery of privacy. “Cora-san can come.”

Luffy froze.

Law was tense, boring holes in the bar with his refusal to lift his gaze. Then Luffy pulled on his hand and Law seemed to fold all of his long limbs into the ever-bright space that circled around him, moving stiffly but without resistance until Luffy was curled protectively around his prize with a look of wonder on his face.

Blessedly, the air was dampened around their little bubble for a moment. Some of the crew had broken off back into their own conversations and drinking games when they sensed the privacy of what was happening at the bar. Shanks really loved his crew. They were idiots to the last but they knew how to read a room.

“I can meet him?” Luffy asked all quiet.

And Law tightened into the embrace with the slightest of nods.

Shanks got the feeling that this Law they were seeing was not usually one for public viewing. When the heart inside Luffy’s chest had been fluttering, racing, and unable to keep up with its own frantic pace, Shanks had panicked over the discovery that it wasn’t Luffy’s heart to begin with at first but then it had been a relief, because it wasn’t Luffy that was verging on a heart attack, wasn’t the one that he cared about in distress. But it was this Law that had been panicked and this Law who had screamed as Luffy was being killed. Not for the first time, he wondered where Luffy’s husband had arrived after his time jump, why they didn’t appear together, and where this wrecking ball rolling haphazardly down a hill was going to crash through next.

The heartbreak in the air now was old. Whoever this Cora was had clearly been dead for many years in a version of the future that was steadily becoming more and more distant. I can meet him sounded something like you saved him.

“He’s here.” Law pulled himself back and seemed to pull control over himself in seconds, any vulnerability stripped clean as he brought himself to lean casually against the bar. A neat trick that.

“Here?” Luffy queried. “Here in the past or here-”

“Docking. I ran ahead.”

Sap, Shanks wisely did not say out loud.

Luffy giggled. Then seemed to catch a thought. “Torao. How did you get here so fast?”

Law looked very intently at the wood detailing on the bar, “I stole a submarine.”

“Yeah but, how do you get here from North Blue in four days?”

Good question, that was absolutely not possible.

Law sighed, long and shaky, and leant his weight back in way that looked so close to being relaxed. “We were at reverse mountain.”

“With Cora?” Luffy looked lost. This was a relief for Shanks, who was also lost. “You came back to reverse mountain?”

“I’ve been back longer than you.”

“What?”

Shanks sat up straighter, he could feel the gears whirring in Beckman at this new set of clues to the mystery. “How long?”

“I am not sure.” Law’s voice was chipping itself shorter with every response.

Luffy tilted to the side, puzzled. “Did you pass out? I thought you’d found a way to measure yourself after with scan.” A muscle jumped in Law’s jaw and Luffy’s eyes narrowed. “Torao always keeps count.”

Beckman had a look in his eye that suggested he’d figured something out he didn’t much like. He spared a moment to pull Shanks into his worry and then turned his gaze back to Luffy who had a whole different set of puzzle pieces to work with. Because Luffy knew that Law kept count. Always. Luffy also knew that it was the ‘not knowing’ that drove Law crazy because that was where people could creep up behind and pull the rug out from his feet. At least, that was how Law thought. So, the question was, “How is Torao not sure?”

“Months,” Law snapped. “I didn’t bother keeping track.”

I was grieving, they all heard.

“Torao,” pulled a hand at Law’s sleeve.

“What,” snapped back the hand that pulled away.

Right. Law had watched his husband die, then been thrown all alone into the past. For months.

“Hang on. Law, right?” Gold eyes flickered to Beckman and Shanks quietly breathed a sigh of relief. The two of them needed time to reassure each other of themselves alone away from everyone here, but they all desperately needed some answers first. “You came back to the moment you ate your fruit.” A nod. Beckman was good. “Luffy said he ‘pulled everything stretchy’ at the same time you ‘mixed it up’.”

Law grimaced. “Devil fruits don’t just combine like this. I don’t understand it but I think that’s right, we triggered something, a rebound, a reaction, a loophole. It makes… I don’t want to say sense but the closest thing to it, that we’d come back to the moment we fused with those same ‘powers’ if they’re involved in the root of all this.”

“So, hang on, what? You two literally tore yourselves loose from reality? That’s what caused this? Fucking hell Anchor.”

“Not quite.” Wary eyes made their way to Law. “More likely we tore reality loose from itself.”

“Mm,” Shanks agreed, not sure what he was agreeing to. “What?”

“We’re not the only ones.”

“You what?”

“Bepo, Sachi, and Penguin.”

Luffy gasped.

Beckman sighed, “Who or what are these?”

“My crew-”

“Torao’s crew is great! Bepo’s so cool, he’s a bear and a navigator. Penguin is a human and Sachi is Sachi. And they’re all really smart.”

“No wonder Luffy likes you,” laughed Shanks. Law blushed just ever so slightly and pointedly ignored the teasing fingers that had crept up once again to tug his hair. “Come on, this is insane and we have a lot to talk about, it’s high time you get a drink.”

Beckman sighed but grabbed the current bottle all the same. “So, unless all of your crew are fruit users, you two have created some… no, I thought I knew where I was going with this.”

Law raised his mug in thanks and downed half the contents one go, “Who the fuck knows. This isn’t even the first time we’ve encountered time travel and it’s still insane. Point is, Bepo remembers almost everything. Not the last week or so, but everything else. Sachi seems to be from roughly a year previous, Penguin can remember only as far as the Sabaody mess six years ago and looks younger than any of us. So, what’s the deciding factor? There isn’t anything for Cora-san to remember beyond, he died the same day I ate the fruit last time, so he’s discounted. Red-Hair was still alive though, Beckman-ya too, and you clearly haven’t come back with us but these three did. They were fighting with us when all this happened but they were all fighting and remember different amounts. So if some people came b-”

“My crew.” Luffy leapt to his feet. He hadn’t let himself imagine this. Hadn’t hoped because it hurt. Law made sense. He could feel Law’s heart move in his chest and so he was here and there was no convincing himself otherwise. But the others… There was a desperate, hungry gleam in his eye and Shanks realised why Luffy hadn’t made any mention of moving from the island in the last four days, he had been grieving too. Grieving a family abandoned to a future separated from himself.

 There was a concerning tension in Law’s frame however, something that dreaded contact with this hope from Luffy.

“I don’t think everyone came back. Or, I don’t know if we can bring them.” That static feeling was returning to the air, the charge rolling in waves from Luffy’s glare. “I didn’t know what to do when… I found myself here. Look, I found this small part of my crew because I knew they would need help like they did last time, except when I found them, I ran a scan and it was like… they just shambled themselves into place.”

Shanks and Beckman exchanged a confused glance.

“Shambled?”

Law sighed, raised a hand and the air around them shimmered into a bluer hue. “Shambles.” The glass in Shanks’ hand swapped with the straw hat perched on his head and his jaw dropped to the floor.

“Torao, I don’t get it. What do you mean they shambled into place? Why didn’t everyone come back?” Luffy was panicked. Was his crew here or not? Was he alone? Would letting himself hope be safe?

“Bepo, Sachi, Penguin… they were just kids when I arrived but, when I scanned, their cells mixed themselves up and then standing there were the adults I’d known.”

Beckman swore rather impressively and wondered how hard he’d have to try to drown himself in the two inches of beer left in his mug. “This is so much more fucked than we thought.”

“Torao,” Luffy gripped at Law’s collar, “I don’t understand. Is Zoro here? Is my crew here? Is there-” He was on a precipice, wavering, wondering if this was when the fall started all over again.

“Luffy-ya, I’m sorry I don’t know.” He looked heartbroken. “I found Brook. About a month ago. I had no idea where to start with the others but-”

“Brook is here?” Luffy leapt towards the door.

“Wait!” Once again as Luffy made to storm out the door of Party’s his wrist was grabbed and he started to stretch. He turned, a wild look in his eye now and snarling, a mirror of how Law had entered so recently. “He hasn’t remembered anything. I scanned, just the same as the others but… He’s not a Brook that knows you yet. I told him an impossible story that I was from the future and that he’d found a crew to call his own, offered to at least get him out from the Triangle and… I’m sorry Luffy-ya.”

That snapped him out of the desperate drive for the door. Luffy frowned, “Why are you sorry?”

“I didn’t know if I was messing with your future, I thought you would still be a child here and one day you’d go on your adventure but your crew was out there and I didn’t want to ruin anything and anyway I had no idea where most of them were so long ago but I could at least find Brook even if he wasn’t in danger and-”

Shanks thought this heart might be getting whiplash as Luffy stumbled back and into Law’s arms, sinking his face into a fur-lined shoulder. “You knew he was lonely. You knew I couldn’t help so you helped instead.” Law was silent. “Thank you.”

Law, Shanks decided, had his full approval. He still would like to think up some inventive threats at some point, especially as they were well received last time, but witnessing this level of care was enough to cement the idea of the two of them in his mind.

Then, just to add more levels of chaos into the whirlwind that they were calling a day, the door to the bar slammed open on its hinges, the guilty party already cringing and apologising as if unaware of their own strength, and in walked a polar bear, three humans, and a skeleton.

Chapter Text

“Brook.”

Luffy shot towards the door, careering straight into the skeleton and driving them both through the wall of the bar. Except, rather than the wall blowing out and crumbling around their heads, it bent with them, stretching just like Luffy’s weird rubber limbs, spitting them out onto their feet again, before wobbling back into place.

“Captain…”

The glass in Shanks’ hand cracked. The skeleton, or Brook as it would seem, had walked in wearing a ratty old suit eaten through with moths, and the ratty suit was still there, for sure, but now an orange feather boa had materialised around his shoulders and pink sunglasses adorned his head.

There was a moment where the two of them held a shocked stare between them before Luffy pushed the skeleton away, caught himself on a wall that appeared soft and springy under his hands, and threw up another round of blood.

“Luffy-san!”

“Lu-ya!”

“Anchor!”

The edges of Luffy’s hair flickered to white before he shook himself back to the usual black.

The skeleton Brook hovered worriedly over his captain, giving way as Law rushed to his side. With a flick of his fingers, the blue hue appeared again in a dome that spread to cover a Luffy that was pulling away to stagger to his feet.

“Luffy-ya, please please sit and let me-”

“‘M fine, Torao, feel better now.”

“You are not fine if you’re coughing up blood. How many times do I have to tell you that?” And wasn’t that a concerning insight into Luffy’s continued self-preservation habits.

Luffy did that head shake once more, as if trying to get the last few water droplets out, and his hair wasn’t wet but it did seem to shake off the weird gravity-defying aspect it kept trying to take on. “It’s okay, that was good. Things aren’t stretching anymore. Plus, Brook is Brook! Brook, you remember right? You never age but you got some of your clothes back.”

“Ah I’m flattered Captain, it must be my famous youthful complexion, except I’ve been dead for fifty years and seem to have lost my skin!” Brook and Luffy both burst into laughter at what felt like an overly morbid joke and Shanks was forced, suddenly and without warning, to come to terms with the fact that Luffy had apparently recruited a dead man to his crew. Roux was right, East Bluers were some crazy motherfuckers.

Law tried to grab for Luffy’s hand as he danced out of reach and skipped up to the bear that had walked in (which they’d all somehow forgotten about) with a delighted, “Bepo!”

Why of course, after the skeleton a mink was pretty tame in comparison.

“Ah hello Luffy, I think you should maybe…”

“Lu-ya. Luffy. What the hell do you mean things aren’t stretching, what did you do?”

“Anchor…”

“Shanks! Where’s Makino? I need to introduce her to everyone. Brook’s my musician. Brook! I’m so glad you’re here. And this is Bepo! He’s Torao’s nav-”

“Anchor. Your eyes are red.” Shanks was terrified. Because this wasn’t a time-travel hangover or whatever they had been trying to kid themselves with.

“Huh? Oh.” Luffy slapped himself, hard, and his eyes went back to their usual brown and black. “Fixed it.”

Law stalked up to Luffy and grabbed him by the shoulders looking like the feral thing that had burst through the door several minutes ago, “Luffy-ya, are you still in gear fifth right now?” There was a sliver of fear in his voice and, even though only a couple of people present fully understood those words, everyone could feel the danger in whatever this was.

“No.” The tension leaked out of Law’s frame just a little bit at that. “But I’m also maybe not not in gear fifth.”

Law yanked him down into a seat and threw up the blue room once more. “What the hell does that mean?”

At last Luffy seemed to give up to being checked over and he leaned back with a sigh, kicking his feat as the tattooed fingers twisted through the air like they were leafing through a book and Law seemed to check over various limbs for all their secrets. “I’m not in gear fifth right now. But I was then, and I think then’s not finished.”

A look of abject horror crept over Law’s face and he pressed hard into his own chest as if to reassure himself his heart was still beating there.

No.

To reassure himself that Luffy’s heart was still beating.

Hang on. Shanks glanced to Beckman and noted the grim set to his face.

Months, Law had said. I didn’t bother keeping track.

It’s a relief, said Luffy. If Torao’s heart is here, that means he came back too, right?

There had been no surprise from Law when Luffy thought they’d both arrived four days ago, no argument or moment to think of what he’d been doing at the time. He’d come straight here at a speed that wasn’t possible by any means they knew of. Because he’d felt it the second that Luffy’s heart had… had what? Started beating again? Filled the empty space in his chest? What the hell had Law arrived in the past with to keep him going, literally and physically?

See, here’s the thing.

Law landed in the past some eight months prior, directly after watching his world get torn apart. He’d come back to the moment his pseudo-father was bleeding out in front of him and had manged to channel all that rage and desperation into saving him, killing everyone nearby, and then getting them the hell out of there as fast as he possibly could. He’d spent the next couple of months mostly dissociated, wrapped in a blinder of shock and grief while Rosinante, the aforementioned father, had the pleasure of recovering from what should have been near-fatal bullet wounds and the shock of his deathly ill, thirteen-year-old child eating a devil fruit and turning into a 30-odd-year-old man decked in tattoos (yet still sporting that same fluffy hat) who then dismembered roughly twenty people in a near-mindless rage. While neither of them can entirely trust the memory of those first few weeks, the best part of a year had passed and both Law and Rosinante had somewhat reconciled with the fact that Law had time-travelled into the past and replaced his younger self.

Having Bepo, Sachi, and Penguin age up in front of their eyes had been a shock but had led to the group theorising that Law had somehow altered something on his trip backwards and that contact with his crew was triggering the ‘change’ to snap into place where he was. Having Luffy’s heart in his chest suddenly go from a dead thing with the consistency of melted plastic to a living organ, racing and pulsing in familiar and concerningly erratic fashions, (while a very confused but grateful Brook was in the middle of a heartwarming reunion with a whale) had wiped all thoughts of theories out of his head and replaced it with a chant of he’s alive he’s alive he’s here he’s alive.

Law had not gotten over Luffy’s death in the last eight months but he had understood it as fact. To learn that Luffy was alive had turned him into a maniac capable of breaking all logical sailing speeds by utilising his devil fruit to teleport them in bursts towards the island about which he’d heard only a handful of stories of his husband’s childhood. To see him, to be able to grab hold and feel warm skin and a pulse and breath against his lips had felt like a dream and salvation and like he was finally able to wake up.

When Luffy said that then’s not finished, Law heard I’m sitting here in front of you but I’m also currently still living the moment of dying. And that was terrifying. Because what if that moment tried to steal him back?

A good pirate was selfish. Law cultivated selfishness as self-preservation. If Luffy was alive in this moment, if their crews could join them here, he had no interest in another time that was already lost and no care for whether his being here caused any sort of cosmic rift. Perhaps Luffy had, after the last few years, finally leaked into Law some of his overflowing disregard for consequence and overthought.

“Luffy,” the voice that made it out was one that had been ground down to a fine grit. “Are you saying that you are still actively dying right now?”

Luffy wasn’t entirely sure, to be perfectly honest, but he did think that was unlikely, because he was currently sitting in Party’s bar and not on an island in the future, so he said, “Nope.”

Law was breathing a little too heavy like he maybe didn’t believe him. So Luffy reached out and cupped his hands, with all their rough nicks and familiar scars and scratches, around Law’s jaw and pulled every piece of his focus into only himself and only his eyes, into that serious look that Law loved because it kept every promise it had ever made and that most of the bar had never before seen. “Silly Torao. You’re a Heart Pirate. Just listen to mine, it’s fine now. Nothing’s burning.”

Shanks wished this was a more private moment for them but Luffy had pulled each and every one of them into his gravity. Maybe they all needed this reassurance, though perhaps to a lesser extent.

“You said it wasn’t finished,” Law’s voice cracked and they all pretended it didn’t.

Luffy frowned, face all twisted like this was more thinking than he’d prefer to take part in. He was not the only one whose head was hurting. “I don’t think I’m there. I think I’m just still holding onto it. That’s why it’s still stretchy.”

That seemed to calm Law enough that he could lean back and cover his face with his hands.

It was a lot, too much tension for this cozy bar to take.

“Okay,” Beckman spoke up, already half regretting it, “But you said it had stopped stretching.”

Luffy spun in his chair to smile up at him, “Mm yeah, it did a bit. The room isn’t so wobbly anymore but it still feels like it wants to be. Don’t worry though, I’ve been holding it steady. Nami said it’s really hard for people to walk when I make it bouncy. Which is why it’s better to jump, but we made rules about that on the Sunny after the mast got stuck under the railings.”

“I understood maybe forty percent of that,” Shanks said without any real hope of getting clarity.

“Ah Luffy-san and Usopp-san wanted to see if they could use the ship’s mast as a catapult if Luffy turned it to rubber,” Brook chimed in doing his best to be helpful. “Unfortunately, we hit a rough patch of water and a wave soaked the captain, so he lost concentration for a moment. Franky-san almost killed them both when we thought the mast might be stuck like that permanently yohohoho.”

Law hummed, “Seems like you’re fully with us then, Brook-ya.”

Brook, and there were still several people in the bar not over the fact that there was a talking skeleton in the mix, swept his hat off in a flourish and gave a bow to the surly surgeon who was now sagging where he sat as if the mad dash of the last four days was finally catching up to him. “Indeed I am, Law-san. Though I don’t quite understand it, I am certainly glad to be here with you all. I must thank you again for venturing out and picking me up.”

“Right,” Law sounded exhausted. “You Red-Hairs are all famous and we’ve had far too many parties with you but nothing makes sense anymore so, this is Brook.” The skeleton bowed to the bar. “Bepo.” Now the bear dipped his head. “Sachi, Penguin.” It was somewhat a relief to see two regular human grins at that introduction. “And-”

“Wow. You’re huge.”

The man standing, stooped truly at the height of the ceiling, laughed as Luffy appeared at his toes and craned his head back to meet his eyes. He’d been quiet all this time, like most of them just trying to keep up with the chaos that was being thrown around at breakneck speeds. He’d also been stunned speechless at the sight of Law, silently taking intimate physical touch as reassurance. It was one thing to see your newly adopted son age seventeen years in a moment, another to watch him grieve a life from a future that no longer existed, and quite something else again to see someone who you have only known as traumatised and angry and desperately pushing the world away, suddenly and actively seeking comfort from another unknown human being.

“And this is Corazon.”

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 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.

Chapter Text

‘Corazon’ watched the man in front of him light up like bonfire, enough energy and excitement crackling off him to set the room alight with him.

“Torao! It’s Cora!”

Law was clearly trying to hide his amusement and would likely have managed if he wasn’t far too tired to have that level of control over his face. “Yes. I am, in fact, the one that just told you that, idiot.”

“Ah! I haven’t done this in ages! Hang on. It is very nice to meet you, my name is Monkey D. Luffy.”

Everyone in the bar did a double take.

“Oi.” Law looked disturbed. “Since when do you have anything even close to manners?”

“Makino taught us so we could steal more politely.”

“I did what?” Several pirates raised their glass in a silent cheer for their favourite bartender as she appeared from the stairs.

“Makino! Where have you been? Come on and meet everyone!”

The tall figure by the door beamed, delighted at the bubbly ball of chaos his little murder gremlin had apparently managed to grab hold of. “A pleasure to meet you as well, Luffy, Makino, everyone. I’m Rosinante.”

“And you,” Makino smiled. She turned to glare at Shanks, “I left for less than an hour and I miss out on how much?”

“You’re blaming me!?”

“Rosi-what?” Luffy frowned, “but you’re Cora?”

Rosinante laughed. “Corazon is something of a title someone gave me, Law shortened it when he finally stopped trying to kill me. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him use my real name.”

Luffy blinked once, twice, eyes widening and a smile spreading slowly over his lips.

Hmm. Should he perhaps not have said that? Rosinante glanced at Law to see if this was normal behaviour because nothing about the last few minutes had been a normal kind of anything and that was making it very hard to tell how to read things.

Interesting, Law was blushing. Holy shit Law was blushing.

Then at once Luffy and Red-Haired Shanks burst into laughter, little sniggers from Benn fucking Beckman and Law’s motley crew lightening the room further.

Then Luffy was stretching long limbs to wrap around Law who pointedly turned away even as a rubbery sprawl landed on top of him.

“Shut up. I was twelve.”

Luffy giggled. “Hey Torao.”

“Shut up, Strawhat-ya.” Then they both paused for a moment to blink at each other. “Huh.”

Everyone in the bar turned towards the only person currently wearing a straw hat which was none other than Red-Haired Shanks sitting casually on a barstool. Rosinante had not been prewarned about this. Curse Law’s innate talent for homing in on the highest bounty in any given area.

“I’ve not got a straw hat, Torao.”

But Shanks did. “I…” He couldn’t quite find the words.

“You gave him your hat…” Beckman said, all quiet like, in wonder or something close to it.

Shanks laughed. Of course he gave Luffy his hat, who else could he possibly give it to? Then he laughed again, something unknown bubbling in his chest. Luffy was looking at him with one of those new expressions they kept getting glimpses of but hadn’t yet had time to learn to translate.

Then Luffy was smiling and it was like Shanks was twelve years old and standing on his old ship hearing a deep laugh pour out as woven straw was pushed down onto his head for the first time, feeling the pitch and swell below him. Little Anchor shouldn’t have that sort of power. Except Shanks thought maybe he knew why he gave the hat away.

He’d been wondering for the last few days, picking and turning over everything he knew about this sunshine boy, and he kept coming back to that quality still held within him that Shanks had been labelling childlike for want of something better. It was the easy grin and ever, just bubbling under, laughter. It was the way he sat and swung his legs from a stool, the way he threw himself forward to be closer to listen to your story, and how he’d jump for joy and sag for sorrow like his every movement was still hardwired to his every thought and the movement itself was a part of him. Which was something you only saw in children before they learnt to hide themselves away because every adult hid. It was the way he looked at Shanks, still, like he believed in him in the way that Shanks used to believe in Roger, before he realised there was no such thing as invincible or forever.

Deceptive, a quality like that, because the danger of an earnest man wasn’t in what lies they might tell you but in what you might have misread in their character. Luffy wasn’t a liar but, seas, he could be hard to read. Expressive and open and relentless and not at all what you assumed him to be.

Shanks was reminded suddenly of a week ago, when he tried to goad kid-Luffy into breaking character and was rewarded with him stabbing a new scar two inches wide under his eye. That was childish, wasn’t it?

Luffy was childish in the way that children were sometimes ancient. In the way that childish meant disarming, meant unshakable faith, meant freedom. In the way that he wasn’t, actually. Not at all, really. There it was again, that melancholy.

There was something painful and something happy and something light and something leaden all mixed up inside, and Shanks thought of that little baby Anchor begging him to-

“You kept on asking to join, didn’t you?”

Luffy laughed, bright and light and full of everything. “Probably every day. Right up until your ship was about to sail away.” Shanks was so glad he’d said no because look who Luffy grew into on his own road. “So we made a promise. And I had to look after it until then.”

The evening outside settled into night as Shanks’ crew began to drip away to things like sleep and their own private moments. Makino flit around and lit the candles in the window, cleared the mess from the few emptying tables, not missing a beat as Brook swept to her side and offered a bony hand and a tray to pile mugs and glasses on like a strange kind of autonomous waiter in a horror show.

There was, for just a brief moment, a much-needed lull in the spinning world as some people imagined a future that had one day been sure to follow and others remembered a past that was no longer upcoming. Bepo grabbed a bottle and a little table by the window, pressing a heavy paw onto Law’s shoulder as he passed and trying to leach a little of his tension without his notice. The two others from Law’s crew settled down by his side and Shanks had a sudden vision, clear as day, of the era they must have come from. Corazon, Rosinante as he called himself, folded down into a chair across from Law and they looked nothing alike apart from all the ways they matched, long lines and eye-catching patterns and strange, intense kind of auras. Everyone settled and it felt more like a conference than a reunion, various major players and their peoples by their side, all gathered around this strange misshapen table in little Fusha.

So serious, thought Shanks, so much weight from worry.

Then Luffy looked around the group for a second, grinned at Rosinante, and swiped Law’s hat for himself. He jumped right into his lap and ignored the ‘Oi, fuck off’ that Law gasped, sprawling like he belonged there and pushing the wide brim down over his eyes like he was mocking someone.

We made a promise.

Shanks had spent the last few months learning the language that was Luffy. This version here was known and unknown and had spent his own time and more of it learning the language of Shanks. Shanks looked at Law, watched him glare at the man helping himself to his personal space and his personal effects and realised how young Law looked without his hat, how exhausted he clearly was now there was no hiding his face. He remembered you married us and slot in a new little piece of knowledge, how Luffy’s husband called him, without thinking, by a nickname for the hat Shanks currently had sitting on his head, and he couldn’t help but wonder at what world he was living in now.

Despite several verbalised complaints, Law made no physical moves to take back his hat or throw Luffy off, and it made Shanks think about what a thing it was to wear something of someone else on your skin. Something he’d thought of not infrequently since he’d been carrying this part of Roger with him.

“Oh Shanks, have you met Cora… Um Rosi? Nah. Cora.” Luffy said with all the authority of a judge. Rosinante grinned, partly at Luffy’s enthusiasm and partly at the fact that Law had subtly wrapped his arms around Luffy’s waist from where he sat behind him. “Cora! This is Shanks. Wait, you’re like kinda in the marines, right? You know who Shanks is then. Shanks, this is Cora. He’s like Torao’s Shanks.”

Rosinante choked because he was not kinda in the marines, he was a marine commander and an undercover spy, even if the navy minus Sengoku most likely wanted him dead for his last little bit of treason. And anyway, that wasn’t quite the introduction he was hoping for when faced with a New World pirate who seemed to have adopted his apparent son-in-law.

Shanks choked because he wasn’t aware he was a benchmark relationship to anyone, never mind the person he’d assumed was maybe sort of Law’s father. “Beck. Did I just acquire in-laws?”

“I think you also gained a child at some point.”

“Makino, come sit, come sit! Oh you met Brook, good. Brook’s on my crew, isn’t he the best? You guys met once before technically, but nothing counts anymore and now we get to redo all the parties so come on, sit, sit.”

“A pleasure as always, Makino-san,” the skeleton swept into a bow.

Makino laughed, shook his hand, and grabbed a handful of bottles to dump unceremoniously on the table centre. She glanced at Shanks for a moment, clearly amused, and prompted a laugh from Beckman when he recognised the glint in her eye. “Aren’t you forgetting someone, Luffy?”

Luffy frowned, taking the time to think about it and glancing between Rosinante, Shanks, Beckman, and Brook. He looked back to Makino, aware there was a trap somewhere and unsure where he’d crossed his wires.

Behind him, Law seemed to grow only more tense, eyes fixed on the middle distance and fingers curled tight where they were held over Luffy’s waist. He looked genuinely quite apprehensive, which Shanks thought was hilarious given his reaction to meeting him was a cocky smirk and a heap of snark.

Luffy leant back, still looking wary, and mashed Law’s hat right into his face. Man didn’t even react.

Bless him, Shanks thought.

“Ah!” Luffy yelled. “Bepo!”

Bepo winced. “Sorry Captain.”

“It’s fine,” Law sighed. And everyone at the bar gave a little moment to thank whichever god they cared for that Luffy had managed to find someone with the patience to let his brain spin and crack and leap about in its own patterns without resentment.

“I think I might cry,” Rosinante whispered to Brook as he settled down in the chair next to him. “I still can’t believe Law got married.”

“Yohoho,” laughed Brook, ever so quietly. “He is quite the romantic when he thinks no one is watching. And just as chaotic as the captain! I suspect he’s quite enjoying this.”

“Luffy,” Makino smiled, “your husband.” She raised a single brow, “I hope.”

And Luffy blinked at her for a moment that lasted just long enough for Shanks to wonder if they’d all somehow made a terrible mistake.

Then he was leaping up quick enough that Law’s chin cracked back with a grunted ow, bouncing on his feet as if he was about to start running.

“You haven’t met Torao? Makino, why didn’t you say so?”

“For fucks sake, Lu-ya.” Poor guy.

“Torao, hm?”

And Law actually shut up at that, subtly straightening a little to look her in the eye. Shanks bit down on the giggle that threatened to spill out. Rosinante did not and got a good glare for his indiscretion.

There was a tense second where Law, hands awkwardly braced on his knees and displaying a lovely selection of tattoos, awaited whatever judgement Makino was about to pass while Luffy literally bounced on the spot, clearly desperately excited but waiting for her to do as she might want. Then Makino laughed and pulled Law up and into a hug.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Law froze up like a corpse in a frosty gravesite.

Makino squeezed him tight for a moment and spoke softly in his ear so no one else could hear, “I’m so glad he found so many people to love him. Thank you, Torao.” Law’s head whipped back, startled, before he seemed to relax all at once, even bringing his hands up lightly to meet behind Makino’s back. And that was all it took for Luffy to laugh brightly and wrap his arms around the two of them, once, twice, three times in a coil, and squeeze them tight enough that both were soon wheezing and demanding to be released to breathe.

Luffy snapped back to himself with a grin, grabbing Law’s hand and turning to Makino to say with a ringing pride, “This is Law. I married him, but don’t worry we’re going to get married again so you have to come, okay?”

Law, thought Shanks, looked entirely too emotional at that statement.

Given the absolute whirlwind of the last half an hour and the absolute hell he’d seemingly been through over the last four days and the last god-knows however many months, he decided to let him off just this once. He did, however, sneak a look to Rosinante and catch him wiping tears messily into his feather jacket, and at that Shanks figured that enough was enough. So, in true pirate fashion, he grabbed the largest bottle on the table and began to pour out large shots for everyone.

“Well.” He looked around the table which now sat Luffy, Luffy’s husband, Luffy’s husband’s father(?), the scariest, most charming barmaid in East Blue (Luffy’s cousin? Shanks never did get round to figuring that one out), Beckman (thank the seas), and a musical skeleton. “A toast. To whatever the hell just happened. And to whatever the hell is continuing to happen. To the soon to be re-married couple. And to whatever the fuck you call your son’s husband’s dad when he’s at home.” Then everyone new got momentarily distracted when Brook the skeleton did in fact take the drink and it seemed to just disappear down his non-existent throat. “Also,” Shanks placed his glass down and slumped into a seat. “You’re an odd looking marine, aren’t you?”

Law pinched Luffy’s side in a weak pass at a reprimand, “That was a secret, Lu-ya.”

“Ah. Oops. Shihihi.”

Rosinante laughed at the clear lack of remorse, downing the gifted drink and clearly not expecting quite such a hit.

He was interesting for sure, decked in a black feather coat and red hearts all over his shirt, bold painted lines around one eye and stretching out his mouth. Still, Shanks had a bounty high enough that most marines either shit themselves or began premature dreams of a wealthy retirement once they caught his eye. If Law, who very clearly was no marine, had brought him here, and if Luffy had no issue, well, Shanks wasn’t one to start a fight without good reason. Still, it looked like Law was likely to wedge himself into the circle of people he held close and called family pretty soon, so he wanted to see what this marine was planning on doing. Just in case, because Luffy was absolutely one of his persons, and Shanks had no problems whatsoever causing problems when his people were involved.

He smiled, easy and open oh so friendly with his head lounging in one hand and his legs spread just wide enough to be a bother. Rosinante grinned back like he was delighted to see him and stretched out his long legs until he was more comfortable.

“Fucks sake,” muttered Law to one side.

“Shhhh this is funny,” Luffy whispered far too loudly.

“Well,” said Rosinante, “I haven’t checked in with command since my last act of treason. So I might be odd looking but I may also be out of a job.”

“Oh I do love a bit of treason,” Shanks grinned.

Law snorted. “Pretty sure you’re out of a job anyway considering your cover is entirely blown.”

Rosinante winced. “Ah. Yes. That too.”

“Oh yeah,” Luffy frowned under the fluffy fur rim still perched on his head, “we’ll have to beat up Mingo again.”

Shanks got to watch twin shadows drop over Law and Rosinante, aware that some way to the side the three that claimed themselves part of Law’s posse had tensed as well. Honestly, the hardest part of all this has been trying to keep up with all of the names. Interestingly, Law looked less panicked than Rosinante. Although that may have had something to do with the fact that Luffy was currently perched between his legs.

Both of Luffy’s sandaled feet had come up to rest on the table edge and there was a loose quality to the way in which Luffy held himself which was at odds with the recent panic Shanks could still feel in his own bloodstream and the fresh haze of excitement from, you know, everything. Despite the fact Luffy himself had been so close to losing control over something ten minutes ago, he seemed able to act as a kind of an anchor for the other man like this. Tethered that way, and with a steady breath that told of an inner calm that was pretty damned near believable, Law brought one hand up long enough to pour another long drink and then downed it straight in one.

“Yes,” he said once finished, “we will. But he’s not a warlord yet and now with any luck he never fucking will be. So, without being overly optimistic, this go around might be a little easier.” Then he poured himself another drink the same size and slid the bottle over to Rosinante who had started a coughing fit at the thought of his brother as a warlord, then dropped his glass for it to shatter at his feet.

“Mm,” Luffy seemed to consider that. “Nah should be easier anyway cause we’re both way stronger now.”

Feeling mildly left out, Shanks turned to Beckman who mouthed a puzzled Doflamingo? Because that was the only person he could think of that ‘Mingo’ might possibly match to, and he’d remembered that Luffy thought Law should be in North Blue, where Doflamingo had been making noise for some time now.

“Doffy’s a Warlord?” said Rosinante once he’d finally recovered.

“Eh, was.” Luffy picked at his nose. “Then we beat his ass and I think he’s been in Impel Down for like, ages now.” He flicked something off to the side of the room and Law grimaced.

“Friend of yours?” Shanks asked. Trying to work out how much of the ghastly expression was learnt fear versus tired makeup.

Rosinante grimaced, “Brother.”

Shanks brows disappeared into his hair. “Didn’t know Doflamingo had a marine brother.”

“Neither did he, that was the point.”

Shanks whistled.

Makino swirled her drink around, watching the revelations with a kind of easy grace that Shanks wished he could emulate. “Nice to see you’re keeping the family tradition of making things as complicated as possible, Luffy.”

What the hell did that mean? Shanks shared a look with Beckman and they both decided to take the safest route and flag that for later.

“So you’re a spy then,” Beckman said, offering said spy a new glass.

He took it gingerly, “As Law said, I think that bridge is fairly well burnt.” The bar had grown quieter around them again, more people peeling off back ship-ward and the sleepy town settling outside the walls. “Doflamingo and the marines were both after a devil fruit with one hell of a bounty, though likely for differing reasons. They both were under the impression I would help them acquire it. I arranged things so they’d distract each other and stole it first before… well, I am led to believe that things didn’t end well for me last time.” He glanced to Law who looked away quickly. “However, with Law’s… foresight, we managed to slip out before things turned sour.”

“Not before you got shot six times,” Law muttered.

“Sourer.”

Beckman hummed, “That’ll be Law’s fruit then. That’s why you appeared early. It’s a miracle, frankly, that you both ate them so relatively close together.”

Rosinante frowned, “So, Luffy, or the younger you ate your fruit the other day? That’s what triggered…” he looked back at Law who glared a burning hole through the wall.

Shanks frowned. “Did anyone see your…” How to word this, “Time-trip?” 

“No.”

“You seem sure.”

“I wasn’t in a mood to leave witnesses,” Law snapped, eyes narrowed as if in a challenge. Not that Shanks was going to care. No, he just glanced once at Luffy to check that, nope, no sign of surprise.

Luffy was deep in thought. Had been for the last little while after realising they might end up fighting some old familiar faces in a round two. His gaze had fixed itself off into something no one else was privy to. “Hey Torao?” He’d stolen one of the hands around his waist and was idly playing with the long fingers again. “Do you reckon I could punch through the birdcage now? Betcha I could.”

Law froze. Fully, froze solid and seemed to stop even as much as breathing. Then, before any of them could get too worried he started laughing, tipped his brow forward to rest on the back of Luffy’s head and shook. “Yeah,” he gasped. “Probably. Why the hell not? God I want to see that.”

#

Luffy sat, feet up and back pressed into Law, fingers tapping out little rhythms into the ink patterns of Law’s hands and wrists. Brook was nearby and Law was behind him and the world had stopped fighting back quite so hard which meant he was able to grip a little tighter to the moment everything had fallen apart but he still was exhausted. The conversation around him bubbled and turned as everyone poked at cautious theories that did and didn’t make any sense. Even tired as he was and puzzling through his own thoughts, he was hyper-aware of everyone in the room and the low thrum of energy that everyone held in their core like a lighthouse. Of course, that meant he was also aware of the gaps where he should feel Zoro and Nami and Usopp and Sanji, the gaps that were empty because they all were too young and miles away and didn’t know him yet, where Chopper should be even though he might not be born yet, where Robin and Franky should fit if they weren’t out in the world somewhere already feeling lonely, where Jinbe was supposed to sit, except he wasn’t here because he was half a world away and had another life without any of them and he still called someone else captain.

“Lu-ya?”

“Mm?”

The arms around his waist tightened for a moment and he realised how hard he was gripping Law’s wrists. “Sorry, Torao.”

He grinned at Shanks who was watching him out of the corner of eye as Rosinante spoke about something in wide gestures and Brook expertly caught the various objects that were flung from the table in his enthusiasm. Then he stuck his tongue out at Makino who’d paused her conversation with Beckman to look over him like she used to do when he was little. Her eyes flicked behind him for a second and he nodded a little thanks at her, Law was far more tired than he was and still had nervous energy coiled and bristling through his limbs.

The heart in Luffy’s chest was calmer than it had been the last few days, which was a relief, but it still wasn’t as steady as it should have been. He’d prompted Law to eat some small bites of the food Makino had brought over after a while, but Luffy could confidently bet he’d half-starved himself from the moment he’d started the mad dash across the east. Law was an idiot and only ever a good doctor to other people. When it came to himself, he just used the same knowledge to push his body to every extreme he could think of.

Luffy felt a tug in his gut and a pain in his heart as he wished Chopper was here to fuss over them all, as he wished Robin could listen in and share some of her boundless knowledge and work on cracking this chaos like a puzzle.

“You’re worried about your crew, aren’t you?” Law said softly behind him. He was. Of course he was. “That’s why you’re still holding on, isn’t it?”

Luffy smiled. Law was clever, even when he was being an idiot, always had been. “I don’t think I can let go and still reach them later.”

“I think it’s hurting you.”

“It might be.”

Law’s fingers bit into him. “How long can you hold it?”

“Don’t know. But it got lighter when Brook arrived.”

“So the faster we get to some people, the longer we have to get to the rest?”

“Maybe. Hmm. I think that might work. Is Torao holding something too?”

“I don’t think so. But I don’t know I’d feel it in the same way. It might just be sapping energy without me noticing.”

“Maybe you should make a huge room, see how far you can reach.” Luffy glanced up behind him. “In a few days.”

Law huffed, “Yeah, I’m done for now. But I don’t know what else that would do, I’ve thrown a room over half the East Blue at this point.”

Huh.

Luffy’s feet slipped to land on the floor.

Law had just raced across the entire East Blue, throwing rooms like skimming stones. In his mind’s eye, Luffy saw a submarine jumping through the sea and bouncing, causing little ripples to flow out at every connection point.

“Lu-ya?”

How wide had he thrown his rooms in his panic? How far was each jump? When Law used his awakened powers, he could control the shape and flow of his rooms to limit the operating zone and minimize external information. It was only useful in select situations, though, and it burnt through his energy like nothing else, so why would he bother for this. No, he’d have gone for fast and far. Wide spheres to catch the furthest diameter and the longest jump point. The ripples would have stretched for miles.

I ran a scan and it was like… they just shambled themselves into place.

A scan was just energy, they’d theorised before. Law had theorised. It made sense, it was all just energy. That was why haki was go good at cancelling it out.

Luffy had been seven years old and twenty-three a week ago, there were no rules to adhere to.

Luffy wanted his crew.

“Anchor?”

Luffy flexed his hands and felt the little bounce and stretch of fifth gear, the fact he was and wasn’t in it and the impossibility he was clinging to with only belief. He pulled a little harder. That was annoying, it wouldn’t give.

That was annoying.

The past that tore him apart was trying to cling to his crew. Fuck that.

Luffy was pissed.

Luffy was the freest man on earth.

Time could not constrain his crew.

He breathed out.

Clasped his fist.

Pulled.

This time he felt the stretch.

A drumbeat played, just a little one behind him from where his heart sat in Law’s chest, the low thrum vibrating in his veins.

The world was only ever what you made it.

Luffy breathed in and infused his very will and spirit into something solid and bright and shining.

“Wake up,” he said. And the words spread in a ripple through the room and past the walls and out, rolling into night and flaring like an early dawn.

Chapter Text

Shanks gasped as a wave drenched his head and the midday sun scorched his skin leaving white spots in his sight. Everyone in the bar buckled where they sat and braced against their chairs, the table, anything that seemed the least bit stable as a wave of conqueror’s haki poured from Luffy at a rate Shanks had never before felt in his life. Then it was gone and he could have sworn he was stone sober and ready to run a mile.

Normally, getting a wave of conquerors could be anything from a pillow pressed on your head to a wall being dropped from above. That wasn’t quite right of course, wasn’t anything nearly so physical in sensation, but that was the closest he’d ever found to describing it. The pressure was what knocked people out, pure intent manifest. Not tangible, no, but real enough to create a gale, knock a person to their knees, to compel.

Luffy had turned it on its head. If conquerors forced submission by knowing to stroke a barbed plant in the direction of the bristles, rendering it harmless, weak, pliable, Luffy had just grabbed the plant and yanked it backwards, triggering every defence and reflex. A matchstick on a gasoline can of adrenaline.

Shanks had no idea that was possible.

The high was short lived, ebbing now, not something that would sustain you for long but more a slap about the face to make you sit up and listen. He glanced around the bar. Most people, he knew, did not have anything close to his tolerance to haki and that was the kind of thing that could make you blind to your limits until you’d burned through your lifeforce.

Beckman met his gaze, wide-eyed and vibrating. Yeah, that was pretty much how Shanks felt. Law’s crew looked like they’d been hit with an electric bolt, though one was noticeably more panicked than the others. Similarly, the few of his own crew still around the bar were still scrabbling for stability as if their limbs were attempting to move independently from their thoughts. Makino looked… shocked… yeah, shocked. Hm. Sure. Rosinante seemed to be similar to Beckman, wired but wary and maybe reassessing everything he’d ever assumed about Luffy. Which was fair, Shanks could understand that. Law was difficult to read to be perfectly honest. He looked a bit like he'd just gone through a week of sleep deprivation, been slapped around the head by his jailer, and now was teetering somewhere between catatonic and sharply aware. That was… a pretty accurate translation, actually. How he was still awake in the first place, Shanks had no clue. Brook was a still a skeleton and therefor Shanks was unsure where to begin with reading that one.

Luckily for him, Brook was the first one to gather himself to speak. Actually, maybe Brook was the least affected of all of them because when he did speak it was light and relaxed, like he’d just had an incredibly satisfying nap.

“Ah,” said Brook. “It does feel good to be home.”

And Luffy threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“What the fuck,” Beckman gasped. “What the hell was that?”

“Hey Anchor?” The grin that fixed on him was a wild thing and Shanks recalled the moment Luffy had crashed through the bar and made both him and Beckman reach for their weapons out of some raw survival instinct. He remembered how it felt to see his hand by Beckman’s neck and know that any wrong move could be catastrophic. Luffy looked at him and Shanks realised what a big fucking ego he’d developed being away from Roger and Rayleigh and the other monsters he’d grown up with. He wasn’t an idiot, not by half. Shanks was pretty on par with the Four Emperors at this point, not that he’d ever challenged one properly, not yet. Despite knowing that, when he looked at Luffy then, still reeling from feeling his haki aggravate every one of his reflexes, Shanks had to wonder which of them would win if they properly went at it.

Had they? Had Luffy challenged him in another life? Another version of him? Who was that Shanks that would have fought? Did he win?

He felt a thrill in his spine and his feet and his heaving chest. Screw the old Shanks, he could find out for himself if he would win. He wanted to know how the hell Luffy did that and then he wanted to try it.

Luffy was still watching him like a maniac with the same earnest look he’d held when he was seven and all Shanks could find to say was, “Warn us next time, yeah?”

“How the hell far did you reach, Lu-ya?” Law asked looking shaken.

“Hmmm,” thought Luffy. “I couldn’t get to Drum, but I figured it didn’t matter cause Chopper might not be born yet. No idea where Zoro is right now, so I aimed for Nami cause she’s the furthest point in the east.”

“Ha ha,” said Law. “Hahaha.”

Shanks couldn’t quite tell if he was laughing or having a breakdown.

On the other side of the table, Rosinante reached out to grab Brook’s sleave in a tight grip. “Where is this ‘Nami’ just now?”

Far too relaxed for Shanks’ liking, Brook took a nice long sip of whatever the hell he was drinking out of a teacup no one had noticed him acquiring. “Well, who can say. Time is a funny thing and I’ve been on a ghost ship for the last thirty or fifty years, depending on how you look at it.” Rosinante stared at him like he’d forgotten Brook was a dead man. “But she should be on Cocoyasi, all things being well.”

Rosinante joined Law in his maybe amusement/maybe breakdown.

“Anchor,” said Beckman. “Luffy, what did you just do?”

“Don’t know,” Luffy answered. Which was not at all what anyone wanted to hear. “We’ll find out soon probably. But I think,” he paused to examine his hand, clenching and releasing a fist like he was feeling for something, “I feel a bit weird now.”

Law staggered to his feet, “You what?”

“No, like,” Luffy frowned. “It’s like I just came on land.”

Don’t worry though, I’ve been holding it steady.

Law swayed but managed to step forward and hold Luffy by the shoulders, checking him over as if scared he was about to vanish. “Things are less stretchy, you mean?”

“I think so, feels a bit like when Chopper gives me gas sometimes after a fight.”

“Oh fantastic,” said Law. “You’re high.”

Luffy laughed. “Nah, not quite. Maybe. More like the relief when the pain goes, you know?”

One day, thought Shanks, one day he was going to get a full, straight answer out of Luffy if it killed him. Actually, the surprise of it might be the thing that killed him.

Brook cleared his throat. He looked far too calm and Shanks hated him just a little bit. There he was sat with his legs crossed and hands folded over his knees as if this was a walk in the park and something he saw every day. Actually, he was the only one here mad enough to call himself Luffy’s crewmate. Maybe this was every day. Good God help them all.

“If I may?”

“Please,” said Makino, reaching over to top up his cup. When did she get a fucking teapot?

“My thanks,” he toasted her. What was happening. “If the captain is still holding onto the moment of, ah… ‘collapse’, then I agree it is of utmost importance to pull whoever back that we either can or want to while that is an option. I assure you,” and here he looked out to Shanks, to Rosinante, to Beckman, “If the crew is near enough to hear it, they will recognise an order from their captain and we will see them shortly.”

“And if not?” asked Beckman.

“Then we’ll find them.” Luffy’s voice allowed no arguments.

“Precisely. Now,” Brook continued, “From experience, you are all going to feel a rather spectacular crash in a few minutes, so might I suggest we reconvene in the morning?”

“Yup bedtime!” cried Luffy. Then he ducked, looped an arm around Law’s waist, and threw him over his shoulder. “Night everyone.”

Law for his part looked less embarrassed than one might have expected and more resigned to fate. “I can walk, Lu-ya.”

“Not while I’m carrying you, you can’t.”

Law sighed. It was hard to argue with that kind of logic so he didn’t even bother trying, only reaching limply for his sword as he was carted away, still propped up by the bar from way back in a time that might have been two hours or several days ago now.

With one elongated limb flying out like a missile, Luffy grabbed it and tossed it over to the window with a yelled out, “Bepo, catch!”

“Luffy,” Law groaned, “Don’t throw my sword away.”

“That’s not away, Torao, that’s Bepo.” And then he vanished off up the stairs with Law hanging over him like a rag doll.

#

“Finally,” said the polar bear that had been sitting quietly at the next table. “I kept thinking the captain was going to pass out where he sat.”

Rosinante felt at war with himself because, yes, absolutely, Law looked half dead and definitely needed his bed so thank the seas and any god around that Luffy had not only cottoned on to that but somehow, magically, had enough influence over him that he could just pick Law up and take him away. If you’d asked Rosinante before he’d seen it, he’d have told you that Law would have clawed and scratched his way out of a hold like that, even if it had killed him to do it. None of what Rosinante knew about Law seemed to apply to Luffy though, which was reassuring in and of itself. But no, he was conflicted because, yes, great, Law even trusted Bepo to look after his sword and finally switch himself out of the hypervigilance he’d kept up ever since he had a panic attack at Reverse Mountain, but also, how dare Bepo be so relaxed in the circumstance. Mildly ruffled, if that. Asshole. Rosinante thought they were friends.

“You,” he accused, pointing a finger at the bear. “Why are you so unfazed by this? Is this normal? This isn’t normal. Never mind Luffy, I feel like I’m high.”

Bepo leant the long sword against his shoulder in a comfortable motion that suggested he was used to this. Like Luffy hadn’t just stolen his captain, unarmed him, and entrusted his weapon to Bepo without even thinking. “You want to know the first front page story I ever read about Luffy?”

“Yes,” said Shanks immediately. “Also no, it might tip me over the edge at this point, but absolutely, yes.”

“That he’d declared war on the World Government by burning their flag at Enies Lobby before razing the place to the ground.”

Complete silence covered the bar. Everyone turned to look at Brook.

“Ah. That was actually before I joined.”

“Ha ha,” said Shanks. “Hahaha.” Maybe he was having a breakdown too.

Beckman cleared his throat. “And was that an ‘accurate’ article would you say?”

“Yes and no.”

“The way I have been made to understand it,” offered Brook, “Is that a crew member was stolen. This is,” and here he looked all around their little assembly. While one couldn’t exactly say he ‘locked eyes’ with anyone, the intensity of his gaze, with its empty and open bones, seemed to trap them somewhere in a void darker than the night outside, “Completely unacceptable.” He let them sit with that for a moment, taking his time to think through his next words. “People often get the wrong impression, they think the captain is careless, or reckless even. And perhaps you could call him that, he certainly wouldn’t mind. But I have found the truth to be that he is simply willing. Does that make sense? It is not a matter of what he is willing to do, just that he is.”

And Rosinante thought suddenly that he might understand what might have drawn Law to the strange figure of Luffy who appeared both like soft sunshine and mighty inferno.

He’d wondered if he should hate him, at first. If he should at least try and resent someone who’d piled yet another grief onto Law who already held too many of them. Though that didn’t seem fair. After all, how could Rosinante hate someone who had given Law something worth grieving? Quite a catch-22.

In the days after that first week of Law’s awful listless silence, when Rosinante had tentatively begun to learn who this new grown person was, the first worry had been Law’s health, with his skin still over-cold and his every movement loose and unfocused.

“Your pulse,” he’d asked, when Law was finally able to stand and take notice of the rock walls around them. “How…”

“Yeah.” Law braced his weight against the stone. “I should definitely be dead.”

“Oh,” said Rosinante. Because what else do you say to that?

Then he watched as Law held one hand over his chest in an odd claw like grip, spoke a low murmured scalpel, and tried to pull something out of himself. The thing was suspended in a strange looking, clear container, blood red and messy. As he pulled, the back half seemed to catch and, rather than leave his body, the whole thing stretched and sagged under its own weight.

Law pressed the hand back to his chest and the thing disappeared.

They both were silent a moment, staring at his chest as it rose and fell in ragged breaths.

“Law,” Rosinante manged to start in barely a whisper. “Was that your heart?”

And then Law just started laughing and Rosinante thought it might be the worst sound he’d ever heard. He didn’t know what to do. Law laughed like there were claws in his throat and he was trying to tear them out.

Then he sobbed out, “No.” And Rosinante was terrified and so confused and utterly out of his depth. “It’s not my heart,” said Law.

Which he didn’t understand because what else could it be? What was happening.

“It’s not my heart,” Law repeated, laughs subsiding.

If he fell back into shock now it might actually kill him. Rosinante might not know what the hell was going on but the last week had been bad and he could not let that happen again.

He reached out slowly and took the wrist of the hand that was still pressing in tight to Law’s chest, pulling just slightly to that Law turned to face him. “Law?”

“It’s not my heart.”

No, that wasn’t what he said.

Or rather, Rosinante had mixed it up.

“He’s dead, Cora.”

It’s not my heart. That’s what he meant.

The Op-Op fruit.

As Law staggered and crumpled, Rosinante caught him, ignoring the light-headedness as all of his injuries pulled and flashed hot. Law sobbed, loud and keening as the grief of the last week hit him now with lucidity.

There was nothing Rosinante could offer except his arms and so that’s what he gave, wrapped him tight in an embrace and held on while he cried.

“I don’t get it, Cora.” Rosinante didn’t care that he didn’t know this version of Law. If he could offer any barest hint of comfort now, he would give everything of himself a second time to do it. “Why am I still alive?” He must know this Law because why would his heart break for someone he didn’t know at all?

Not until some four months later, when they’d found three of Law’s crewmates and those crewmates had adjusted to their own time-skips, did Rosinante finally learn the name of the man Law had loved enough to hold inside his chest. The moment Bepo asked after someone called Luffy and Law shut down immediately. Law had become nasty then, spitting things at Bepo like the way he used to try and hurt people as a child, and Rosinante watched as Bepo understood what that meant and let him rage and snarl before curling silently into his side.

 He’d learnt more that night, after Law had crashed into an uneasy sleep and Bepo spoke a few soft words about an insane man who’d caused them all headache after headache and somehow through it bullied Law into stupid, childish competitions, the occasional smiles, and then, eventually, into living like it was something he wanted to keep on doing. After that, with some strength pulled from having these three old friends close once again, Law had occasionally spoken of Luffy himself. Usually with only one of them at a time but still, it was good, better, at least.

One day he’d taken them to rescue a skeleton in the middle of the Grand Line and it made no sense at all until Law had begun to tell the creature who turned out to be a man, Brook, a fantasy story about a once-future and a man Brook had called Captain.

Rosinante did not want Law’s heart in the hands of a careless man. But he thought that maybe this Luffy would be okay.

#

“Hey, Shachi.” Everyone turned to Penguin who was still looking the most affected from Luffy’s wave of haki out of everyone.

“You okay, Peng? You look… iffy.”

“I think I remember everything.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Like, the past. The past-future.”

“Are you… sure?”

“I truly don’t think I could ever imagine the captain laughing and blushing the way he did when Luffy threw him over his shoulder at his wedding.”

“Oh, no. No, there’s no way any of us imagined that ever happening. Still not sure I believe it now, to be honest.”

The bar was dead, dead silent.

Then Shachi leapt over the table and tackled Penguin into a hug, “Peng! You’re all back!”

“Peng,” whispered Bepo above them. “I’m really sorry to ask this, but can this please, please be a tomorrow problem?”

“Oh a hundred percent, I might honestly just pass out right here.”

“Good, good, excellent.”

At some point, most people managed to collapse into a bed.

Somewhere.

Chapter Text

“Put me down.”

“Okay,” Luffy sing-songed back, tilting to land Law gently back on his feet and half twisting to kick the door shut. And he would have turned then, to properly look at Law now they were alone, only he was stopped by arms suddenly wrapping around his back, tight across his chest, and Law’s face pressed hard into the spot between his shoulder blades.

“Not fair,” Luffy said. “Now I can’t hug you back.”

The arms across his chest tightened and Luffy deflated, eyes softening and hands coming up to stroke softly at the wrists trapping him as a tremor began to shake itself through the body pressed in tight behind.

Law bit down hard on his lip, breathing as slowly as he could to try and contain the noise and the raw fear that was clawing and scoring his throat. Now there were stairs and multiple walls and a door shut between him and anyone else, the overwhelming everything had flooded his thoughts. All of this was insane and unreal and totally impossible, and if he let go of Luffy now, he would vanish and Law’s chest would go cold and dead and so still that he’d lose his mind again. It hurt. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be here and warm and holding Luffy again.

“Torao,” a soft voice said.

A sob broke out and Law dug his fingers in deeper, desperate to hold onto this. He couldn’t breathe.

“Torao, let go and let me hug you.”

Let go? He felt sick, shaky and light and unable to stop the way his breath was escaping and getting louder when all he wanted was to hold still and be quiet and maybe get to keep this just a little bit longer.

“Law, I promise you’ll feel better. Loosen your arms so I can turn and see you.”

Law believed him. Because Luffy always kept his promises. But he didn’t know how to loosen anything.

“Give me your hand, that’s it. Squeeze. I’m here. I’m here. I’m holding your hands. You’re going to squeeze my hands, there, well done. Big breath. Loosen your arms for me Law, there.”

Luffy stretched himself up a little to thin his waist and slipped around to face Law who was standing, face now pressed to Luffy’s chest and arms once again slipping into a vice like grip. Luffy’s own arms came around now, finally, and wrapped in a band across Law’s shoulders and up, one hand coming to rest on top of his head.

He was glad, in moments like this, that he had grown that little bit taller a couple of years ago. Law still had some height on him but it felt easier now to fold around his partner without needing to stretch out his limbs.

Trying not to squeeze too hard while Law was still struggling with his breaths, Luffy started humming softly, just a mindless tune that carried some noise and vibration and built a little bubble around the two of them. His fingertips rubbed gently at Law’s scalp and he noted how scratchy the stubble was as Law breathed harshly into the space between his open shirt. Law hadn’t bothered with pretending to look after himself, then, and hadn’t let Bepo push him to rest. Not that that was surprising, really.

Luffy forced his muscles to relax again before he squeezed too tight.

Months, Law had said. Months in the past. Months with no heart.

Later, after he had the chance to recover, he was going to be fascinated by that, Luffy knew. And would probably deal with the trauma of it by attempting to figure out exactly what had happened and whether there were any effects now to their bodies and hearts being technically different ages from each other. But for now he just needed some reassurance.

Slowly, the breathing changed and settled as Law seemed to win the battle over himself and clamp down on what was bubbling inside. The shaking slowed and switched to more infrequent tremors in his jaw, his fingers where they sat on Luffy’s back.

“Can Torao look at me?” Law shook his head and Luffy huffed. “Please?”

Luffy brought one hand down to spread over Law’s spine and added a little pressure, bringing the other up to rest on his nape, thumb sitting on the corner of his jaw. “Torao?” He stroked gently over the line of his jaw, back and forth.

Law breathed in, not quite steady but long and slow.

“Torao will believe this more if he sees.”

The breath huffed out of Law and another sob, quiet this time, escaped out between them. The fingers at his back clenched tight again as Law wrestled for control and Luffy kept his thumb moving gently back and forth as a soft reminder, giving another low hum that was something like a question.

Law breathed once, twice. Then twice more in quick succession before his head lifted up and he tilted just slightly back with wet eyes open and teeth clenched tight. In front of him, Luffy’s big brown eyes blinked, soft and open and waiting for him. And there was no stopping it, Luffy’s face split into a wide smile. A piece of joy bubbling through him at having Law so close again and having those golden eyes focused on him.

“Torao’s eyes are so pretty.” And he cupped Law’s face in both of his hands just like he’d done downstairs, fingers tangling into the unkept hair, and just held him, stuck in his gaze and cradled in his hands. And Law stared back. And he kept breathing. Sometimes it stuttered and caught. Sometimes his face screwed up and then smoothed out.

Luffy kissed a smile into his forehead and Law ached someplace inside that used to be empty. “Torao should let himself cry properly.”

“Shut up,” he gasped out somehow.

“Hmm nope. Let me take you to bed.”

Luffy pulled with a light pressure as he walked backwards a couple of steps, the breath heaving through Law’s chest as he followed. Every few seconds a fresh shiver of relief ran through him as the days and weeks and months of everything rammed at the carefully built walls held within. It was a wonder, how he was here and looking at Luffy and they both were alive.

Suddenly his face felt heavy and unmoored and he blinked out of his wonder to realise that Luffy’s hands had disappeared. Not for long, there they were sliding his too-heavy coat off his shoulders and then they were back, pulling the ties on this shirt until it hung loose enough to slide up and over his head.

Luffy was still there afterwards. Still in front of him and still looking right back at him.

Tears welled up unbidden and somewhere in the back of his mind Law marvelled at how a person didn’t simply run out of things to cry over at some point in their lifetime. He jolted as Luffy brushed the damp bruises under his eyes with sweeping thumbs and it felt so good to let the weight of his head drop back into those hands for a moment that he decided to sink. He wanted to drop his whole weight into Luffy because he was sagging and falling apart and then, when he did, those hands caught him because of course they always would.

Then there was a bed under him and he was sat looking into Luffy’s eyes as he crouched in front of Law, frowning. Why was he frowning? A cheek pressed to his temple and Law sighed into it.

“Oh Law, you really overdid it huh.”

“Shut up.” Law frowned. He didn’t want Luffy to shut up, did he?

Luffy laughed, just lightly, and Law felt another tear escape which was so stupid because this was good but he was just so tired now.

“Law.”

He blinked, the world and all its moving parts coming back into sharp focus suddenly.

“Do you want to wash first or just go to sleep?”

He could feel the air chilling the dampness on his chest and back and the grime of several days on his palms and fingertips. Every piece of his clothing was layered with sweat and if he had any sanity left, he’d demand Luffy take him to a shower or a bath or even a bucket, frankly but, God, just the idea of moving. He grimaced. It didn’t seem worth it to cling to sanity at this point. He just wanted to fall apart.

“Law.” Luffy waited until Law met his eyes and blinked into focus. “I’m coming back.” And then he vanished.

Law swallowed. Felt pathetic for a moment. Blinked through a few new tears and thought with a touch of amusement that Luffy would be pleased he was crying, the maniac. Then it all got a bit too much, so he pressed his head into his hands and focused all of his attention on the heart beating a myriad of patterns in his chest, as steady as it ever was.

When hands appeared back on his knees, he knew that meant Luffy had returned. The knowledge sat in his mind and Law could tell he was still on unstable ground because a quiet voice at the back demanded his eyes stay shut just in case, that Luffy was in front of him but he might not be.

Oh how Law hated when logic fled like this.

Enough of this.

He breathed in deeply and was pleased at how smooth it felt. An extra weight pressed into his thigh and he took a moment to catalogue the smell of the room and the feel of the mattress and the small sounds of another person next to him.

Law lifted his head and dared to look out, finding Luffy crouched in front of him, head rested on Law’s leg and smiling up at him.

Law scowled, just as baffled at Luffy’s thoughts as he’d ever been. “What the hell are you smiling at?”

“You’re here.”

Law felt his heart skip and watched as Luffy’s eyes flicked down for a moment as if to tease that he’d clocked the response.

It should have worn off, the cause and effect and thrill of feeling these little tells every time and knowing that each one of his was felt in equal part. It was just such a raw and open connection that even now, several years after they’d swapped the very life of themselves, it could still make him blush how Luffy had this cheat code to his thoughts. Especially now, because he’d thought it was finished with.

“You’re awake,” Luffy said.

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“No, but you weren’t awake.”

He didn’t bother denying that. He was still a little dizzy from the last few minutes, still half drunk on exhaustion and far too close to his edges.

“Here, let’s get these off.”

“Are you trying to get me naked?”

“Yup. Torao’s pretty when he’s naked.”

“What am I, a piece of meat?”

“Mmmm the juiciest, tastiest piece of meat.”

“Idioms are lost on you.”

“Idiots are always getting lost.”

“Idioms.”

“Who?”

His jeans caught on one ankle and Law couldn’t help but laugh. The heart in his chest was trilling, little beats like feet dancing lightly on their toes, which he’d learnt was one of Luffy’s resting rhythms. Light and bubbly and playful.

Then Law was sat there, bare and chilled on the bed, as Luffy reached to the floor and picked up a cloth. The tendons in Luffy’s wrists flexed as he wrung it tight and folded it over itself.

That was where he vanished to, then. If Law was by himself, he would have probably passed out in his clothes then woken up crawling out of his skin and unable to shake the feeling. When did Luffy get so good at reading him?

The damp cloth swept over his face, right up to his hairline and under his nose and then down the line of his neck and over his chest. He watched as Luffy concentrated on his skin, dipping the cloth back and wringing, methodically making his way down to fingertips and beyond. Throughout the whole process, Law wondered over the fact he’d even thought to warm the water.

“Marry me,” he had to say.

Luffy glanced at him with a curl on his lips. “You already promised we would.”

“I know, I wanted to say it.”

Luffy laughed. “Okay, as many times as Torao wants.”

“Kiss me.”

Luffy grinned, shark like. “Mm, as many times as Torao wants.” Then he leaned forward and up until his lips met Law’s in a gentle press.

Law had been the one to kiss him in the bar, hard and desperate and furiously angry with overloaded relief, but he needed this peaceful moment now. He needed to ask for something and have it given, needed to know he could trust this.

“Move over,” Luffy grinned at him. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Why are you still fully clothed?”

Luffy stretched, all long lines and muscles and confidence. “I get it, Torao wants me naked like a piece of meat.”

“Fucking hell Luffy,” Law laughed, “I swear you do this on purpose.”

“Do what?” Luffy winked, kicking his shorts off into a heap behind him. Then he crawled over Law and dropped his weight on him like a blanket, giggling as the breath wheezed out of him and he spat out a curse.

The room stayed quiet for a moment as they both stopped to relish the press of skin on skin and the strange sensation of another person’s rising chest pushing into them.

“Lu-ya.”

“Mm?”

“Not that I’m not grateful to no longer be covered in sweat, but could you not have also washed yourself? Doesn’t it kind of defeat the point if only one of us is clean?”

“Nope,” Luffy rolled them to lie, side by side and squeezed close on the narrow bed. “Torao likes to be clean but he also likes me like this.” And he rubbed his nose into Law’s collar, right at the join of his neck, like he couldn’t quite get over being so close together again.

“I hate you. You’re disgusting.” Then Luffy licked a long line over his neck and Law couldn’t help the sharp in-breath response, shivering at the smell and feel of Luffy all around. “Fuck, I’m disgusting.” Luffy nibbled on his jaw because he was like that as a person, and Law let down whatever last dregs he’d been keeping as a false barrier between them, hooking his feet around Luffy’s leg and stealing it for himself. An arm wrestled in under his head, the world shrank down to miniature, and everything was good.

Luffy stared at him like he loved him and the heart in his chest did a little bouncing beat and if to say yes, yes I do.

“Are you doing that on purpose?”

Lips pressed to his and held there for a second before Luffy spoke in a mumble, “Torao’s not asking proper questions.” Then he waited for Law to roll his eyes and begin to huff a response that started something like ‘you know exactly what I’ so he could push closer and lick into his mouth.

Law’s heart skipped several beats at the same time the one in his chest beat in doubles.

The kiss was deep and warmed him all the way to his bones even as Luffy pulled back with a grin and a laugh bubbling just under his skin simply because he was so alive and so full of joy at having Law near again and then they were locking eyes across the room for the first time and fighting side by side for no reason other than to show off and making promises they didn’t yet know the meaning of and then Luffy was shining high in the sky and Law was flying through the air at every turn and they were resurfacing next to each other again and again breathing salt air and sand and wind and the sight of each other and life was incredible and terrifying and constant and slow and never stopping and overwhelming and monotonous and ever-surprising and harder every day and easier all the time and the sun fell from the sky and Luffy was dying, right in front of him as Law’s foot splashed through a pool of what might be blood and kept going, knees tensing as the world rippled and stretched and haki pounded through him as the heat built and he couldn’t make it in time even as his room stretched out in front because the sky above was opening into a maw that could swallow the sun and Luffy was alone, untethered on the ground, and not even he could hold the earth and the heavens in his grip all at once but still he hung there and pulled with all his might as if he could as ripples billowed out and the sky reached fingers to snatch and pull and tear at him and Law felt it, the seize of the heart in his chest as it all became too much and his foot splashed through fresh blood and then splashed down into the earth in a way it should never do because the very earth was melting and Law couldn’t get there but it didn’t matter because he didn’t have a choice it wasn’t a thing he could or couldn’t do that wasn’t how this worked so he opened a room beyond his expanding room and he screamed as the heart in his chest began to burn and melt inside of him and as he heard Luffy’s wild laugh boom over the battlefield he grabbed hold of every single thing inside and his last thought was shambles.

“We’re okay now.”

The voice came through slowly, repetitive and curling.

“Torao is here with me, and we’re safe.”

His skin was buzzing. He felt like a dying engine, spluttering and sparking and cracking.

“Luffy.”

“Hello Law,” said Luffy. “I missed you.” And he kept holding gently as those words finally shattered him.

With a release like a wave cresting, again and again Law sobbed, loud and open. He clung to Luffy and felt hot skin under his fingertips and knew that it was real. He felt the mattress creak under their weight and knew he was on the island Dawn that he’d never before set foot on. He felt pressure on his face and neck and all around where Luffy held. And Law knew that somehow he was alive and glad of it.

“You’re doing well, you know. I know Torao hates this but it’s good, I promise.”

Law hated crying. God, he hated crying. He hated the loss of control and the betrayal of his body and the way it left him dazed and slow.

But Luffy always kept his promises.

Hello Law.

They were okay now, somehow.

The world fell apart and here they were in spite of it.

What a thing.

Law cried and this time he let his body wail like it wanted to, let the current pull him under because Luffy was holding him and he knew Luffy wouldn’t drown him.

His head hurt, his limbs ached, he felt better than he had in weeks because this was all-consuming but it would not last forever.

Luffy kissed his cheeks as the sobs died down, ran his fingers through Law’s hair and pressed them close together.

“You died.” Law’s voice was wrecked. A torn thing that limped, hurting itself.

Luffy pulled back just enough to look properly at him. “I’m alive now.”

“You died,” Law needed to say this out loud or he’d always be terrified of it. “Again.”

“Mm,” said Luffy, seriously thinking about it. “I don’t think I’m any good at it though.”

“What?”

“Twice and I’m still here.” His gaze was intense and Law never wanted to look away. “I must not be very good at it.”

“Was that a joke?”

“Nope.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“Not really.”

“No, I mean it. How the hell am I even alive? I shouldn’t be. The heart in your chest can’t have been keeping me alive because it wasn’t here. Not until… so how-”

Luffy cut him off with a kiss, swallowed the words and drank him. “Later,” he said. Another kiss, pressed to his lips and then travelling in little jumps down his jaw and into the crook of his neck because Luffy was like a vampire and would probably actually take a bite out of him if he thought Law would let him.

“This has been infuriating me for months already,” Law huffed.

And Luffy grinned, bright and wide and so jarring in the harshness of the moment.

Law squinted, tried to make sense of what he was seeing and realised it was hopeless. “Why the fuck are you smiling right now you actual psychopath.”

The smile dimmed just a little and Luffy gave a nervous giggle, avoiding eye contact as he muttered, “Ahh Torao won’t like it.”

“Don’t you fucking dare. What the hell did you just think?”

“I was just thinking how proud I am.”

“Ugh.”

“You kept living.” Law stopped breathing. This was why Luffy was dangerous. His voice was warm and unavoidable and god so fucking earnest, “You’ve been grieving, and even healing, right? That’s why you looked for Brook.”

“Oh my god, I hate you.”

Luffy giggled.

“That was disgusting. Take it back, right now.”

“Nope.” Luffy squished his face in close.

“I hate you. Get off of me.”

Of course that just made Luffy laugh louder because he was the worst.

“Torao loves me.”

“I do not. Don’t you dare put words in my mouth.”

“Torao wants to marry me.”

“Who’d marry you?”

“Torao would. And he’d do it again. I’ll marry you even better this time.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Lu-ya. How do you marry someone better? It’s not a skill you improve at.”

“I’ll show you how. And if you disagree, we’ll do it again until I win.”

“Until you win? Fuck right off. Why would I give you another chance to prove some nonsense point that makes zero sense to begin with?”

“Because Torao likes marrying me.”

Luffy kissed right under his chin and Law huffed out of the way, “I do not.”

“Torao likes indulging when I say ridiculous things.”

“I never indulge you. It’s like finding a stray, if you feed them once they’ll keep coming back. You have to be cruel.”

Luffy laughed and tried to hold it back, failing with a snort into the hollow of Law’s throat. Disgusting. Law quickly clamped down on his smile before Luffy could look up and catch him out.

“Torao likes that I know how much he loves me.”

“You’ve got a big fucking ego, don’t you? What’s so great about you?”

Luffy rolled on top of him and sat up abruptly, tapping his chin as he thought. “Hmm, Torao thinks I’m a hot piece of meat.”

Law laughed out loud at that. “Not that again, you show off.” Luffy winked. “You’re a brute.” Fingers crept softly up Law’s ribs. “You haven’t got a clue, have you?”

Luffy grinned down at him and it was dazzling in the way that tiny moments are always everything. “Torao likes teasing me.”

“Oh you think I’m joking?”

Luffy waited a moment until Law’s eyes started to drift down the length of him before he grinned again, “Torao likes looking at me.”

Law met his gaze with a strict deadpan. “You’re so-so at best. I simply have no choice when you climb on top of me.”

Luffy’s hand came to rest over the curl of Law’s chest tattoo, fingers tapping the faintest twin of Law’s own distant heartbeat into the skin that once held it. His voice, when he spoke, was low and sad in a way it rarely sounded, “Torao likes having my heart in his chest. Likes feeling me with him.”

The breath caught in Law’s throat.

Safe and protected in his chest, Luffy’s heart beat in a series like a waltz then switched to a four-part pitter patter like rain on a body of water. Law’s eyes felt hot. He thought about landing in the middle of a Winter island and feeling colder than the snow around him. He remembered a cave and the complete silence of his chest and thinking that he was dead, that this emptiness must be the end of all things. He looked up at Luffy and felt that first burst all over again as heat and the pulsing sound of a drum beat rushed through him after so long with nothing.

“Why would I want…” he swallowed, grabbed a hold of himself and scowled, “Why would I want a stupid thing like that?”

Luffy lay himself back down over Law, staying propped up on one elbow so he could hover, face to face, then lean in to just above his ear and say, “I think, it’s because Law loves me.”

And Law wrapped Luffy tight in his arms, tangled their legs together, and said, “I do. I love you so much, you have no idea. Now tell me you love me too.”

“Mm. I do. Love Law. More than he knows.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Never.”

“I love you.”

“Knew it.”

“I love you.”

“Mm. Love you Law.”

“I mean it, I really love you.”

“I know.” Luffy kissed him how he always did, like it was a game and a prize and his favourite kind of worship. Then he kissed him softly on the forehead in case Law thought he hadn’t meant it. “Torao should let himself sleep now.”

“Will you promise me something?”

“Of course. What does Torao want?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Luffy laughed and wiggled himself into the comfy spot by Law’s armpit, sliding an arm under his waist and settling down as pleased as anything. “Okay, I promise to promise you something when you know what you want, does that work?”

“Yeah,” Law mumbled from halfway into dreamlessness. “Yeah that works.”

Chapter Text

Shanks chewed absentmindedly on his spoon, mind stuck in a morning haze and tripping, fixated on the thought of where the food Brook ate might be ending up. The man in question was sitting to one side, quietly chatting with Bepo while tuning and plucking a violin, the two of them sharing a sweet-smelling pot of tea. Lucky Roux had taken over for the day, giving Makino some time to sleep late and not worry about feeding the monsters (Luffy) that had taken up residence, and the bar was filled with the smell of fresh bread and bacon grease, coffee and the floral tea Makino hand-picked from the hillside.

He didn’t even have a throat, though. So like, where did the tea go?

Shanks glanced over to his left, where Law was slumped over a coffee cup looking like death warmed, frozen over, and then reheated again a bit too quickly over a campfire. The doctor he usually bothered, Hongo, had very little patience for Shanks’ wonderings on the best of days, but Law was a doctor too, right? Surgeons were doctors. And he’d known Brook for some years already.

He opened his mouth, half-formed question on his tongue just as he remembered alligator legs and the fact Law had willingly given his own actual heart to somebody else to keep in their chest. Not that Shanks minded. Hell, none of them would be sat here together if he hadn’t (and wasn’t that a thought), but like, it didn’t say great things for his sanity. Or Luffy’s for that matter, not that Shanks held any illusions there. It also wasn’t a thing that made sense unless you wiggled your fingers and let the batshit science of devil fruits fill in the blanks. He looked back to Brook. Right. Devil fruit. That had to be it.

That still did not explain where his tea was going.

Shanks had left the ship that morning far earlier than he’d ever normally dare wake, stopping only momentarily to wonder over the fact his own dear crew, his sweet drunkards and layabouts, were awake at dawn and in the middle of a lively discussion in the galley. Limejuice (and it was always fucking Limey, wasn’t it) had begun a betting poll, it would seem. Early bets had been for which crewmate would show up first and the closest time of arrival seeing as they had a vague smattering of names like Zoro, Nami, Sanji, and of course, Usopp. Then Lucky Roux had pointed out that the first one to turn up had been a skeleton that had had no prior mention, and they added a third part to the betting, simply titled ‘Anything fucking goes.’ Currently, an actual robot had great odds, though Shanks suspected that was just wishful thinking. Some clown had suggested a marine officer, at captain or higher. Several people were debating if Luffy was more likely to have befriended the fishmen, merfolk, or giants, and the giants seemed to be coming out on top. As Shanks walked out to the dawn painted deck, Beckman and Roux in tow, he called out a bet for a former warlord. Just for the hell of it.

The three had taken their time to walk leisurely along the docks and through the still-sleepy streets, enjoying the early morning air and the way the sun caught on the windmill blades on the hills above them. As they walked, Beckman wondered aloud which warlord Shanks figured most likely to join Luffy’s crew.

He hadn’t really thought it out. Just wanted to throw a suggestion that sounded unreasonable but would be hilarious if he ended up winning the pot.

“In all likelihood, we won’t have heard of half the warlords they know,” he’d pointed out.

“That’s true,” Beckman mused. “They did mention Doflamingo supposedly came in last time. You noticed…”

“The immediate tension as soon as he was referenced? Hard to miss.”

“If he killed Rosinante last time, then there’s a hell of a history between him and Law.”

“I wonder what had the marines worried enough to spy on him.”

“That they could then immediately ignore, yeah.”

They walked in silence for a moment before Roux piped up, “You trust him then, chief? This spy.”

“No idea. But…”

Beckman gave a wry smile, “But he’s Torao’s Shanks.”

Shanks laughed. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Roux grinned, wide and unnerving, “And what do we think of this Torao then? Quite the duo, him and Anchor. How the hell did that happen?”

“Opposites attract,” offered Beckman.

“My issue,” started Shanks, “is we already know asking Luffy is going to be infuriating. And I guarantee Law is the kind of asshole who’d rather lead you along and deliberately mislead your thinking until you trip and fall right into his game. He won’t say shit if we ask him outright.”

“Chief. You just described yourself.”

“I absolutely did not. Take that back, you swine.”

“Hear me out,” Beckman began, which was never a good thing. “Luffy doesn’t have a warlord on his crew.”

“It was half a joke, Beck.”

“But instead, Law as a warlord.”

Shanks inhaled to protest such a crazy idea immediately, then froze the thought on his tongue and turned it over a second time. Could he see it? Maybe. Maybe not. Could a surgeon offer enough to the government to make themselves seem appealing? Actually, that raised more questions. What the hell kind of surgeon became a pirate captain in the first place?

“Ahhh but can you really see him working for the government,” Roux asked. “He doesn’t exactly scream ‘I can take orders’, does he?”

“Crocodile is a warlord now.”

“Name me one warlord that’s not doing it with the explicit goal to swindle the government in some way.”

“That’s a good point that,” Roux conceded.

Why would a surgeon become a pirate captain indeed. Shanks thought back to last night, to the dangerous crackle in the air as Law swept in like a disaster and the cocky way he’d held himself on introduction. “Name me a guy more likely to swindle the government than Trafalgar Law.”

“That’s a great point that, Chief.”

“I’m still not sure I can see it,” admitted Shanks. “But I hope it’s true. That’d be fucking hilarious.”

The three of them paused just outside Party’s.

“Yeah,” asked Roux. “How d’you reckon?”

“Well now. I think. We can all agree. That there’s no hope in hell Luffy would ever, ever, become a warlord.”

Beckman froze, blinked like a fish, then burst out laughing and had to prop himself on the wall. Roux frowned, “I genuinely shudder at the thought, Chief. Ain’t no fucking way.”

“Right,” grinned Shanks. “Exactly.”

“Not sure I follow.”

Beckman tried to pull himself together. Failed. Tried again and choked on his spit. “So what are the odds Luffy got his husband fired from the warlords then?”

Shanks grinned the kind of maniac look that was normally seen shortly before a marine officer developed a very bad headache. “Oh, high, Beck. I’d say pretty fucking high.”

#

For the second time in two days, the door to the bar burst open to reveal a man breathing raggedly from running half the island. Predictably, the mystery man immediately zeroed in on the time-travelling pirate at the counter.

One of the time-travelling pirates. There were too many of those now.

Luffy. He was looking at Luffy.

Shanks, used to this by now, didn’t even bother to get up off his seat. Oh, sure, he could tell the man probably had a fair fight in him if he put his mind to it but, after yesterday, the bear, the skeleton, his apparently kind-of-adoptive son’s husband’s kind-of-adoptive dad, and the revelation that Luffy was apparently holding reality in his hands in order to allow his whole crew to time-travel to the past (which Shanks used to just think of as the now), Shanks had decided that actually, this was an event he was simply going to let happen as it so wished. There would be enough stress to deal with once everyone had calmed down and started actually talking things through to bother getting all excited every time a time-traveller burst through the door. One only had so much energy to give in a day. Besides, this one carried quite a bit less murderous intent than Luffy’s own husband had, so like, it would probably be fine. Roux had given him a second bowl of porridge and snuck some bacon in while Luffy was distracted. Shanks was good.

The man at the door, shirtless and jacked, was staring wide-eyed like he didn’t know now what to do. Like he didn’t want to be here. Like this was something to be feared.

Luffy though, Luffy was looking at a ghost.

Ace is alive.

It’d been six years since he had seen his brother.

Ace is alive.

Six years since the Marines had executed his brother.

Ace is alive.

The last time Ace had looked at him, there had been a gaping hole in his chest and blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. He had died because Luffy was too slow, too weak, too late, too small to stand up against the world. Ace was dead, had died in his arms with a smile and the sheer audacity to thank him for it.

Luffy had lived six years beyond his brother’s death and had spent those years in the only way he knew to do, wholly without regrets.

There had been nothing for him to regret in the act of failing to save Ace because Luffy had given everything he had to the attempt. That fact, that he wouldn’t have done anything different, did nothing to stop the heartbreak. In fact, that more than anything had come the closest to breaking him. Because Luffy had no regrets and yet… Ace was dead. And those things didn’t make sense in the same world.

Ace is alive.

How do you rationalise a grief you fought so desperately to prevent after learning that it was a hopeless fight? How do you resent someone for dying in your place when you were willing to do the same for them? How do you not?

Ace is alive.

Maybe Luffy at seven and naïve or at seventeen, newly broken, or even at twenty-one and on top of the world, would reflexively smile and bring his brother in without thinking, because all Luffy wanted was a hug and to hear Ace laugh as he made fun of him one more time while they lay side by side. All he wanted was to bask in his big brother’s warmth and be idiots together for a little while. All he wanted, really, was for Ace to be happy and to be free on the sea and comfortable in his own skin even if, for those things to happen, it meant that Luffy never got to see him again.

But then, in a softer voice than he’d maybe ever used, just so so confused, Ace said only, “Lu?”

And Luffy didn’t do grudges, didn’t bother, didn’t care to try. But Ace had promised him the impossible and made him believe in a world too fragile to survive. But Ace had never gotten to live in a world where he believed that he was loved. And it was that part that gave Luffy incentive to hold on for a moment to a grudge. Because how dare he. How dare he tear himself down when he was wonderful and good and one of Luffy’s own people.

Luffy demanded the impossible be made tangible and by the sea and the earth and everything that held itself alive Luffy was going to seize this now they had found themselves in and this time, Ace would survive.

With a snarl, coarse and angry and heavy with intent, Luffy rocketed off his stool and punched Ace hard enough to send him flying to crash off somewhere in the street. Then he vanished after him to burn off some of the cagey energy that raced around his joints.

“Well,” Shanks said to the room in the aftermath, “I suppose Anchor has whatever the hell that was in hand.”

“Can’t believe he can throw a proper punch now,” Beckman added.

“Seas,” said Shanks. “Yeah, like a pistol that was.” And they both laughed at that.

Brook, having broken off from the little bits of melodies he’d been playing with through breakfast, tilted towards Law. For a brief moment, Shanks wondered if the skeleton would be furrowing his brow if he still had brows or if those little motions in the skin were long lost to the dead man.

“Was that Ace-san?”

Law just sighed over his coffee. The dark bruising under his eyes was much more noticeable in the morning light than it had been during his own dramatic entry the previous night and he’d barely spoken two words to anyone so far, deep into his second coffee and clearly eyeing up the pot for a third.

“Ace?” Beckman queried.

“Ah,” Brook turned a couple of the pegs on his violin ever so slightly, “Luffy-san’s older brother.”

Shanks and Beckman froze, one mid coffee swig and the other suddenly aware the food in their throat was in danger of not being swallowed.

Recovering like a champ and reminding himself to be prepared for quite literally any and all revelations that were bound to unfold because nothing made sense anymore, Shanks managed to voice incredulity at the fact that, “Anchor has a brother?”

“Two,” Law roused himself to supply. God, he sounded like he’d been chewing gravel. “None of them are blood related. I think he met them after you left.”

“Huh.”

Beckman eyed the door through which they could all hear various crashes and the odd yell of ‘Luffy wait’ or ‘idiot, stupid, asshole’ and other such similar cries.

“Do they…” an explosion sounded, thankfully a little more distant now, suggesting they’d at least gotten clear of the village. “Not get on then?”

“On the contrary, Benn-san. I believe they were quite close.”

Shanks’ shoulders sagged.

Sixteen years was a long time, and how wonderful it was that Law and Luffy were getting these chances to save their loved ones, that Brook here was found so quickly this time round, but they had all clearly lived through such a wealth of grief the first time around. Maybe it was unreasonable to wish they could have escaped a thing like that in a world like this, but it didn’t seem fair. He wanted to bundle little seven-year-old Luffy into his arms again and promise him that good times will come, that he won’t always be so lonely, but that boy was already gone.

A crash sounded, much closer this time.

“Should we stop them from destroying the town?”

“When did you learn haki you little shit?”

“Or maybe stop Anchor from murdering his brother?”

“They’ll be fine.”

A wall of flames raced past the window then all was silent.

Beckman was cautiously eyeing the door as if he expected it to come flying at him. Shanks was focused on the odd tension held in Law’s frame that couldn’t quite be explained by his evident exhaustion.

With one more sigh, Law downed the remainder of his cup before standing and heading for the door. “Come on Red-Hair, sounds like they might be finished. Let’s go rescue Ace-ya. I don’t think Luffy is going to be in a state to explain what’s going on.” He paused with one hand on the door and Shanks felt those sharp eyes drag through him as if to measure his worth.

Despite the fragment of softness they’d all spied on last night as he’d caught up to Luffy and the clear affection he held for the few people he called his own, there was something unnerving about Law and Shanks was almost certain he wielded it consciously as a weapon. To what end, he couldn’t say. Perhaps simply to dissect whoever troubled him.

Law continued without emotion, “The last time Luffy saw his brother, he’d just had a hole punched through his chest by an admiral.” Shanks felt his breakfast roll over in his stomach. “The admiral was aiming for Luffy.”

And for a moment, everything fell away.

Shanks could see it. Could see a broken man surrounded by devastation and a yellow submarine that slipped away through the cracks of the wreckage.

“You got him out.”

“I did.”

“Aokiji froze the sea to try and stop your escape.”

Shanks noticed that everyone in the bar took a moment to look at his arm and he did not appreciate the insinuation that the limb was about to fall off. Law, he noticed, looked genuinely quite concerned. That was nice of him.

“How the fuck do you know that?”

Shanks frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Pretty sure I held a gun to that Akainu dickhead, ‘cept it feels a bit like a dream and I’m guessing that was sometime in a future we haven’t lived,” Beckman chimed, staring off into the middle distance.

Law swore something vile under his breath.

“Oh,” said Bepo. “Sorry Captain. Penguin got his memories back too last night. Forgot what with… you know. Everything. And, you know, morning.”

Law closed his eyes and breathed in very slowly. Then he breathed it all out again.

While unable to read the man’s mind, Shanks sympathised.

“Law-san,” Brook prompted. “Weren’t you going to rescue Ace-san?”

“Right.”

Out he went.

At no sign of movement from his captain, Beckman kicked Shanks off his chair. Still trying to wrap his head around the memories that had appeared like little rags and whispers, he stumbled out the door without a protest.

Beckman squeezed the pressure point above his nose. “Hey Brook,” he said to the skeleton, “You want to get drunk?”

Chapter Text

Shanks caught his footing as he exited the bar, glancing around before following the grumpy surgeon to the crumpled figures at the very end of the street. For the amount of noise made and the sudden, desperate ferocity of the fight, they’d managed to break surprisingly little that he could see. A couple of large potholes he didn’t remember from yesterday. One empty stall lying in shattered pieces that he made a note to get the crew onto fixing later. A wall that, now broken, didn’t actually seem to go anywhere. Almost as if they’d both of them known where to aim.

Luffy had found himself two brothers. That was good. Kid was in desperate need of company and one of the many reasons Shanks had been so adamant to not let him on the crew was the hope he might make friends around his own age. The Red-Hair’s all adored him but he so clearly needed people he could learn with not just learn from.

The last time Luffy-ya saw his brother, he’d just had a hole punched through his chest by an admiral.

He knew that was true. Knew it as clearly as he knew the silhouette of a ship larger than the one sitting at port. Knew both ships were his home even though he’d not met one of them yet. Knew that when he met Luffy’s brother in a moment, he was going to have Whitebeard’s mark emblazoned on his back.

Shanks hadn’t lived through that, he hadn’t travelled through time, but these people around him had and once upon that time they met with an older version of him who would now never quite exist. What the hell was he supposed to do with that? Every time Shanks thought he was getting his head around this something rocked his footing and threw out the playbook.

Here is what else Shanks knew. He had never in his life set eyes on Law’s yellow submarine.

He did not know what he was doing.

He did not know how to hold on to this small piece of life he wanted, except to be stronger and more dangerous than anyone else in the room.

He did not know who the strongest one in the room was.

Whatever had happened, or was happening, was changing things. Luffy and Law and whoever else walked through those doors were in the process of tearing up the board on which he’d learnt to play and it was exciting. Shanks was excited. Let it never be said that Red-Haired Shanks couldn’t roll with the punches. Hells, in another life he’d had an arm bitten off by a fish. This was nothing. He couldn’t wait to see what new seas were soon to be sailed on. Even if it scared him in more ways than he’d care to admit.

Law and Shanks stopped a couple of metres from the brothers, a little dust swirling from their feet in the dry morning air, joining the light layer of it all around, kicked up by the brothers’ fist fight.

“Lu?” Poor Ace looked so confused. “Oi. Luffy.”

But Luffy wasn’t listening. He sat, braced with legs either side of his brother’s waist as if he’d just been trying to punch his lights out. Still, in fact, punching weakly on one side of Ace’s chest with a barely curled fist. The other hand clinging desperately to the string of beads around his neck as he sobbed. And oh boy did he sob.

Ace had one hand on the back of the head that was crying into him while the other just lay listlessly in the dirt. He blinked at the sky, at the mess of black hair on his front, a spacey shock on his face. “Lu,” his voice cracked. “Hey, are we dead?”

Then he floundered as Luffy just dug himself somehow closer into his chest and sobbed only louder.

Law sighed and flicked his hand out once and again up, the blue glimmer that surrounded his odd powers appearing briefly before Ace was suddenly standing on his feet, bracing hard to catch his balance and tensing so as not to drop the sprawl of limbs on top of him. It would have been very easy to give Ace a heads up beforehand but that wasn’t really something Law had felt like doing.

“What the fuck?”

“He’s not going to move for a while. You might as well come inside.”

“I… who the fuck are you? Wait a minute… Shanks?”

“Huh. Hey kid. I take it we’ve met.”

“What..? Hang on, you’ve got two arms.”

“Really? Really!? This is the point that everyone catches on to? Am I genuinely only known for having one fucking arm? Am I that shitty of a pirate that nothing else stands out?”

Ace blinked. He hiked Luffy up more securely in his grip and rubbery arms snaked themselves in rings around ribs. “I mean… You gave it up saving my little brother, that’s not something I’m likely to forget.” Oh. That was quite a bit different, Shanks thought. “Hang a minute, are you dead too? The fuck did that happen?”

“What? No, you’re not dead. None of us are dead. No dying allowed, stop making Anchor cry harder. Also, that little shit told me it got eaten by a fish.”

“I’m in the past.”

Shanks threw his hands to the sky. Of course this was Luffy’s brother. He fit perfectly.

“Well, that was easier than I thought,” Law turned himself back to the bar. “Come on, Fire Fist. I suppose you’ll want breakfast.”

Ace stared at the retreating back of a random man he’d never seen before who’d levitated him, ordered him around, and then kind of maybe confirmed his mad theory on time-travel by casually offering him breakfast. “Hey Shanks, who the absolute fuck is that?”

Oh, Shanks grinned. Oh, someone might kill him for this but it would be so worth it. “That’s your brother-in-law.”

“MY FUCKING WHAT.”

And then Shanks discovered that Ace could set his own hair on fire.

#

“Hey Beck.”

“Yo.”

“You ever feel like you live in a comedy skit,” asked Shanks.

This was a fair question. Luffy’s dead-but-no-longer-dead brother was sitting next to Shanks, Luffy still wrapped around his torso several times. Said brother was currently half-heartedly glaring at Law, who had lost his seat to Brook, who in turn was now sitting at the bar doing breakfast shots with Beckman.

Beckman didn’t bother looking up at his captain from where he was pouring out a new round for himself and Brook. “What makes you say that?”

Brook chuckled. “Life is a so often a farse, but how lovely for it.”

Meanwhile, Law ignored Ace’s glare in favour of stealing the fresh coffee pot Roux had brought out and dragging himself into the seat on Shanks’ other side. Two very different coping mechanisms there.

Law must have been feeling generous because he then poured a second mug out for Ace and dazedly asked, “Lucky-ya, can you feed him as if he’s Luffy?” As if that wasn’t mildly terrifying to hear.

Ace had actually already forgotten Shanks’ suggestion that he might have a brother-in-law and just what, exactly, that fact implied because he was only now beginning to really process that he might not be dead or dying in the middle of a battlefield.

It may or may not have helped that there was a skeleton at the bar.

“Ah,” said Brook. “How rude. Please excuse me. A pleasure to finally get the chance to meet you Ace-san. I am Brook, Luffy-san’s musician.”

Ace blinked.

“Hey, Lu,” Ace asked, gamely putting the mental screaming inside his head to one side for a moment. The limpet made out of his brother was still half buried into his collar so Ace tapped on his temple to register a question. “Where the hell did you find a skeleton to join your crew?”

Luffy unfortunately did not yet appear to be capable of even incoherent speech so Brook helpfully chimed in with, “The Florian Triangle.”

A grin spread over Ace’s face, then a laugh burst out. Carefully, he unwrapped one hand from where it was keeping Luffy steady and reached out to shake the bone fingers. “Yeah, that checks out. I met the crew just after the reindeer joined. Thanks for putting up with him.”

“Ah, Chopper-san is always a delight.”

“I cannot wait to meet the rest of your crew, Anchor.”

“Thrthbst,” came a mumble from Ace’s chest.

“Hah?” Ace frowned.

Reluctantly, Luffy raised his head and swivelled his head around like an owl till he was gazing, unfocused at Shanks. “They’re the best.”

“You doing okay there, Lu?”

Luffy’s head snapped back into place, eyes narrowed. There were tear tracks running down Luffy’s face and a red sheen to his eyes.

Ace swallowed.

The door to the bar slammed open.

“Lu, I swear, did you seriously manage to fuck around with time and land us in the past? I just know this was somehow… Oh fuck.”

Beckman raised the bottle in Law’s direction in a question and shrugged when he shook his head and reached instead for the prized pot of coffee, refilling his cup once again and then taking a full scalding gulp straight from the spout for good measure.

This was now the fourth occasion some time-traveling pirate(s) had crashed through the door (not counting Luffy who’d managed to avoid the need for the door) and it did of course still carry some element of surprise, but it had morphed from the holy fuck what the hell is this kind of shock to the who the hell is next kind of curiosity. It was better, Beckman had decided, to just wait until everyone had gotten over their own initial reactions, and then they could have some productive conversations later. Shanks accepted a large shot from Beckman and a larger coffee from Law and then poured one into the other.

Luffy peered around Ace’s shoulder to look at the newest arrival and gasped in delight. Ace, on the other hand, had gone wide-eyed and chalk white.

“Ace…” The mystery blond at the door whispered. Ace flinched.

“Sabo!” Luffy yelled, smiling for the first time since his back-from-the-dead brother had walked through the door.

“Sabo,” Ace said. “What the hell do you mean, Sabo?”

“Ah,” said Luffy.

“Ah,” said the man that was apparently called Sabo. “Yes, so…”

“Shanks, are you absolutely certain we aren’t all dead?”

Shanks sighed, “Honestly, nothing seems certain anymore. Your brother is literally holding reality in his hands or something. Who cares at this point?”

“No,” Luffy growled. “No one is dead. No dying. You are absolutely not allowed.”

“If we’re all back in time and back from the dead then why is Sabo not ten years old anymore?!”

Shanks and Beckman, so desperately intrigued after the last few out of context comments, swivelled to Law who they hoped would have some clue what was going on and be ever so slightly more articulate than their favourite gremlin. Unfortunately, Law just looked mildly uncomfortable and that wasn’t any help to anyone.

“I, um… didn’t die?”

“What do you mean you didn’t die you piece of shit? If Luffy wasn’t in the way I’d knock you out.”

“Yeah, that’s… that’s fair.”

Just slightly off to the side Brook muttered that he’d, “Never seen Sabo lost for words before.”

“I have,” muttered Law back. “Koala.”

“Ah.”

“Please guys, you gotta keep us up with that’s going on,” whispered Shanks a little further on.

“Brother three,” Law mumbled around his coffee cup.

This was Luffy’s other brother. Shanks snapped back around and took in the new addition with a more critical eye. Whereas Luffy and Ace were similarly bare chested with rich tanned skin under cargo and denim shorts, this third one to join the ranks was dressed like a mock-up noble. High boots to the top of his calves, black overcoat, and a badly tied… what was that, a stock tie? And there was an interesting scar covering half his face and disappearing down to his neck.

Ace rose to his feet and slowly staggered himself and Luffy over to the door where Sabo was stood frozen with a look of hopeful terror on his face, clearly trying very hard not to cry.

Shanks wanted to scream. Why was everyone in these kids’ pasts dead or dying?

Despite claiming he wanted to knock Sabo out, upon reaching his blond brother, Ace simply grabbed him tight in a hug. Luffy, somehow, had managed to keep his legs wrapped around Ace while twisting his torso to face Sabo and encircling his torso several times with his arms. The weirdest thing about all of this chaos might still be the fucking Gum-Gum fruit.

“I’m sorry,” Sabo was saying. “My head… I forgot… and I saw you dead... everything came back but too late… Ace… I remembered and you were dead… Luffy disappeared and…”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up, you goddamned asshole. I can’t believe you’re alive.”

“Can I just check I got this straight,” Beckman asked. “We left Dawn, Luffy found himself two brothers, one of them died, then years later the other one died, then the first one turned out to be alive when he realised the second one was dead, and now all of them are standing in front of us alive again, yes?”

“Yohohoho, that sounds about right Benn-san.”

“Five bloody fucking hells.”

Law poured himself another coffee. “Sabo very nearly died. He tried to escape the island when his ship was shot down. Massive blunt force trauma, severe burns. Honestly, the fact he didn’t drown is, in itself, a miracle. Dissociative or traumatic amnesia is a natural response for the brain in a situation like that and, without any stimulants from his old life to help the brain recognise old pathways, it’s just as likely that he could have never recovered the memories.”

“Oh, Torao’s here,” said Sabo from the huddle of brothers.

Ace popped his head up, “You know this asshole? Also wait, hang the fuck back, you had amnesia?”

“Aha. Yes. Um, yeah.”

“And you remembered because you…”

“Read an article about… you and Lu.”

“Saying I’d died.”

Sabo winced, “Yes.”

“But none of you lot died, right?”

“Correct.” Sabo said.

Shanks clocked Law's narrowing eyes at that. Considering how they’d all arrived in this mess, that statement might not have been strictly true. Though Sabo may or may not have known that.

“Ace,” Sabo continued on, oblivious. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Um…”

Law swore under his breath earning more concerned looks from along the bar. He got to his feet, “Marineford, right?”

Ace laughed and it was wet, choppy. “I woke up in the bandit’s hut and just figured that was kind of it.”

“Wait, Ace-ya, do you remember getting hit?”

“Okay, seriously. Who the fuck are you dude? Shanks, wipe that fucking grin off your face. If you say that bullshit one more time, I’m gonna hit you. Hang on, Sabo, you’re alive. Did you marry this asshole?”

“Me?” Sabo burst into hysterics.

“Luffy-ya, can you let go for a moment?” Law began walking over. “I want to check Ace over.”

“Check me? If you draw that sword, I’m gonna deck you. Just-”

Law paused, frowning. “Lu-ya?”

Luffy shook his head.

“Hey, Lu,” Sabo spoke all soft. “It’s just Law, come hug me for a minute.”

Luffy shook his head again, still clinging between his two brothers like he didn’t trust them not to vanish if he let them out of reach.

Something wasn’t right.

There was something heady in the air.

With each step Law took towards the brothers came the sensation of wading through syrup. Sticky and slow and clinging to your skin. Law brought a hand up towards his chest, fingers clutching the fabric.

Keen eyes from Sabo clocked the movement and widened. He reached awkwardly for the shoulders braced against his front. “Lu, what’s wrong?”

A head shake.

“God, Lu," Sabo gasped. "That’s really tight. I can’t quite breathe.”

“Stretchy…” Luffy mumbled.

Everyone could tell something was wrong.

It rippled out from the brothers like static, like nails dragged on a chalkboard, like finding yourself underwater and upside down.

Law lifted a foot and placed it down, jolting as, just for a moment, he imagined something splash and soak his boot. He swallowed, looked to the floor, saw that it was stable, and told himself that the world was not ending.

Stretchy.

Why now, what was happening? Yesterday, making contact with Brook seemed to help settle things. These two being here would suggest that last night’s wave of haki had done its work more effectively than anyone could have guessed. That suggested a whole hoard of incoming problems in itself but even so, the load should have lightened. Did they make a mistake? Did bringing more people make it more difficult to control? Was this too much at once? Was it just the shock from seeing Ace again that was throwing Luffy into a tailspin?

Law managed another step forwards, sure this time that even though the floorboards didn’t splash like a liquid, they clung to his boots like they were painted with something sticky. The bar was hot. The thick air warm enough for you to feel it in lie your lungs, slather a layer of sweat… “Oh fuck.”

Why had none of them thought of this?

“Luffy,” Law swallowed the panic clean down his throat before it caught on any of his words. He was a professional. He did not panic. “What exactly are you holding onto right now?”

The heart underneath his hand, under his clothes and skin and bones, was getting louder, pounding in patterns that shouldn’t work and starting to reverberate and echo out around the room like the drums were here.

“Ace,” Luffy gasped. “Ace and Sabo at the same time.”

Law stepped forward and felt the ground give and ripple under his feet. Fuck.

“Okay.” Another step and almost close enough to reach out and touch Ace’s back. He spread out a hand and opened the largest room he could which… was not as large as he would have liked. The mad dash across East Blue had not been his best thought out plan but then, he’d learnt some years ago that sometimes it was better to act without planning. “Okay. If you let go, does something happen? Do I need to move one of them away?”

“If you touch me, I’m gonna-” Ace started up a new threat which would probably have been just as heartfelt as the others except he was cut off as Sabo met Law’s steady gaze in a dawning horror and he came to the same creeping realisation.

“Oh no.”

Ace frowned, “Sabo?”

“Luffy, Lu-ya, hey. Can you hear me? I can reach to the edges of town. To the beach, if you need. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Can’t let go.”

If Sabo was not Sabo, they would be in a full-blown panic. As it was, they were pretty fucking close. “Ace, stay calm-”

“What the hell is going on? Someone please-”

“Shut up.” Spines all across the room straightened at the harsh command in Sabo’s voice. “If Law tells you to do something, do it immediately. I promise we’ll talk through everything after. Stay calm. Do not use your devil fruit.”

At the bar, Brook breathed in sharp enough to make the air whistle across his bones. With no small amount of horror, Shanks realised he could somehow read an expression of fear in the skeleton’s face.

Entirely aware they were out of their depths, Shanks and Beckman had hands on their weapons out of reflex more than any belief it would help.

One more step and Law was alongside them, close enough to grab Luffy if he fell once one of his brothers had been swapped out to the edge of town or close enough to… Law did not know what to do. It was hot this close. Whether that was from Luffy or the unnatural clash of two fire logias that had no way to exist in the same time and space, he hadn't a clue. Except here they both were, that Law did know. Two people that had eaten the same devil fruit and it was possible because Law and Luffy had done… something.

“Sabo?” A grunt was all Ace got in response. “I know you said not to use it, but it is getting harder to avoid it.”

“I know,” Sabo sounded winded. “I feel it too.”

Ace wheezed and braced as if someone had layered a fresh load of bricks on his shoulders. His hands were fisted tight in the fabric over Sabo’s shoulders and that was the only thing keeping him upright as the world swam in front of his eyes and the floor became loose. A slow bead of sweat dripped from his temple at the same time a thin steam of blood began to trickle from his nose.

Good God it was hot.

Law was very aware that if this went badly, he was taking the full brunt of whatever the hell was in the rebound. “Lu-ya, I can’t hold a room like this too long. Do I move them or not?”

“No.” Luffy’s voice crackled through the room, different from Sabo’s air of command earlier. It wasn’t quite haki but it was something. “Then’s not letting go, I’ve just got to pull.” He looked up, as if to offer reassurance or to check that Law was listening properly and his blazed eyes a piercing red.

“Our past is pulling us back?” Ace whispered.

“Ace,” Sabo snapped. “If you finish that thought, I am going to let Law experiment freely on you once all this is fixed. Lu, can we help?”

“Just… Hold on. Tight.”

“Law, swap with me. Now.”

There were very few people in the world that could give a command Law that would consider following. There were very few people in the world that Law would trust to look after the people he held in his heart.

This young Shanks might not be the person that Law had once grown to respect but, when it came to Luffy, he knew that Shanks was to be trusted.

“Shambles.”

Law landed on a barstool and Shanks appeared in the middle of a sticky heat with one hand holding out a straw hat. No one heard the little rustle of straw on hair but him and the three brothers huddled desperately close.

“Luffy,” said Shanks. “A pirate must keep their treasure safe. Are you a pirate or not?”

Flames were starting to lick up the edges of Sabo and Ace’s outlines. A terrifying flicker that came from nowhere except the inside of their cores. Shanks stood steady, posture relaxed and an easy grin on his face as he took in the picture of Luffy crowned in his old captain’s hat for the very first time.

And Luffy laughed.

It suits him, he thought.

One hand came up to brace the straw crown and tilt it up to show a wide grinning face. “Shanks is so smart, Shihihihihahahahahaahaaa.”

Shanks breathed in deep as the air all around him and down inside his lungs stretc h  e   d         w            i                 d                        e. The hat stayed, held in place as Luffy’s hair rolled and flickered a bright, blinding white that spread to his clothes and seemed to wrap around the brothers like a scarf. Luffy laughed and then he snarled, loud as the drums that sounded from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Luffy was bright and hot and blinding and the air around him glowed while the shadows cast over his face held something terrifying. Luffy was inhuman.

“Give them to me.”

The room dipped and bowed as he grasped hold of his brothers, one on either side, and he pulled.

Something snapped.

The limbs wrapped in tight rings around Ace and Sabo sprung back to their usual size and the recoil spun them both out to spill over the ground, gasping for breath and feeling like they’d just had a bucket of sea water poured over then a bath of their own fire.

In the middle stood Luffy, laughing and giddy, light rippling off of him like sunrays.

He brought a hand to his chest and pressed in as if to remind himself of something and the laughter calmed and settled. Colour faded back in and the room dimmed back to normal levels that now felt dull and washed out. The wild hair, curling and reaching in its own patterns slowly darkened and steadied and, with a last blink, even the red eyes were changed back to a familiar brown. With one last amused huff his knees buckled and Shanks swept in before he could even try to catch himself on shaking hands.

“Easy there, Anchor.”

“Sabo… Ace…”

“Yeah, Luf. All good.” Sabo wheezed out a laugh as he rolled onto his back. “Holy fuck.”

“What the,” Ace paused to gasp for a moment, “What the actual fuck. Like,” he couldn’t help joining in with a hysteric laugh from somewhere deep in his belly, “What the actual hell. Fuck me. I feel like someone ran me over with a boat.”

Law padded back over to where the bothers were spread out in disarray, suddenly aware that his own feet were not feeling altogether steady and so so glad the ground had returned to a regular firm pressure. He smirked, “Straw-Hat-ya.”

Luffy just laughed in response, reaching to feel the hat he loved so dearly beneath his fingers once again. A younger hat. One without all of the carefully sown threads where Nami had patched it back together again time, after time, after time.

“Is everything… are we good?”

Luffy gave a shaky thumbs up. “I feel good. High as gas.”

At his side, Shanks tried to hold in a laugh of his own. “Very reassuring, Anchor. Can you stand?”

“Sure,” said Luffy making absolutely no moves to stand.

Deciding no one was getting up anytime soon, Shanks sat and lowered Luffy to rest against him. He watched with a frown as Law threw up another room and seemed to move his sword in that same ‘scan’ thing he did the night before. There was sweat beading down the side of his head and he looked not far off collapse himself. “Law, sit down before you pass out.”

“I’m fine.”

Shanks narrowed his eyes.

Once again, the goddamned fucking bar door opened. This time thankfully there was only the previous lot of time-travelling pirates so everyone immediately dismissed this as not important. Which was slightly alarming for Rosinante, Shachi, and Penguin who’d just opened the door.

“Huh.” Rosinante remarked, observing the carnage in front of them.

Just off to the side, Ace started to snore.

Chapter Text

“So, Doc. What’s your deal?”

Law spared a moment to glance away from where he was inspecting several jigsaw pieces of Ace’s ribcage and vital organs, all suspended neatly above his chest, in order to meet his eyes. “My deal.”

“I notice you don’t rush to introduce yourself as Luffy’s crewmate, yet you seem awfully comfortable with all this time bullshit.”

Law hummed, scanning the room lazily and meeting Bepo’s tired look for a moment. He held himself back from a smirk but, from Bepo’s long-suffering sigh, his first mate likely knew the kind of mood Law was in anyway. The fingers he held, splayed out in front, flicked around and down, and Ace’s liver slot back into place followed by a squashed box that held several layers of muscle and grisly bits.

Man didn’t even blink.

“I’m hardly the only one in the room too sensible to call that idiot a captain. I don’t see you challenging them.”

Ace’s eyes were sharp. Not hostile but… it was easy to remember the time in which he’d been respected and feared across the Grand Line and beyond as one of Whitebeard’s commanders. “Everyone in here, besides Brook, either belongs to Red-Hair or has been looking to you for cues this whole time.”

One brow raised in a mocking curl, “Is that right? Yet you don’t seem to mind that my hands are currently holding the inner workings of your chest.”

“Eh. My brothers clearly trust you with me.”

Law hummed, curious.

“Even if you are a bit of a dick.”

A few feet away, Sabo chuckled. He was sprawled over a backwards chair so to rest a chin on folded arms, very much enjoying the sight of Ace trying to figure out the rules of this particular game. It was unfortunate, he thought, that Ace had picked Law as his target seeing as the bloodthirsty surgeon undoubtably had one of the better poker faces around. But then, Ace had always enjoyed a challenge. Sabo looked down to his calf where Luffy had attached himself, curled like a creeping vine and staring in a soft kind of wonder at the sight of Ace and Law cautiously poking at each other.

Hard to believe this might be something they’d be allowed to keep. Hard to care if they were in fact dead, he thought, seeing Luffy so happy around all these people that he loved.

“I’m just curious,” Ace continued, “how another pirate captain got himself thrown into the past with my little brother.”

“After a certain point,” Law sighed, “I found it easier to just accept whatever insane disaster Luffy drags me into.”

“Adventures, Torao.”

“Sure. That.”

Ace laughed properly at that, which was a little disconcerting because Law was, right at that moment, slotting his lungs and ribs into place. He held out a hand and gave a lazy grin, “Portgas D. Ace. I reckon you know that already, but still. Anyone mad enough to ally with Lu is alright in my book.”

There was a long moment where Law sat stone still and searched for something only he knew. Ace’s grin didn’t falter for a second but some of the others around the bar felt a tension of their own as they waited for Law’s reaction.

Then a tattooed hand met Ace’s in a firm grip and Law spoke, clear and true, “Trafalgar D. Water Law.”

Half the gathered pirates sucked in a breath in shock, each one of Law’s posse particularly aware of the value that introduction offered.

“Oh,” Ace raised a brow. “The Surgeon of Death? You didn’t steal one of my kidneys while you were in there, did you?”

Law stood stiffly, snapped off his gloves, and wandered over to the bar for another coffee, God only knew how many he’d drunk already at this point but hell if he wasn’t still absolutely shattered. “I’m flattered you’ve heard of me.”

From over at the bar where he was lined up with Rosinante, Brook, and Beckman like the oddest assortment of parents watching from the bandstands you’d ever seen, Shanks spoke up with an, “Oho. That’s a hell of a moniker you got there, Torao.” Annoyed eyes  flickered his way and Shanks pouted obnoxiously. “How come we didn’t get the full intro, D.”

Law looked back at Ace who had been poking at the smooth, unmarked chin over his ribs in wonder at how he’d been so easily taken apart and then pieced back together again. “A curtesy, I guess. For someone who places weight in a name.” At that, Ace looked up with something calculating in his gaze. “And anyway,” Law looked to Rosinante, then to Luffy, “not sure my reason for hiding has quite the same value this time around.”

Rosinante pouted a mirror at Shanks’ side, “You didn’t even tell me about your moniker, Law. One, that’s sick as hell. Two, I am concerned and have several questions.”

“What’s the point? Law deadpanned. “That name doesn’t exist yet, might not again.”

Sabo cleared his throat. “Well? Is there any… lasting effect?”

Law rubbed his face in an attempt to clear the headache that had settled in as soon as he started taking Ace apart. A futile hope as it was currently quite content drilling a thin hole down past the inside corner of his left eye. “It’s... strange. But I have a theory as to how our older bodies are here. Or rather, a theory on the state of our bodies here.” Everyone straightened up at that. “Sabo, do you mind if I compare?”

Sabo shook his head and began to twist to allow Law the space to check him over but was stopped by a low ‘Torao’ from below.

A brief conversation seemed to pass between Law and Luffy before Law sighed and conceded. “Fine. Let’s just do a regular check-up now, I still want to check your vitals after the skip and whatever the fuck just happened between you two.” He dragged his chair over to where Sabo was and wordlessly accepted the stethoscope that Bepo seemed to materialise from nowhere, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves that appeared from a pocket. Then he raised a brow at Luffy who huffed and sulkily disentangled his limbs from Sabo’s leg.

“Are you feeling any side effects?”

“A little cool, feels similar to when I first ate the fruit. Temperature was wacky for a while then.”

Bepo passed over a thermometer.

“When did you actually ‘wake’, both of you?”

“Last night sometime.”

“Yah, same here.”

“Freaked out, thought I’d been knocked out and was missing some time, or I’d been drugged and dumped in a trash pile. Realised I was in the Grey Terminal and freaked out even more. Spent the night breaking into Goa convinced I’d fucked a mission and Koala was going to have my hide, only all our usual message points were dead and none of the numbers went through on any snails. Figured out everything was really fucked when I bumped into someone that I have on good authority died several years ago.”

Law slipped the thermometer under his tongue.

“Yeah, I woke up in the bandits’ hut and was real confused that the afterlife was so… I don’t know. Visceral? Small? That hut is way smaller than I remember.”

Law frowned at him. “And since then?”

“Mm. I think I passed out. Then I might have gone into shock. Or thrown up. It’s a bit fuzzy.”

“Right.”

“Then Dadan appeared and freaked the fuck out, screaming at me, demanding to know what I’d done with myself.”

“What?”

“Well, she was asking what I’d done with Ace. Which I now realise was because she was expecting a child and instead found a grown man in his room. But I just couldn’t believe I’d died and there Dadan was still yelling at me. So I may have cried and called her an old witch. And then I apologised for some things which really freaked her out. Then she started crying that Garp was going to kill her and I just… Well, our treehouse isn’t here yet, which I thought made for a pretty shitty afterlife. Then I ran here.”

Law inspected the little mercury dial and then began a quick check of Sabo’s eyes, snapping his fingers and watching the little contractions and blinks. Meanwhile, Luffy had lifted himself up and over to sprawl in a messy hug over Ace who wrapped his arms back around him on a reflex. It was obvious just how used to each other’s space the brothers all were and how these tactile comforts were easy, familiar things not to be questioned. It was also clear that the grief and relief everyone was feeling would take some time to lose its edge. No one was quite relaxed, it would seem.

“Are you okay?” Sabo frowned. “What drained your powers so drastically?”

Law’s jaw clenched. “Fine, thanks.”

Sabo’s brow raised slowly, “So you’re in time out because…”

“Captain skimmed us here from Reverse Mountain.”

The glare Law shot across to Penguin could have killed someone less prepared for it. Luckily, Penguin had a great deal of practice with this sort of thing and simply deflected with a peace sign and a grin.

“Skimmed,” repeated Sabo with wary tone born of too much experience.

“It’s pretty cool actually,” Shachi chimed, “even if he nearly killed himself.”

“Shachi.”

“See, you fire up the sub to max surface speed, then Captain opens a room, we’re talking one of the big ones, and swaps us with something just above the surface right at the far edge. It’s usually a bird or something, though the best times we ever got were with Usopp firing out stand-ins. Took us a good few tries to get the technique down when we first started working it out ‘cause how you thrust the engines during the brief landing point is really important. If you get it right, ship appears, bounces, keeps flying forwards while the captain sets the next room and mark. Booya.”

“Holy shit,” muttered Shanks.

Sabo’s eyes were wide. “You can skim your submarine.”

“That’s pretty fucking sick, I won’t lie.” Ace liked this guy. Nobody sane came up with something like that.

“Yes,” drawled Rosinante from the bar. “Very impressive when you’re bleeding from your nose and ears.”

“Traitor,” Law bit out.

“Torao.” Luffy’s head snapped up and around.

“I slept after that.”

“You passed out, Cap.”

Law began sliding his sword from his sheath with a nasty look in his eye.

Luffy full on growled.

Law didn’t make any further moves to draw his blade but he did look Penguin dead in the eye and remind him that, “I don’t need a devil fruit to remove your head from your shoulders. I do need it to make the removal non-lethal. Choose your next words carefully.”

Penguin slid his chair behind Bepo.

With a sigh, Law lent his sword back against the table. He glanced at Luffy and looked away again quickly. Deciding to keep his hands busy, he slid a blood pressure sleave, which literally no one saw on his person before now, onto Sabo’s bicep and began inflating it.

“We designed it as an emergency getaway,” he admitted slowly. “For sprints, not long-distance. I admit that I was… reckless, in this instance. I was more careful after passing out. We did shifts.”

From a table away, Bepo hummed.

“I was.”

“Gotta say, loving hearing about your white-knuckle approach to limits after you spent ten minutes juggling my organs.”

“Please,” said Law. “Like I’d make a mistake with that.”

Luffy huffed, “Yeah, don’t worry. Torao’s great at looking after people that aren’t himself.”

“Oi.”

Luffy stuck his tongue out and then turned back to crash his face into Ace’s neck.

The sleave deflated and Sabo slid it off onto the table behind and Law, seemingly done with his checkup, reached once more for his mug, frowning at the lukewarm sip. “You said you spent the night breaking into Goa?” he hummed.

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t feel faint or crash out?”

“I don’t think I’ve slept since I… arrived?”

“And you were okay before the jump? Physically, I mean. No injuries, anything.”

“No, nothing major.”

“Okay. Luffy?”

“Hah?”

“When you landed, any ill effects?”

Luffy hummed, “I was super sleepy. Kept passing out randomly pretty much until you all arrived.”

A twin huff of air sounded from the bar where Shanks and Beckman were watching this all unfold. “He threw up a pint of blood and then passed out for most of a day,” Shanks added. “Couldn’t stay steady on his feet for the next forty-eight hours or so.”

No one was particularly surprised that Luffy’s own assessment might have lacked some of the finer details.

Law blew out a slow breath. “Yeah, that checks out.”

Sabo leaned back with a considering hum, “So Lu was hurt when you guys jumped back, I take it? That’s what you’re saying.”

“Not just that. I think we can be confident this isn’t a matter of switching out with a younger counterpart, we’ve fully fused. Or rather, there’s only ever been one of us to begin with and one pool of energy to drawn on.”

Beckman leant in, “From the healing rates you mean?”

“If we’d simply switched places then, without a doubt, Ace and Luffy would both be dead right now.”

Ace’s arms tightened without thought, “Lu what? But you said…”

“What’s interesting is that actually most people so far have been fine. Brook seemed not to suffer any effects last night,” Brook raised his glass to confirm, “Sabo, you prove that point here. My crew, too, had little effect when they switched. So, let’s think of the younger counterparts as an energy pack.”

“That’s pretty grim,” Shanks frowned.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shachi assured. “Cap’s in work mode. We’re all blood bags and circuit boards now.”

Law ignored them. “If we assume we’re landing in what is essentially a battery pack of our own lifeforce, even if the jump itself is draining in some way, as long as you land where your counterpart is, younger and therefor higher charged, you shouldn’t notice an ill effect.”

“Unless you arrive injured,” Sabo finished, “because the energy gets spent. Holy shit.”

“The cells in Ace’s chest,” and here Law began gesturing as if he was inspecting the pieces again, “they’re healthy but new, fragile. Every layer is thin.” He nodded to Ace, “Your body’s exhausted because you’ve cycled through about six months of healing in an instant. Luffy went through something similar but wasn’t able to recover in quite the same way because he’s still holding on to the jump point and still expending huge amounts of energy.”

The bar was quiet for a moment as every tried to digest that onslaught.

“Hang on,” said Rosinante. “How badly were you injured then, because you were basically catatonic for a week after you jumped. And you were still feeling it at least a couple of months after.”

Law just waved his hand, “That’s actually the best argument for this. I wasn’t injured before the jump. Drained, sure. We’d been fighting for hours and we still have no idea how we caused this, chances are we could have burnt through whatever lifeforce we had left, who knows.”

“Excuse me, you guys did what exactly?” Ace was baffled and mighty concerned. He wasn’t the only one.

“But I wasn’t hurt the same way Luffy was. So, there’s two likely reasons my landing was rough. One, by all rights I should have just been dead outright because I didn’t have a functioning heart in my chest. I can’t claim to understand how that shit was possible yet, but if we look at the low temperatures, let’s call it an ‘irregular’ pulse, exhaustion, slow recovery… sure, reduced circulation could in theory contribute to that. So let’s pin those together for now.”

Ace and Sabo met each other’s gaze in equal horror, each caught on something slightly different. Ace was still fairly behind and had no context to apply any of this to. He had, however, figured out that Law was not only insane but also some unholy medical anomaly. Maybe a zombie even, who knew. Sabo, however, did have most of the unfortunate context and so was aware of what it meant for Law to have arrived some time earlier than Luffy. He was now trying desperately to avoid imagining what state Luffy’s heart had been in during the interim.

“Two,” Law began.

“Your counterpart was injured,” Beckman realised.

Law smiled, sharklike, “Bingo.”

“Holy shit,” breathed Shanks.

“I can’t believe that actually kind of made sense,” said Rosinante.

“I have so many questions,” whispered Ace.

“My counterpart,” continued Law, “unlike everyone else here, was dying on this end. So there was little to no recovery possible. Any lifeforce left was used either in the jump or replacing whatever we burnt in kickstarting this bullshit.” He smiled that grim nasty smile of his, “Essentially, my battery was drained.”

“Really dislike when you talk about yourself on death’s door like that, Law,” Rosinante grimaced.

Law waved him off.

Slowly, Ace raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“Are you a vampire?”

Law blinked. “Excuse me?”

“No heart, cold, you’re all tall and broody.”

“Excuse me.”

“Honestly, got to hand it to you, ‘Surgeon of Death’ is fuckin hilarious, if so.”

Sabo and Shanks, absolute traitors the two of them, both burst out into belly laughs.

“Oh my god,” said Law. “I can’t believe Sabo is the sensible one. That’s genuinely terrifying.” Sabo just laughed harder, everyone else dissolving into snickers and chuckles at Law’s dismay.

“Don’t be an idiot, Ace,” said Luffy.

And Shanks immediately grabbed hold of Rosinante and Beckman’s wrists in excitement. He had been waiting so patiently for this.

“Torao’s got a heart. Here,” and he leant back so he had room to tap on his chest, right under the top corner of the scar that Ace hadn’t even had time to ask after yet.

Ace blinked. He looked to Law and back to Luffy, uncomprehending.

Shanks was vibrating because he was a piece of shit and was so ready to watch someone else go through the nightmare of one of Luffy’s explanations.

“Lu, are you… trying to tell me that you… have feelings for Law? It was a cute metaphor and all, I’ll give you that?”

“What?” Luffy frowned. “Oh, sure. I guess.”

Shanks cackled. Rosinante was now holding Shanks’ hand in both of his like he was watching a boxing match or a melodrama, or a boxing melodrama. Brook, without tearing his eyes from the chaos, poured out shots for all four of them and silently cheered with Beckman.

Law, poor man, just covered his face with his hand and wondered if it was really worthwhile putting so much effort into cheating death, again and again.

Ace froze.

Sabo appeared next to Brook on the barstools and took the quickly offered shot with a grin and a whispered, “A thousand beli Ace tries to punch Lu.”

Brook tilted, “Luffy-san? Not Law? I’ll take that bet.”

Sabo grinned.

“Hang on,” Ace stuttered. “Shanks called that fucker my brother-in-law.” Maybe Ace did not like this guy. “LUFFY! YOU CAN’T GET MARRIED, YOU’RE SEVENTEEN!”

“Ohhhh here we goooo,” said Sabo.

Luffy, still sat on Ace’s lap from where he’d been draped in a hug until recently, just frowned, puzzled.

“And you. You fucker.”

Law looked to the ceiling to see if it held any spare patience for him.

“Luffy, get off me. I need to punch him.”

Then Luffy started laughing.

“Oh here we go,” whispered Sabo.

Luffy laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe, so hard he sounded mad, bright red and gasping. Then, at some point he calmed enough to yell out, “Ace is the youngest!”

Ace looked like he’d been slapped, “I’m the oldest, you little shit!”

“Nuh-uh. Not anymore, Ace is the baby.”

“You shut your fucking mouth. I’m your big brother.”

“Saaabooo.” Luffy’s head folded backwards in a move that would have snapped anyone else’s neck like he was some kind of nightmarish, grinning seagull.

“Yes, dearest brother.”

“Who’s the littlest?”

“Why, Ace of course.”

“I’ll kill you both, just you fucking try me.”

“Ace,” Luffy frowned. “Show your big brothers some respect.” Then he cackled and dived to the side as Ace swung a hard right at him.

“Oh bugger,” said Brook.

“You’ve never shown me respect a day in your life.” Ace began chasing Luffy through the bar, over tables, under legs, swinging and meeting only thin air as Luffy dodged and swayed, laughing all the time like this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“This is better than I could have dreamed,” whispered Shanks.

“Did he… forget that he’s pissed at Law?” Rosinante whispered back.

Law pinched hard at the pressure points between his eyes, “I really don’t know if I have it in me to deal with three of them at once.”

“You,” Ace screeched to a halt. “Did you steal my little brother’s heart? I mean literally, I mean physc- you know what I mean!”

Law sighed, finished off his now stone-cold coffee, and looked Ace dead in the eyes. “Technically, I believe he’s now your older brother.”

“I will murder you, you fuck-”

Then Luffy grabbed Ace by the arm, kicked out his legs, and sat on his back holding one wrist twisted up behind him like a prize.

“I think this is the best day of my life,” said Sabo, looking around in glee. “Anyone else?”

Ace stared at the floorboards in front of his face in shock, trying desperately to compute the fact his little brother was now older than him and had just thrown him to the ground before he could register any movement incoming. “What just happened…”

“Don’t worry, Ace,” said Luffy. “Me an Torao are gonna get married again, so you can come to the next one.”

Ace twisted awkwardly to look up behind, “I missed your wedding?”

Luffy let go of the arm he was holding and smiled in a strained, unfamiliar kind of way. “Ace missed a lot of things.”

Ace turned back to the floor and actually quietened down at that. From just a few feet away, Law watched carefully as Luffy’s eyes fell to the wide tattoo taking up the expanse of his brother’s back, noting how his gaze lingered on the centre point even as his head seemed to turn away, subconsciously protecting himself from the sight he so clearly dreaded.

Slowly, as if lifted by a string, Luffy’s fingers rose and reached out, hovering just above Whitebeard’s mark. Then his fist clasped and he looked up, remembered he wasn’t alone, and turned away like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

“Hey, Luffy?” Ace whispered.

“Mm.”

“What age are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Oh,” said Ace, soft and slow. “I’m sorry.”

Luffy seemed to pull back into himself, unsure, “Why is Ace sorry?”

Ace turned his head enough to see Luffy behind him, “I broke my promise, didn’t I?”

Luffy flinched back, hard.

Then he was on his feet and his face was that way it got sometimes, too blank and hard to read. “Ace is an idiot.”

And then he vanished.

The door swung, loud in the aftermath of such vibrant play and a sharp reminder of how strange this was for everyone.

Ace should be happy, shouldn’t he? The room was happy. Joyous and chaotic and bright and bubbly. It was like Sabo said, maybe even the best day he remembered having. And why wouldn’t it be? They were alive, all of them.

Ace rolled onto his back and threw an arm over his eyes, hyperaware of every eye in the room and the unfamiliar caution Luffy had looked at him with just then.

Luffy had never been cautious with Ace, not once in his life. Not when Ace was angry and nasty and throwing him off of cliffs. Not even when Sabo had talked to him about Ace’s parentage and told him to be cautious. So what had he broken then, that Luffy might look at him as if he was scared for what was coming next.

Luffy was twenty-three; six years Ace had been dead.

Ace bit down hard on his lip at the sudden sharp pang that ran through him with the knowledge that he was never supposed to learn that Sabo was alive, that this impossible twist was just that, impossible. Ace wasn’t supposed to be at Luffy’s wedding. He shouldn’t see his brothers as grown up, adult things.

A chair scraped across the floor as Law stood, collected his sword, and headed for the door without a word.

“Law.”

One hand on the door, Law paused. He turned back just enough to see a single, shadowed eye watching him from below Ace’s arm.

“There’s a cliff, just below the treeline. A peninsula above a cove.”

Law held his gaze for a moment before nodding once, and then he, too, disappeared.