Chapter Text
[“Apocalyptic Road Trip Gang” Group Chat]
LAW - Good morning yoi, departing soon. Everyone else?
HARUTA - im about to leave too
IZOU - Hi this is Perona!!! <3 Izou’s driving so he told me to text you for him
ACE - good morning!
ACE - were you guys driving all night or something
IZOU - Yeah pretty much!!! He just switched with dad!!!
IZOU - Gimme a sec
[PERONA <3 has been added to the chat]
PERONA <3 - Okay that’s easier!!!
LAW - Has anyone heard from Thatch yoi
ACE - I think his phone died last night
HARUTA - damn it
HARUTA - i wanted to show him a pic of all the cats in the truck
LAW - Haruta you don’t own a truck yoi
HARUTA - I know
HATURA - I stole it
ACE - I WANNA SEE THE CATS
HARUTA - [img] Behold.
ACE - awwwwww
ACE - we should totally steal a car
ACE - maybe not deu looks unhappy with me again
ACE - marco tell him hes dumb
LAW - why yoi
ACE - he says i shouldnt text you guys so much
LAW - What’s your battery yoi?
ACE - ah
ACE - um
ACE - i plead the fifth
LAW - Listen to your friend yoi. Does he have battery at least?
ACE - yeah over 50 the jerk
PERONA <3 - Oh hi ace, aren’t you the one who’s as dumb as my idiot brother? Who i’m NOT actually related to just so we’re clear
HARUTA - lmao none of us are related either
ACE - HEY
ACE - TELL IZOU IM GONNA GET HIM FOR THAT
PERONA <3 - He says he doesn’t care <3
LAW - Battery check-in yoi? Law’s is at 80 and he has a portable charger and a burner just in case.
DEUCE - I’m at 54, Ace is at 12
HARUTA - 70s. but I should probably stop taking cat pics or itll go down fast…
ACE - I PLEADED THE FIFTH DEU WTF
ACE - traitor
PERONA <3 - 30 for me, just under 70 for Izou, dad has backup chargers so we should be good for a while!!!
LAW - Okay yoi, so as long as Deuce’s phone doesn’t die we should be okay.
DEUCE - I am officially sick of being the responsible one.
ACE - look we’ll jack a car and be home in like two or three days no problem
DEUCE - The minute we get to Loguetown I’m not talking to him for a week. Just so you know.
PERONA <3 - Izou says to “turn your damn phone off already Ace”
ACE - fine
DEUCE - And now he’s sulking.
LAW - Just try to stay safe yoi, all of you.
HARUTA - roger, peace out
PERONA <3 - cya <3
……
Marco was more than a little reluctant to hand the phone over to Law. Thatch was officially out of touch. Even if he got home in two days, that was two days of not knowing if he was okay. He trusted his brothers to take care of themselves, but he knew accidents happened, and Sabaody had a bad reputation that he knew from many concerning transfer patients was well-earned.
On the bright side, it seemed after the god-awful week they’d all had, they’d been able to cash in some of their luck. Not only was Law’s apartment easier to get to than they’d dared hope, but Marco had been delighted to realize that Law had grossly understated the emergency supplies he kept on hand. They could’ve stayed a month without leaving and been completely fine, and maybe they would’ve tried it if the zombie issue wasn’t so unpredictable; if they put off leaving too long, they might not be able to, and he wasn’t willing to risk it when he’d already promised his Pops he was coming home.
To both their surprise, Hats had offered to take a watch shift. Their resident unknown variable had calmed down quite a bit since their escape from the hospital cafeteria. When he developed a migraine and all but passed out on the couch shortly after their arrival, Marco and Law were all but certain: he’d been on painkillers, and they were wearing off. Marco helped Law pack and prayed whatever was going on with Hats was nothing some ibuprofen couldn’t fix; head injuries could be unpredictable, and even with Law’s survivalist stockpile, there was only so much they could deal with.
Hats woke up in time to insist on taking over Marco’s watch, though, and Marco woke up a few hours later to the smell of fresh coffee. He slung his bag over his shoulder and followed the scent to the kitchen, where Hats stood over a french press with a concentrated frown.
“Good morning,” Marco said.
Hats blinked up at him, like he hadn’t noticed him enter. “Hi.” He turned back to the coffee press. “This is what people do in the mornings, right?”
“Some people, yeah.” Marco rummaged around for some sort of travel cup; he knew Law was anxious to get on the road to make as much headway as possible. “How are you feeling?”
“Head hurts less. But I feel like my bones ate pop rocks.” He tapped his fingers on the counter. “Amnesia is such bullshit,” he declared a moment later. “Why do I know what pop rocks are but not my own damn name?”
“Head injuries are weird,” Marco responded, for lack of a better answer. “Maybe you’ll remember later.”
“Maybe.” His fingers drummed faster. He’d been all smiles the day before, but now he seemed too wrapped up in his thoughts to bother with more than a blank expression.
Law joined them not long after, found them travel mugs, and handed Hats a jacket and a backpack with little fanfare. They were already packed, so Marco texted his family while Hats helped Law with final preparations. When everything was ready, Law glanced around, shrugged, and walked out without a word.
As they’d predicted, the zombies couldn’t climb stairs properly. As much as going up and down eight stories sucked, they didn’t see a single zombie until the staircase between the second and third floors, where one had tripped and cracked its head open. The floor below that was deserted, and the first floor only had three.
Marco had just enough time to start to reach for the golf club he’d claimed the night before (he was certain Law only had one for self-defense purposes, he was the least golf-inclined person Marco had ever met) when Hats called dibs and bashed their skulls in with a by-now-familiar grin. Even without the bloodstained hospital gown from the days before, he looked more than a little deranged. He exchanged a concerned glance with Law, who had likewise reached for his sword (Marco didn’t know how or why Law had a sword, but at this point he didn’t care), but the problem was dealt with and they had made it out onto the street.
All night, Marco had been fighting to ignore the sounds coming from the street below Law’s apartment. Now, the damage was already done. It was too quiet. Groans meandered through the air around them, like the city was exhaling its death to what few living inhabitants were left to hear it. Undead corpses shambled here and there in clusters; none had noticed them yet. Cars were abandoned and overturned in the middle of the road. Windows were broken. Streetlights stood parallel as always, though their wires had little left to carry. And Marco was a doctor, he knew the scents of the body, of life and death and infection and blood, but he’d never smelled it this dense, this miserable. He pulled his shirt up over his face. Law grimaced, Hats just frowned.
Law took the lead since he knew the neighborhood, keeping them away from busy streets and dead ends as they made their way West to the city’s outskirts, closer to Loguetown, grasping towards safety. Hats gleefully dispatched any corpses that crept too close. Marco kept an eye out behind them for danger and around them for anything useful, but found no trace of the latter, and the former was limited to zombies, nothing unusual—by the standards of their new normal, at least. Their progress was slow but steady; Marco gladly accepted caution over the alternatives.
After a few hours of skirting around the most crowded parts of the city, their surroundings morphed from apartments and office buildings and shops into factories, and the scents of industry took over. Fewer corpses appeared until they were alone. Marco imagined this sector was quieter than it had been in years, even after Hats dropped into step beside him and asked, “So you have brothers?”
Marco didn’t think Hats had paid much attention to his contacting his family. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised; Hats was still to all intents and purposes a stranger. “Yeah, and some sisters,” he answered.
“Big family, then? What’s that like?”
“Chaotic. We’re on our way to stay with them, Pops lives on an island so the outbreak hasn’t reached his town yet.” Marco watched him; his face was still neutral, like it had been all day except when he was fighting off undead. He seemed to be listening closely, so Marco went on. “Five of us moved away, so we’ve been keeping in touch with a group chat to make sure we all get home safe. Aside from myself, there’s Thatch, Izou, Haruta, and Ace. I’m the oldest, and Ace is the youngest. At least, we think so.”
“You think so?”
“We’re all adopted, so not all of us know for sure how old we are,” Marco explained. “The foster system is a pretty mixed bag, records like birth dates aren't always reliable.”
“With systems like that, some things always slip through the cracks,” Law chimed in. “I think Cora’s foster license was expired when he got me.”
Marco bit back a laugh. He’d never met Cora, but Law didn’t speak of many people fondly, so he’d always figured things had worked out for the two of them. “One time Pops dropped Ace’s report card into the fireplace when a case worker asked for it. He won’t admit it, but I’m certain he did it on purpose.”
Hats smiled a little. “Your little brother doesn’t like school, then?”
“He’s not the sit-still-take-notes type.”
Hats smiled a little more, before his expression curled into a frown like burning paper. “Brothers sound nice,” he said. “I wish I had brothers.”
“Maybe you do,” Marco pointed out. “You don’t know for sure, right?”
Hats gave him a long, indecipherable look through his single eye. “I don’t remember much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about myself,” he eventually said.
“What do you remember?” Law asked. He had slowed to walk with them. Marco had seen him watching Hats from the corner of his eye all day. He hoped it was just curiosity. It was only natural to be wary in a situation like this, and Law was more cautious than most, but the last thing they needed was pointless infighting.
Hats shrugged. “Concretely? Not much. I hate my parents, I like catching lizards, I had a top hat like this one, my favorite color has always been blue. I think I ran away, though, so even if I had a biological brother, it wouldn’t matter anymore.”
“That’s good if you’re starting to remember,” Marco pointed out. “Maybe the amnesia is just going away on its own. You know, healing with time.”
“You said you know things about yourself besides what you remember,” Law cut in. His eyes were slightly narrowed, like when he was working on a particularly difficult surgery.
“It’s just noticing little things. Thoughts I have, gut reactions, muscle memory.”
“Like smiling while you kill things?”
Hats donned a perfectly blank smile. Marco suddenly wished he wasn’t standing between him and Law.
“Do you know how you ended up at the hospital?” Marco asked.
Hats shrugged. “A stranger found me unconscious near the train tracks and brought me in.”
Marco frowned; that wasn’t a lot to work with. “Do you have any gut reactions about that?”
It was quiet for a moment, long enough that Marco wondered if Hats would answer at all, but then he said, “I was going somewhere. There was something I was supposed to do, something important.” He seemed to fold in on himself. “Someone’s counting on me, and I’m just… lost.”
Marco didn’t know why, but he found he couldn’t help but trust him. Sometimes the patient changed his face like a jacket in early spring, but now he simply existed there, lost in thought, and Marco knew it was real in a way he could never explain.
Law wasn’t satisfied, though. “Someone must’ve come to ask you questions, right? There’s usually an investigation into things like that.”
“It was just a formality,” Hats scoffed. “Some officer guy came in and decided pretty quick that I’m homeless and it was a suicide attempt—in other words, not his problem. But he let a couple things slip about the local criminal scene, so it wasn’t a total waste of my time. He didn’t know anything useful, though, so I just lied to him until he left me alone.”
“So you enjoy violence and lying to the cops,” Law said. “Anything else?”
“I can pick locks—sorry about stealing from the vending machine, by the way.” He didn’t sound sorry at all.
“That was you?”
“Focus. And thanks for the jacket, but the first thing I noticed about it was that the inside pockets would be perfect for hiding a small weapon.” He turned the coat open and wiggled his fingers in the pocket.
Law reached into his own inner pocket and pulled out a taser. “That’s why I like them.”
Hats laughed. “You don’t need to threaten me.”
Marco was ready to leap to Law’s defense, but his fellow doctor’s expression changed, ever so slightly, barely a twitch in his brow—just enough that Marco thought that maybe Hats was right, maybe that had been a threat.
Law’s mouth flattened into a perfect line. “I don’t know about that. Sounds to me like you’re some kind of career criminal.”
“Think of it like mutually assured destruction,” Hats said. “If I hurt either of you, you wouldn’t let me come with you. If you kick me out unprovoked, I have no reason not to hurt you. Of course, that’s just the practical side—the real reason is that I like you two.” He blinked, tilted his head. “Yeah, I’m definitely not normal and I don’t think I can blame the head trauma for all of it.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Law grumbled.
“Anyway, brothers. Brothers sound nice.”
“We’re just glossing over the career criminal thing?”
“Or the suicide theory?” Marco added.
“I’m not suicidal,” Hats said, waving him off. “I thought about it just in case, but I’m definitely not. It’s just the simplest explanation the cops could think of; it’s less work for them, especially if they’re in the mob’s pockets.”
“Because the other option is attempted murder?” Marco cut him off, incredulous. “I think you’re really brushing past the idea that someone tried to kill you.”
“They totally botched it though.”
Marco rubbed his temples. How the hell did someone have worse survival instincts than Ace?
“What about the homeless theory?” Law asked, clearly still irritated but too curious to let it go. “You could’ve been staying on the train and gotten thrown out by someone else who wanted that car.”
Hats shook his head. “I thought of that too. But curly hair is temperamental, if I hadn’t been taking proper care of it for that long it would be a disaster by now.” He pulled at a strand of his hair as if to emphasize. It didn’t look great, to be clear, but Marco figured that had more to do with the current state of the world than Hats’ living situation; he was sure none of them looked particularly presentable at this point. “And I guess I have a feeling about it too. I have a place to return to where I belong, if only I knew where to look for it. I don’t know how I know that, it just feels right.” He started to smile, but it fell flat and dropped away. “There’s something I need to do. I just can’t remember.”
The three got quiet again.
Marco wasn’t sure what to think. He had feelings about everything Hats had said, but none of them could cut through the noise. He was unnerving at times, and they knew less about him than even he did—but still, he hadn’t hurt them, and Marco found he didn’t expect him to. Plenty of his own family had criminal records, after all. Izou often kept a weapon handy. Marco had once watched Thatch talk his way out of a speeding ticket with such conviction that the officer ended up apologizing. Haruta was picked up by the system from a fighting club and discovered her love of cats through community service volunteering. Marco still had to remind Ace to pay for food sometimes. He had his own not-particularly-legal hobbies in his youth; he still practiced lockpicking. Everyone had a history. So, no, Hats didn’t frighten him. Marco wasn’t afraid of him so much as for him, and that had its limits too; clearly he was capable and had a home, even if he didn’t remember it.
He thought it meant something, too, that Hats had told them all of that when he was obviously used to keeping secrets. Or maybe Marco was turning into his Pops—see troubled young man with a good heart, commence adoption protocols. Well, Hats was coming to Loguetown with them, so it wasn’t unlikely Pops would do exactly that. Hats would certainly get those brothers he seemed so intrigued by.
You know. If they lived.
Law seemed just as deep in thought. After a moment, he returned the taser to his pocket. “Hats?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think you know how to steal a car? The roads should clear up once we’re past downtown.”
Hats laughed. “I can try.”
Law gave him a nod and walked ahead of them.
Hats turned to Marco with a smile. “Tell me more about your family?”
Marco couldn’t help but smile back. No matter how the world ended, some things would never change, and one of those things was that he loved talking about his family.
“Of course.”