Chapter Text
Investigation
The first step towards canonizing a saint, in which the candidate’s life is examined at least five years past their date of death. A reason for consideration towards sainthood must be established during this investigation, either through particularly virtuous actions in life or through attestations of martyrdom. At this point, the candidate may be referred to as “Venerable.”
Roci is five years old. He lives in Mariejois, his favorite food is pickled plums, and he does whatever big brother Doffy tells him to--up to and including digging up Mama’s bulbs in the garden and taking the blame for it. The gardeners catch him shoulder-deep in the dirt, and as the body servants take Roci upstairs for a bath, Doffy yells at Papa, “It was all Roci’s idea! You can’t be mad at me! I forbid it!!”
Nanny waits for him in the bathroom, and she clucks as she looks him over while the body servants bow their way backwards out the door. Roci puts his hands over his head and wishes he could disappear. “Come along then, holy son,” she says as she grasps the hem of his shirt. “Let’s get your little suit to the laundry girls. Hopefully they can save it; you look so sweet in it.”
Nanny hums to him as she bathes him, and Roci waveringly joins in when he can remember how it goes. She’s scrubbing his hair when her song fades and she says, lowly, “You shouldn’t let Saint Doflamingo convince you into being naughty, holy son.”
Roci bites his lip. He knows Doffy would yell if he could hear Nanny say that. Maybe Mama and Papa would be unhappy, too. Nobody’s allowed to say Doffy did something wrong. “Was my idea,” he mumbles. It wasn't his idea, but Doffy said it was, so now Roci has to say it was, too.
Nanny sighs. “Just like beating that slave the other day was your idea?”
Roci squirms. He shakes off Nanny’s hands. His tummy hurts as he says, “Yeah. My idea.” He puts his hands over his head again, hoping she won’t see him if he’s hiding.
Softly, Nanny removes his hands so she can rinse away the soap in his hair. “I’m sure the whole house will do extra morning prayers tomorrow for you, heavenly star. We’ll pray for your temperance and good judgement, and pray that you are kind to us if we deserve it.”
“No!” Roci cries. “Hate morning prayers! Don’t wanna!”
Every morning before breakfast, the entire household lines up before the family to say their prayers. It’s boring, and takes forever, and everyone looks sad when they say them.
“Prayers are important, venerable star,” Nanny says, a little scolding. Roci whines. He still hates them. “They’re how us unworthy beings ask for the favor of your holiness, the Celestial Dragons, who are as gods. Here. Let’s practice.”
Nanny folds her hands together and casts her eyes to the ground as Roci’s hair drips into his eyes. Her voice follows well-worn paths as she recites, “Oh Celestial Dragons, holiest of thy name, may you receive in this world all which is good and in the hereafter all that which is good and may you be protected from punishment.”
“No! No, no, no!! Stop! I don’t like it!”
No matter how much he screams and thrashes, Nanny keeps going. When she's finally done, she smooths a hand over his hair until he hiccups to a stop. As she wraps him in a warm, snuggly towel, she says, “When there’s nothing else we can do to change the tides, we pray. I hope you never have to understand this, holy son.”
Rocinante is thirty-one years old. He rots in Impel Down, his least favorite food is the only thing on offer most days, and he would do anything at all for Trafalgar D. Water Law. But there’s nothing else he can do now other than pray. Awake, asleep, mumbling, in silence, the litany rolls on:
Great Seas, ever-living, life-sustaining, I seek help through your mercy, not for myself but for another. Give him in this world all that which is good and in the hereafter all that which is good and protect him from punishment…
------
Eleven unchanging years in the dark, and it all goes tits up in under a month.
Not that Rocinante’s complaining; a little entertainment goes a long way on Level 6, and Crocodile’s been ignoring him since he very innocently asked exactly what the deal was with the hook, anyway. And when it starts, he thinks it’s just that. Entertainment. Someone else to attempt to converse with through the gloom, on the infrequent occasions he bothers speaking between prayers.
Great Seas, ever-living, life-sustaining, I seek help through your mercy, not for myself but for another.
This one’s dragged in to the sound of seastone chains clinking, so they've got another devil fruit user on their hands. The puddle of light from the lone torch carried by the guards isn't enough for a clear view. Rocinante gets an impression in flashes: tattoos, one that makes him look stupid and another that changes it to dangerously stupid. Red prayer beads. A freckled face still raw with youth in a way that makes Rocinante feel old, old, old.
The appearance of their jailers and a new prisoner makes the other demons trapped down here howl and jeer. Rocinante stays silent. He wasted this week’s allotment of words on Crocodile two days ago. It’s moot, anyway, because the kid still can't tell his ass from his elbow, going by the pinch on his mouth and the white rims of his eyes: telltale signs of the disorientation from seastone that comes from when you still remember what it feels like not to be in its punishing grip.
Rocinante doesn't remember. He’s theoretically aware of the fact that there had been a time when his thoughts were clear and his muscles strong and he labored under a different kind of shackle. It had to have been true. But now, all he has is seastone where there used to grow a devil fruit and a shadow in his heart shaped like a child who knew despair.
Give him in this world all that which is good and in the hereafter all that which is good and protect him from punishment. Protect him from his front, behind him, from his right and his left, and from above him, and give him refuge in your magnificence from being taken unaware from beneath him.
Rocinante is made up of little more than the tatters left behind between gaping losses that pierced him like bullets. But the thing about the Navy is that it doesn’t give a shit how much of a person you are. In fact, Navy training works best when there’s as little personhood interfering as possible.
What Rocinante was trained to do was to gather intel, and this is the intel he gathers:
A name.
“Fire Fist Ace,” Crocodile says with a sneer. He’d waited a day and a half to do it. Unclear if it was for the drama or just because he’s a prick.
“I don't speak to the trash my little brother already took to the dump,” Ace snaps back. Stupid, as stupid as his misspelled tattoo. Soon enough he'll learn that all he has in hell is the other demons.
Still, Rocinante likes him on principle for it. Crocodile is a smarmy fuck, and Rocinante wants to know what kind of little brother puts a warlord away.
A traitor.
Ace screams a name with rage and the barest hint of fear in his sleep: Blackbeard! The news coos don’t make it down to Level 6, but the rumors do. Blackbeard, with a heart blacker than his hair and a need to prove himself.
A brother.
Ace sobs a different name on waking: Luffy…
There’s rumors about that name, too, but none of them say anything about him being Ace's brother. No, Rocinante knows that because the name sits on Ace’s tongue in much the same way that Law would sit on Rocinante’s if he was foolish enough to say it.
Aid him and do not aid against him, and grant him victory and do not grant victory over him, plan for him and do not plan against him, guide him and facilitate guidance for him, and grant him victory over those who transgress against him.
The last thing he’ll give the demons on Level 6 is the way to his heart.
A family.
“When's your daddy gonna come get you, whelp?” one of the demons sneers in search of a fight. It’s the fourth day they’ve tried to taunt Ace into doing something interesting, and it’s the first time it’s worked.
“Be disrespectful about Pops again and I'll make you pay!” Ace rattles his chains. When he twists, the mustachioed jolly roger on his back takes a sidelong glance at Rocinante, judging him.
Rocinante sticks his tongue out at it.
Cruel laughs echo between the bars. “Aww, does the widdle baby miss his daddy?”
“Shouldn't have been such a naughty little boy if you didn't want to get caught!”
“Daddy must be so disappointed in you, and all your sibs too.”
Ace's head lifts to snarl aimlessly into the dark. For a moment, Rocinante can see the flame that must have earned him a name like Fire Fist, shining through the dull weight of seastone.
The flame goes out.
A deadline.
The news coos don’t make it down to Level 6, but sometimes the jailers bring down a copy for shits and giggles. Ace isn't giggling at the front page they push against his bars, though he might be shitting himself. Rocinante can't see that far, but he can hear their cackles of bloodthirsty glee just fine as they read out the headline with dramatic relish. Six more days, and then Ace will be delivered to the ignominious end that Rocinante was spared, for better or for worse.
A connection.
Later that same day, the elevator comes down out of schedule. It disgorges a marine. No--a hero.
Rocinante's heart jerks up his throat and nearly out of his mouth. Garp gives no indication of noticing a still-breathing ghost from his past. Tough old bastard, like always, but even in the dark, Rocinante can see how Garp's eyes deliberately avoid looking into one particularly haunted patch of the gloom as he settles on the floor.
Tough old bastard who isn't afraid of the dark or the monsters in the secret depths of hell, but he still doesn’t know a damn thing about what to do with problems he can’t punch his way out of.
You’re a right mess, boy. I hate to see it, he starts, and the words are different but the sentiment echoes across time: the moment when a man truly knows his own mettle is the one where he’s forced to see a picture of his son’s corpse. Rocinante is thrown back eleven years, back to facing down the same uniform and the same disappointment when Sengoku came down that elevator with the peaceful expression of the Buddha.
Too bad for him that enlightenment does shit-all when the person you chose to call son is a fuck-up.
He claws his way back to Level 6 as Garp leaves, furious and disappointed. To Ace’s credit, he doesn’t howl his grief to the ceiling. (Rocinante had.) He doesn’t scrape his wrists raw trying to slip the seastone shackles. (Rocinante had. More than once.) He doesn’t even flinch as a new-to-him voice, hoarse with disuse, rings out.
“Real pisser having a marine for a relative, huh?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Rocinante shrugs. There go this week’s words.
The unchanging night of Level 6 doesn’t budge. Minutes pass, or maybe hours, or possibly lifetimes, or even no time at all. There’s no difference to Rocinante now.
“What would you even know, anyway?” Bitter.
That’s fine. Ace hasn’t been in the dark long enough for it to drink up everything else and leave only numbness. It’s refreshing, to catch an attitude. It reminds him of--well.
Great Seas, burden him not with that which he has no ability to bear.
“More than you think.” Old habits die hard; he knows better than to part with good intel right off the bat.
“Fuck off.”
“Would if I could, kid.” He can’t say it straight out, but he can bear it if he comes at it sideways. “Garp didn’t look at me. Didn’t you notice?”
“He wasn’t here for you, you self-centered bastard.”
Rocinante hums. Touché. “Standard protocol is to visually verify containment of prisoners upon entry to a prison deck. He checked inside every cell as he walked to yours. Except mine.”
There’s a flash in the dark as the meager light catches the shine of Ace’s eyes turning towards Rocinante. “‘Standard protocol?’ Fuck off, marine.” He spits the last word.
“Already said that,” Rocinante says mildly. “Really can’t think of anything better? I’ve had a ten-year-old cuss me out more creatively than that.” And also stab him. What a little firecracker.
What Rocinante wouldn’t give for--
He’s given it already. Law got the chance he needed, and Rocinante got the fate he earned.
And pardon him; and forgive him; and have mercy upon him.
“So what? You reported to Garp, did something that was too evil even for the Navy, and he’s so disappointed in you he won’t look at you now? I don’t give a shit.”
The response is meditative. An old memory, surfacing from Davy Jones’ locker. “I would sneak into his office as a kid and raid his desk drawers, because he had better snacks than Sengoku.”
The silence following that is almost as deep as a Calm. Even Crocodile and the other demons crowd unsubtly at their bars, desperate for every word. It’s the most that Rocinante has said in one go in eleven years.
“And that’s why they put you on Level 6? Petty theft?”
“No. That’s why Garp won’t look at me, because he sees me and he remembers a scared little kid. I’m here because my crimes were much greater. I cared too much.”
I ask that you be his protector in my stead, and truly I am in desperate need of any good that you have in store for him.
That earns a bark of laughter from Ace. “The worst possible thing a marine can do,” he says, heavy with distaste. “You cared about what? Honor? Truth? Justice?”
“A kid who deserved more than the hand he had been dealt.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No.” The answer is easy. No matter how many eons he lives in the dark with seastone where there used to grow a devil fruit and a shadow in his heart shaped like a child who knew despair, his conviction never budges. Making a choice for himself, for the first time in his life, was worth it. Especially for Law, who deserved better and yet always, always received worse. Rocinante sits in the dark and prays that his sacrifice was big enough, because that’s all he can do now.
Great Seas, ever-living, life-sustaining, I seek help through your mercy, not for myself but for another.
Rocinante sags against his chains. He’s said too much, and all the demons under the deep blue sea heard him. Ace asks him another question, but he doesn’t hear it past the buzz of seastone, and eventually Ace gives up.
In six days, Ace will be gone, and Rocinante will stay. Too bad he won’t get another week’s worth of words before then.
Give him in this world that which is good and in the hereafter that which is good and protect him from punishment…
---
Time has passed.
Rocinante watches dully as commotion overtakes Level 6. The jailers take every excuse for a little fun, so when it’s all said and done, he’s got a few more bruises and Ace has a cellmate: a fishman with a tattoo of a sun in splendor.
A memory tickles Rocinante’s brain. It takes a long, long time to swim up from the depths, long enough that a few days pass before he croaks, “Sun Pirates.”
The fishman doesn’t react, aside from his gaze shifting. “That’s right. And who are you?”
“Some marine.” Ace fills in the gap left by Rocinante negotiating with himself to borrow against next week’s words. The problem is, half of him drives a hard bargain, and the other half has no leverage. Embarrassing, to soundly lose a fight with yourself. “Knows Garp and Sengoku, or so he says.”
“And what does a marine do that leads to Level 6?”
“I gave a shit about what was right instead of what my orders were.” The words come easier to his lips, this time, because they’re further away from mentioning Law. He’s not a treasure easily shared, in part because he’d do violence at anyone Rocinante tried to introduce him to.
Aid him and do not aid against him, and grant him victory and do not grant victory over him, plan for him and do not plan against him, guide him and facilitate guidance for him, and grant him victory over those who transgress against him.
The fishman stares, evaluating. Rocinante wishes he could smile, but he spent his last one before being sent here.
No regrets. No regrets, not once, not ever.
Protect him from his front, behind him, from his right and his left, and from above him, and give him refuge in your magnificence from being taken unaware from beneath him.
“An unusual trait for a marine,” the fishman says. Testing.
“An unusual marine,” Rocinante parries. “Active duty and on a wanted poster at the same time.”
That turns Ace’s head. They both stare. Rocinante stares back. Finally, the fishman says, “In better light, I might see a familial resemblance with--”
“Don’t,” Rocinante barks. Harsh. Louder than anything he’s said in eleven years. Fear flares in the pit of his stomach and crawls up his throat like burning bile. “Don't say that name.”
The fishman doesn’t. “He had a brother.”
“Yes. Had.”
He thinks on that for a long moment. Then, delicately: “He rules Dressrosa now. A beloved king guiding a prosperous nation, despite being a warlord of the sea.”
Rocinante drops his head back against the wall, not caring how his skull cracks on the stone. Blood trickles down the back of his neck, right from his heart. His message never made it. He’d always suspected, but it’s a real shot to the gut to finally have it confirmed. Worse than a bullet; Rocinante would know. “A manipulator making everyone dance to his game, for no better reason than his own amusement,” Rocinante corrects, too tired to be vicious.
That doesn’t cause surprise. “Of my peers, I’ve always liked him least. Perhaps I had good reasons to.”
A fishman as a warlord? Shocking. The Navy’s changed, at least a bit. Equal rights and equal wrongs--or a convenient scapegoat to justify inequality. Now that sounds more like it. “Didn’t know Fisher Tiger became a warlord.”
“He didn’t. I am Jinbe, first son of the sea.”
Rocinante tucks it away in the filing cabinet in his mind. Old habits die hard. “Nice to meet you. I’m officially dead,” he says, nearly cheery. It’s a fun fact about himself.
“Are you so hard to kill that the Navy would imprison you instead?”
“Hardly.” Rocinante rattles his seastone chains. “Easy as pie, with these on. Somehow, this was the merciful option.” Merciful for who? Not for him. For a man who didn’t wish to bury his son, and put him on the sea floor instead of six feet under.
Rocinante’s not great at math, but he’s pretty sure that’s a lot deeper.
He wishes he could be angrier at Sengoku. Blues know he’s tried. But here in the dark where there’s only truth and regrets, he knows: if he had to make the same choice about Law, he’d kill himself first.
He did kill himself first. Real bummer that he survived it like this.
I ask that you be his protector in my stead, and truly I am in desperate need of any good that you have in store for him.
“The Navy’s mercy is a curious thing.” Jinbe says it casually, like they all aren't in this dungeon because they've been impaled on the spike of the Navy's mercy.
“Can we--” Ace says, high and tight, “--knock it off.”
“My apologies, Ace,” Jinbe murmurs.
That’s another month of words gone, and twelve hours later, Ace is just as gone too.
Rocinante is sure that’s the end of it.
Great Seas, burden him not with that which he has no ability to bear.
Rocinante is about to find out that’s only the beginning of it.
---
“Take me with you.”
Who said that?
Faces turn to look at Rocinante. Oh. He did.
“Who’re you?” Luffy asks artlessly. Crocodile lifts a lip but doesn't protest, apparently unwilling to risk Luffy's begrudging mercy. Ivankov's eyes dart in an appraising up-down look but don't spark with recognition. Jinbe is silent, but not guarded; apparently his approval has been won.
Rocinante will put it all on the table for this. Now that he knows Doffy got Dressrosa, fear has been his constant companion. Not for himself, and not even all that much for the people of Dressrosa, because he’s born of a long line of selfish bastards. All the worry that squeezes past the dullness of seastone is saved for one person, who might have swooped back into the birdcage as soon as he was freed.
But there’s no way to ask is Doflamingo playing with four suits? without sounding a few cards short of a full deck himself.
Protect him from his front, behind him, from his right and his left, and from above him, and give him refuge in your magnificence from being taken unaware from beneath him.
“My name is Rocinante,” he says. Desperate, but not too desperate. A performance that isn’t one at all. “There’s someone I need to find.” Hardly a persuasive argument. He thinks harder through the fuzz of seastone. “I care about him more than anyone else in the world.” No, that’s not good enough. He needs to make this personal. “Ace is your special person, right? I have a special person, too. It was my job to look after him, but I haven’t, for eleven years. How would you feel if Ace had been in Impel Down for eleven years?”
I ask that you be his protector in my stead, and truly I am in desperate need of any good that you have in store for him.
It’s low. It works. Luffy’s face twists with rage, and at the end of the scuffle of activity that follows, Rocinante’s cell door is open and his wrists are light. He hardly notices, because he’s staggering under the world gone mad with color and clarity, the surge of power in his nerves, the strength in his limbs.
He snaps his fingers and says into the silence, into the only empty space in him that remains, I’m coming for you, Law. At even just the thought of Law, Rocinante is nearly bowled over by the rush of love-elation-fear-longing that erupts, unconstrained by seastone.
“Come on, Rosey,” Luffy throws over his shoulder carelessly. “Unless you wanna stay here!”
The escape passes in a technicolor haze punctured with Luffy's laughter every time Rocinante trips, and then they’re on a Navy ship sailing for Marineford. Not a bad place to start a search, really. He should be able to sneak in, get what he needs, and run for it with none the wiser while Whitebeard wrecks shop.
Rocinante looks down at himself ruefully; he can hardly swan around HQ gathering intel in prison stripes. While all the rest mill around the fo’c’sle, he weaves his way down to the aft end of the middle gun deck, and don’t you just know it, the Navy hasn’t moved the location of the storeroom in the past decade. Rocinante raids it; it’s stocked with spare uniforms in the usual eye-popping range of sizes, so he’s able to pull something off the shelves that will halfway fit, and on top of that he swipes a sewing kit, a prefilled coin purse or four, a den den, smokes, a lighter, and a pistol kit complete with holster and ammunition.
The impromptu probably-celebration-maybe-fight has migrated down to the forward main deck, so Rocinante tucks himself against the rail on the fo’c’sle and starts to stitch. With what little time he has to devote to this task, he won’t pass muster, but he needs to look the part enough to slip through to the Navy side of the line of engagement. A baggy-ass uniform on his emaciated frame will not do.
“Hey, Rosey! Whatcha doin’?” Luffy swings himself along the fo’c’sle to land with a sproingy thud next to Rocinante.
“Sewing.”
Luffy’s eyes rove over the fabric in Rocinante’s hands. “Are you a marine?” There’s no enmity in the question, no bitterness, no sense of betrayal. Just curiosity, though it’s hardly idle.
“Used to be. Not anymore.”
“Then what are you doing with a marine uniform?” Luffy blithely tramples through Rocinante’s deliberately uninteresting answers with no sign of stopping.
He lowers his sewing and takes a moment to recalculate; maybe there’s more to Luffy than he first expected. “No offense, but I’m not part of your fight, though I appreciate you breaking me out. What I need from Marineford is information, and the best way to get that is to go behind enemy lines while HQ is empty.”
Luffy sways side to side, hands grasping his ankles as he stares up at the clouds. “Information on what? Your special person?”
Rocinante’s hands tighten in the fabric. He deliberately relaxes them. The urge to snap at Luffy isn’t because Luffy’s doing anything wrong; it’s more that what should be a small flash of annoyance at his prying sparks into a grease fire given how long it’s been since he’s felt much of anything at all. He barely restrains his answer to a tight, “Yeah.”
That seems to suffice for Luffy. “Why were you in Impel Down?” Like everything Luffy says, the question is exactly what it is on the surface. There isn’t a deceitful bone in the kid’s body; maybe it’s because he has no bones at all, what with the whole rubber thing.
Rocinante’s tone is as measured as his stitches. It takes all his focus not to prick a finger or tip over with the sway of the sea, which is a nice distraction from what he has to say and how he feels about it. If nothing else, he owes Luffy honesty for the favor of setting him free. “Level 6 is where the Navy puts inconvenient truths.” Luffy stares blankly. Rocinante finds smaller words. “I decided that saving a life was more important than my mission. The Admiralty didn’t agree. But the Navy can’t exactly go around killing marines for that; makes them look like the bad guy, to kill a Marine for protecting the innocent.” Well, mostly innocent. Innocent enough, minus a few stabbings and killings and--look! He was a kid, okay? He didn’t do anything that somebody bigger hadn’t tried to do to him first, and that counts for something.
Luffy’s head cocks to one side as he thinks about that. “So you saved your special person? Did you kick a lot of ass?” He says this with the kind of relish that makes it obvious that kicking ass is one of his primary objectives in life.
“Got my ass kicked, more like.” That’s the pants done. He turns the legs back right-side out and shakes them out with a critical eye. It’ll do.
He moves on to the uniform shirt and, for the first time in his life, blesses the lack of sleeves. Of course, it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other; he doesn’t have to tailor them and deal with tricky armhole nonsense, but it leaves his shackle-scarred wrists with their open sores in plain sight. That’s what the pair of black gloves he grabbed were for, though.
“I got my ass kicked a couple times going down to Level 6,” Luffy tells the clouds, having flopped back on the deck spread-eagle. “And my crew and I have gotten our asses kicked a buncha other times. But as long as you stand up and keep fighting, you’re not kicked for too long.”
Rocinante huffs. “I was in Impel Down for eleven years, kid. I got kicked pretty hard. Officially, I'm dead.”
“So?” Luffy sits up to punch one fist into his other hand. His eyebrows draw down as he declares, “You may be dead, but you’re up again now, aren’t you? So go kick some ass and find your special person!”
Rocinante sets the fabric in his lap to look at Luffy and to search for what lies underneath. He still can’t find a damn thing lurking there. Luffy’s the most criminally open-hearted person he’s ever met. “Shouldn’t you be a little more worried about me? Maybe I am going to turn coat right back to the Navy. What would you do then?”
Luffy shrugs. “I’d kick your ass, too.”
Charming.
The initial reaction is cynical from years of Impel Down grinding him into dust, but then it settles in his bones. It is charming. The directness, the heart. If Ace and Luffy are brothers, that makes Garp his grandfather too. The weapon this kid would be in the Navy--the devotion he could inspire--no wonder Garp’s bitter they’re both pirates. Aside from the obvious.
“Well, you won’t have to.”
When Luffy laughs, it’s bright and clear. “Yeah, I know that, Rosey!” he says, bratty. Reminiscent of someone else, but that bratty was laced with sarcasm in comparison to Luffy’s glee. “I like you. I don’t care what the Navy says is good or bad. Marines talk about justice, but it’s all made-up shit! You saved someone and even though you died doing it, you wanna go save them again, and I think that’s good. As long as you don’t get in the way of me saving my special person, we’re cool.”
Rocinante is entirely too sober for this conversation. What kind of crew does a kid like this have? They must be rabid over him. He can’t imagine what series of events led to any of them being willing to let their captain out of their sight, let alone all of them setting this natural disaster free on Impel Down.
His heart’s throbbing in his chest, beset by a hundred unfamiliar emotions; he needs to take this in a less serious direction. Luffy so blithely accepted his line about being dead that Rocinante can't resist the opportunity to tease. “Now you can tell people you’ve talked to a dead guy.”
Luffy makes a derisive noise. “I do that all the time. Brook is super dead. He's a skeleton!” This is a point decidedly in the mysterious Brook’s favor, given the approving way Luffy says it.
Jinbe summons Luffy back to the halfdeck before Rocinante can ask does Brook respond when you talk to him, so he’s left to finish his preparations in familiar silence. When he goes to the head for the final steps, he has to look in the mirror as he cuts his hair, ties the bandana, and pulls on the cap. It feels like getting gutted. There’s eleven years on his face that weren’t there before, and he looks old. Haggard. Worn-out.
That’s not what makes it impossible to meet his own eyes, though.
Sengoku refused to send the man he called son to a death sentence, but he never wavered in his belief in the Navy's inherent rightness along the way. He damned Rocinante to a life worse than death as a compromise between justice and love. Rocinante’s complete lack of a moral compass meant that he had always accepted Sengoku’s justice almost unquestionably. Yet in the space of a few hours, Luffy met Rocinante, saw the sacrifice he made for Law, and offered forgiveness. Was it really that easy all along, and Sengoku simply couldn't do it? Or worse, decided he wouldn't?
Fuck.
Rocinante pulls on the gloves, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, and takes a deep breath. There’s no time for this shit now: he has more important goals.
They teach you a certain mindset, when you’re in psyop basic. The ones who can’t achieve it wash out, no exceptions. It came naturally to Rocinante, because it felt just like a Calm, but inside of his head instead of in the air around him. In that space, all that exists is the objective and the reaction, and spies live or die by this mindset.
Objective: Find Law.
Corollary: Make sure he isn’t Corazon.
Corollary: If he is, un-make him Corazon.
---
Embarrassing, really, how easy it is for Rocinante to slide unnoticed through the chaos on the battlefield. No one looks twice at a marine moving with purpose when there's thousands more just like him.
It's easy to see the main clash from a distance: the towering bulk of Whitebeard versus the familiar uniforms atop the execution platform, and between them, swathes of bodies, the wreckage of beached ships, and even a giant of unfathomable size. He heads away from that mess and towards the echoingly empty halls of HQ.
A flash of pink in the corner of his eye.
Rocinante’s body reacts before his brain does. Blood flushes away from his stomach and towards his limbs in a queasy rush of fight-or-flight, while his ears ring even over the sound of battle. Only as he’s swallowing down bile does it register: the sight of pink plumage stalking on long legs through a forgotten side of the battlefield, more interested in playing puppeteer than upholding the terms of a letter of marque.
Rocinante slams himself behind a bit of wreckage as his chest heaves. Not here--not now--gunshots and snow and an apology and the last smile that ever stretched across his face--
“Get out there, soldier!” a drill sergeant bawls over the sound of battle.
Rocinante staggers to his feet, eyes unseeing, because obedience to that kind of a voice had been etched into his bones. He’s twenty yards in the wrong direction before he shakes off the fugue, but at least it’s twenty yards further from Doffy, too. He scuttles his way back to the nearest entrance, with every fiber of his being focused on not tripping or drawing attention to himself or glancing up at the execution platform to meet the gaze of someone he’s not sure he can ever forgive.
When he opens the doors, he’s slapped in the face with a long-forgotten smell. Floor polish, gunpowder, grease, and a hint of incense. The familiarity of it shakes loose the band of iron around his lungs, and Rocinante gasps in a deep breath. When he glances out a window, he sees pink and chaos far in the distance, and only then does it occur to him--did Doffy bring the executives with him?
Rocinante hovers by the window in indecisive agony. His knuckles go white from his grip on the sill as his eyes rove over the battlefield, looking for familiar shapes and not finding them. No, he decides eventually. Doffy’s too precious about his toys to share them with the Navy, because his greed is too great. He’s here doing the bare minimum to keep Sengoku off his ass and nothing more.
Sengoku.
No matter how heavy his footfalls feel, Rocinante’s silent as a ghost as he drifts purposefully through the halls. The only useful bit of information that Crocodile had ever given up was that Sengoku had been promoted to Fleet Admiral, so Rocinante doesn’t waste any time stopping by his old office in the Admiral wing.
The door opens silently without the help of a Calm, thanks to hinges oiled to within an inch of their metallic lives by cadets on punishment detail. Rocinante’s ears are ringing again as his fingers tremble, as his mind scrabbles for purchase against a tsunami of memories that howl with tumultuous emotion. All that exists is the objective and the reaction.
Objective: find Law. Find Law. Find. Law.
It doesn’t take any brainpower at all to methodically ransack the office. It’s not the first time that he’s done this, not by a long shot--he was regularly assigned to tossing officers’ desks without getting caught as part of espionage training, which eventually transformed into something of a game between him and Sengoku--and unfortunately, it probably won't be the last time.
Ten minutes later, Rocinante has his spoils arrayed on the desk: a file folder with his name on it and another that says Trafalgar Law. Rocinante’s personal rifle, in perfect condition to the point of showing evidence of being recently serviced and oiled. An unassuming black box, lined with velvet to cradle something more precious than jewels. A bag of okaki, for old times’ sake.
The files had been taken from the secret drawer in the desk, which still lay open. Rocinante waffles over it; he’d worked his way through the room in his habitual order and successfully disarmed every one of Sengoku's traps, which was as good a calling card as painting his name on the wall. Add to that the removal of his own file and rifle, along with Law's file, and Sengoku wouldn’t doubt for a second who’d done this. The updated prisoner manifests from Impel Down would just confirm it, whenever they arrived. But to say nothing, after all these years--
When the door shuts behind Rocinante, the secret drawer is tucked away again, containing a scrap of paper that says nothing more than thanks for the supplies. It’s less than he needs to say, but anything more would be incriminating enough that Sengoku would have to track him down. And if he swerves down a hall and into another office to drop off the okaki on a certain someone's desk with a little note of a crudely drawn face with its tongue out and a finger pulling down an eyelid, that's nobody's business but his and Garp's.
The secret docks are completely empty, not even a skeleton watch left. That suits Rocinante just fine; he’s ready to get the hell out of dodge. The weight of the memories is crushing, and for a fleeting second, he doubts. If it aches this much to stand in HQ, will he be burned to a crisp seeing Law again?
Doesn’t matter. He has his objective, and he was trained to run successful operations at any cost. He’s died once already for Law, and he’s not chickenshit. He’ll do it again, if it’s necessary. Rocinante straightens his spine and gets to picking a craft.
Nobody notices a one-man sloop sailing out from the harbor on the back side of Marineford, in part because it's happening at the same moment where quite a lot of people notice a yellow submarine surfacing on the front side of Marineford.
Rocinante is not among their number, because his eyes are turned down to watch his trembling hands open a file marked Trafalgar Law.
The first thing that greets him is a wanted poster. Rocinante’s eyes rove over it ravenously, taking in every detail. Law looks good. Grown-up. Healthy. Skin evenly tanned with no white patches, lips curved in a confident smirk, and a roguish goatee on his chin. Unbidden, Rocinante's fingers rise to sweep across the cheek, like he’s subtly checking the temperature or brushing away a tear. Grown-up, Rocinante thinks again, limp with relief. It doesn't stop the need in his chest to gather Law up and cradle him close and carry him away.
He only stops looking at the poster when the light fades out so far that it’s reduced to indistinct blobs, dominated by the white of that fluffy hat, a mysterious larger twin to one from eleven years ago. The sounds of battle at Marineford have long since faded, and all that remains is the shushing of waves on the hull, like a mother soothing a child to sleep.
Rocinante heeds her call. Though he tucks the folder safely into the deckhouse so it can’t blow away in the night, he returns to the deck to collapse gratefully and stare up at the first stars of night slowly fading into being above his head. He’s never been more relieved to sleep under the open sky.
---
The calls of a platoon of news coos wake him up, so he’s still half asleep and twisting a vile crick out of his neck as he waves one down, fishes a few berri out of his coinpurse, and exchanges it for a paper. The front page is dominated with pictures of Whitebeard, Ace, and Luffy, and Rocinante grimaces at the headline that takes up three full lines. Ace didn’t make it, and not in a way that he could miraculously come back from, going by the way Rocinante can see sky through his chest in one of the pictures. Poor kid. There but for the favor of lady luck go I, and all that.
When he shakes the paper open, it’s to more pictures spread across pages two and three, the front page being nowhere near enough real estate for the scope of the battle that had occurred. Any amused thoughts about the torturous night the editor must have had figuring out the spreads go twanging out of his mind like the newspaper out of hands gone suddenly slack with surprise. As it dances away on the wind, Rocinante flails for it with a yelp, misses, and thuds to the deck heavily enough that it shudders through the entire boat.
“No!” he howls as he flings himself upright to see the pages sinking into the water as the ink runs into an indefinable mess. The flying-v of news coos is pointed west and well away from him now. “News coo! News coo!! I need another paper!!! NEWS COO!!!!” He dances in frantic desperation, waving arms and legs and shouting as loud as he can until one near the end of the V takes pity, veers back to him, and drops a paper on his head.
Rocinante clutches it to his chest and scrambles into the tiny deckhouse with his precious cargo, unwilling to risk losing it again. The news coos definitely won’t give him a third chance. He lays the paper next to Law’s file, fingers trembling as he smooths it open to pages two and three.
SURGEON OF DEATH REMOVES STRAWHAT CAPTAIN FROM BATTLEFIELD, one of the many, many sub-heads screams. There’s two pictures below it, one of which being the cause of him dropping the paper in the first place. A side profile of Law with his eyes narrowed and his mouth open, a familiar sight to Rocinante who had been harangued at full volume by that exact expression a hundred times.
Rocinante leans in until his nose nearly touches the paper to study the image. He wishes the harried editor had blown this one up to the full size of page two, just for him. Law doesn’t look much different than his wanted poster, but it’s hard to tell when the picture is so small that Law’s pupil is nothing more than a single dot of ink.
“Surgeon of Death, huh,” he murmurs once he admits defeat from the eyestrain and leans back. He likes it. He bets Law likes it, too. Little gremlin always had such a streak for the macabre, and no matter how hard he’d play cool to an audience, he’d definitely crack a quiet, pleased grin on his own over getting an appellation like that.
The second picture takes a bit to puzzle out, small as it is. At first he thinks it’s the execution platform from behind, looking out over the sea, and then he thinks it’s a ship cut in half. He crosses his eyes at it, lifts up the paper to hold it far away and then up close, and finally at a more normal distance, it resolves into--a surfaced submarine?!
“Come on,” Rocinante begs, but the picture doesn’t get any bigger or clearer. Does Law have a submarine?! “Come on, come on, that can’t be all, I need more than that--oh!” Law’s file!! He gently settles the paper to the side and snatches up the folder with his breath trapped high in his lungs.
Navy dossiers on pirates followed a standard order: copies of wanted posters in reverse chronological order, a summary written by Cipher Pol, copies of all relevant incident reports in chronological order, additional pictures for identification, pictures of known craft, and pictures of known associates. There’s just the one wanted poster with a relatively recent year of issue compared to the date on the paper--kept a low profile for a while, smart--and he blows past the type-heavy pages with the intent to go right to any photos of known craft.
HIs frantic fingers flip from black-and-white to color and freeze. It’s a full body ID shot on what looks to be Sabaody, going by the tree trunks and iridescence. He needs to keep looking; he needs to find out what kind of a ship Law sails, but he can’t move.
There’s a roaring in Rocinante’s ears, and his vision spins. His body goes numb, and then cuts out like a bad den den signal. Is there seastone touching him? No. His wrists are light. There’s nothing dulling the world for him now. He’s taking it all directly into his veins, and it’s going to kill him, because there’s just--there’s--there’s just Law.
Rocinante swallows hard enough that his ears pop. He covers his eyes with trembling fingers, chokes on an attempt to take a deep breath, drops his hands to pound his chest as he half-coughs up a lung, and then looks at the photo again. Nope! He squeezes his eyes shut. He definitely needs to pray, but he’s not sure for what. Death?
When Rocinante’s heart finally slows from its frantic tattoo, he cautiously slits open one eye. Maybe if he only just barely looks at it, it won’t burn.
It burns.
Law, confident and tall and smirking and tattooed and full-grown and quite possibly handsome. Carrying on his chest the worst and best thing Rocinante has ever seen in his life. Only a bad spy lies to himself, so he can’t deny that he instantly knows exactly what that symbol on Law’s yellow hoodie is.
Who. Who that symbol is.
Rocinante.
It’s Rocinante and the last smile he ever gave to Law, to anybody. It’s unmistakable. It’s unendurable.
He tries to drag himself back around to practicalities. That answers that about Law being Corazon or not, at least. There’s no way Doffy would tolerate the use of his own iconography to honor someone who betrayed him.
Objective: Find Law.
Corollary: Make sure he isn’t Corazon. Complete.
Corollary: If he is, un-make him Corazon. Blessedly unnecessary.
Wait. Rocinante turns back to the newspaper, moaning a low, “No no no no,” but the headline hasn’t changed. SURGEON OF DEATH REMOVES STRAWHAT CAPTAIN FROM BATTLEFIELD.
Law had been at Marineford. They’d missed each other by minutes, hours at the most, connected by the tenuous thread that is Luffy. They’d been so blues-damned close, and now--
Rocinante leans forward until he can drive his forehead into the floorplanks. “Fuck!” he bursts out, and he can’t tell if the tears that well in his eyes are from the pain of hitting his head again and again or from the suffering of knowing how badly he’s fucked up.
There’s blood all over the wood and Rocinante’s face and uniform by the time he heaves to a stop. He’d bitten through his lip at some point, as well as took a bad angle on a few of the strikes so his nose and left eye socket ache almost as much as his forehead. They probably aren’t broken. He goes boneless and slumps to the side until he’s laying down half-curled around the newspaper and the file.
So he blew it. That's… fine. No, it's not fine at all, but it's not the first operation he’s had go sideways. He has Law’s file, and a pretty good grasp on how Law’s mind works, and the ability to commit crimes of various natures to acquire resources and information.
“Law,” Rocinante breathes. It’s the first time he’s heard the name spoken aloud in eleven years. He rolls until he can look at the picture of Law wearing Rocinante’s smile, and something dark and furiously determined rises up inside him. Nothing will stand between him and his objective.
Objective: Find Law.
Rocinante looks again at his own smile, but this time worry starts to gnaw at his stomach. He flips through the file back to the Cipher Pol summary, and there it is again under the section titled Jolly Roger.
This isn’t just an homage to a dead man: it’s a tribute to a traitor that also functions as a declaration of war on Doffy. Shit.
Objective: Find Law.
Corollary: Stop him from doing anything stupid about Doffy.
Corollary: If he can’t be stopped, do the stupid thing for him, at any cost.