Notes: During the timeskip, and a little bit of AU speculation at the end. A prompt from Tumblr that engulfed me.
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black velvet and heartwood
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When the men of Dock One go out drinking, there are always two empty chairs at the table.
Paulie says the number of their group automatically—he's usually the first one tripping inside, wiping sawdust from his hands and hollering for beer and food. Then Kaku flies in, windswept from jumping around rooftops all day. Lulu and Tilestone lead the rest of the group, and Lucci brings up the rear, the quiet shadow. Paulie drags him to the seat next to his, so they can yell at each other about boats and argue over dumb shit that they won't remember the next day. Paulie does all the yelling, though; Lucci sticks with polite insults via his stupid bird and the occasional pitying sigh. Then Paulie will complain to Blueno; the slow-spoken man is always good for a chuckle and a refill.
It's only when the server comes over and asks when the other two will arrive, does he remember.
He says they ain't comin', and watches her take the chairs away.
He keeps doing it, saying the wrong number. Sometimes Lulu and Tilestone correct him. More often, they don't.
It's on his list of bad habits, like cigars and long womanly legs and drinking milk straight outta the carton.
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Six months have passed since the Enies Lobby incident. Paulie still avoids Blueno's bar (Mozu and Kiwi's bar now) and the apartment where Kaku used to live. He once nearly calls Iceburg's new secretary "Kali—" and coughs into his cigar, inhaling too fast.
She runs over with a glass of water and bows her head profusely until Iceburg rests his hand on her shoulder and apologizes on Paulie's behalf.
After intensive background checks and weeks of vetting, two new shipwrights join the foremen of Dock One. A sawyer and bolt specialist, and a gawky kid-mechanic who can leap half a tower in one sitting. She rattles on and on about how amazing Yamakaze was, how he inspired her to learn how to jump, and wouldn't it be real neato if he ever comes back from retirement?
It gives Paulie a headache. He leaves Tilestone to deal with her and examines the planks of wood the sawyer neatly cuts in half.
She rests her giant saw on her shoulder, no ventriloquist bird in sight. Her work is perfect. She even talks, too; a warm, pleasant voice that grates on his ears.
"Good enough," Paulie grunts.
The Dock One shipwrights gather around to shake hands and congratulate them on getting their jobs. Paulie remembers the same day five years ago, a scene blurred slightly at the edges, all soft and sepia-toned like a vignette photograph: Kaku laughing with Tilestone, Lucci getting straight to work, Kalifa kicking a man unconscious because he insulted the new mayor of Water 7. It's a memory so comfortable he could stuff his knobby feet in it and wear it like his oldest pair of boots, stomp all over the city and live in there, in that gentle time, that space of yesteryear.
Paulie whips around and hollers, "And no skirts, you shameless women!"
The new hires glance at each other in confusion.
"…Well, that's obvious. Skirts aren't exactly ideal for our job."
"It ain't sexual hara—" Paulie breaks off, blinking as though he just woke up. Then he harrumphs and scowls all the way back to the ship he was working on.
Lulu sighs and pats his hair. "Don't mind him. Some idiots aren't good with change."
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One year later, Dock One is entrusted with Iceburg's initial plans to turn the city into a massive ship. The shipyard rings with the constant sound of hammers and steel. Zambai and his crew haven't missed a day of work as carpenter trainees. Iceburg gets re-elected by a landslide. Kokoro returns to conducting the Puffing Tom, Chimney at her side. Mozu and Kiwi name a drink after him; the Cherry Boy. It's a dumb pink brandy that tastes infuriatingly good.
Paulie is promoted to Vice-President of Galley-La and, more impressively, figures out a way to the shipyard that bypasses the debt collectors camped out in front of his place. He's still very broke. Life returns to normal.
Autumn comes gently to Water 7 when he sees an old friend under the bridge.
His hands snap with rope and leaps into the air, his mouth blistering with cigar ash and shit, motherfucker, you're ALIVE—
He stops under the bridge and—
It's a shadow on the wall. The shape of a gondola warped by perspective into a vaguely human silhouette with a top hat.
The scar over his heart suddenly burns. Paulie leans against the wall, catching his breath.
He wonders if he had always been easy to lie to.
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He begins seeing hallucinations of him everywhere. In the alleys. In the park. In the bird store. Wherever there's pigeons, really. It's not like he's going out of his way to gather up the scattered memories; they sneak up on him, like daydreams. He's pretty sure he glimpses Kaku walking along the roof of the belfry. He thinks he spies Kalifa's blonde hair and sharp elbows in the Blue Station. He hears something that sounds like Blueno's drawl in the crowded market.
Paulie sees a shadow one day. It moves too fast to be normal—on the ground one second and flying across the rooftop the next—and he knows.
He catches up with him in the back alleys.
Lucci dusts off his black suit and greets, "It's been a while."
His hair is longer and his face is neat, but for a few handsome new scars. There's not a crease across his smooth tailored shoulders. His voice is deep and calm, dry as a scotch on the rocks. Paulie feels dizzy. Kokoro would've laughed and said all this cigar smoke was finally killing his brain.
Lucci tilts his head, with a look of sneering detachment. It's so familiar it feels like a bad joke, laugh tracks and all.
Paulie grits his teeth so hard he crushes the cigar, and spits it out. "Lucci—"
He turns to leave.
Paulie whips a rope around his wrist, because he has never been afraid of death. Lucci stops and stills, for reasons he'd never understand.
He finds his voice, thick with smoke and some great otherworldly defiance. "If you come near Iceburg-san, or anybody else on Water 7, you're dead."
Lucci appears to consider every syllable of his threat.
"Say it like you mean it." In one flick of his wrist, he grabs Paulie's rope and yanks him over. He stumbles, catches himself, and grabs Lucci's stupid expensive-looking jacket in two rough shipwright hands covered in grease. Lucci glances down at the dirty knuckles at his throat. "I've always been genuinely amused by your thick skull."
"Fucking hell. I liked you better when you didn't speak."
His smirk is cruel. It is a painful fact to endure, knowing that you were never as important to someone as they were to you.
"You didn't need to spend five years pretending to be someone else." The words burn from his mouth, acid-hot. "It would've been kinder to just kill us, instead of dirtying our memories."
If Lucci's eyes flash, then it is just for a second.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Paulie says roughly. "You never cared. You were just an ugly lie."
"I'm sure," Lucci says, "that's true."
Paulie's face screws up for a moment. He looks a bit like he's dying. "Hurt anybody here, and I swear to fucking god, I'll murder you."
He looks down with brutally gold eyes, their foreheads nearly touching. "Better."
In the moment when Paulie blinks, Lucci vanishes. He's left holding a knot of empty rope in an empty alley, and the salt running down his face feels like waking up from some half-remembered fever dream.
And then he remembers, Iceburg.
That night, he sleeps outside his boss' office. (He will sleep there every day after work, for the next month and a half. Tilestone and Lulu will bring coffee, and Iceburg will sometimes join, laying his flintlocks on his lap and meticulously cleaning them. Old memories die hard, old friends have died harder.)
Paulie doesn't know why CP9 returned to their old base, only that they seem to have disappeared just as quickly as they arrived. No murders, no assassinations, no trouble. He doesn't care about the rumors that they've turned their backs on the World Government. Paulie doesn't want them anywhere near his city again.
He does, however, nearly suffer a heart attack when he opens his closet the next morning and finds all of his jeans replaced with miniskirts.
He thinks Kalifa has finally exacted her revenge.
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When Paulie is ten, he understands the kindness behind lies. White lies are currency traded in for hopeful smiles and relief. Optimism is a powerful thing. He's terrible at lying, always been too honest for his own good. But sometimes the semblance of a band-aid is better than none. It's easier to believe what you want to hear, after all.
When Paulie is twenty-nine, he reconsiders the cost of believing.
He finds Lucci in Dock One, standing before the skeleton-ships. He's the last foreman double-checking the Aqua Laguna countermeasures before the long night ahead. He's the most punctual out of all of them, punching out right on the dot. But today he takes just slightly longer, feeling the weight of the tools, cleaning the spotless edge of his saw. For some reason it makes Paulie uneasy.
"Don't worry," he gruffs. "The second Straw Hat shows his face, we'll end him."
"Focus on protecting Iceburg," Hattori coos. "He trusts you over the rest of us! If we lose both of you, Galley-La will be leaderless."
He finishes bolting down the last tarp and stands up. Paulie studies him, unnerved.
"What's wrong, Lucci?"
He pauses. "I don't understand," Hattori says with a tilt of his head. "Am I acting different than usual?"
"I had a feeling like you're—shit, I dunno, like you're preparing for the worst." Paulie shrugs and grins like the smug asshole he is. "You can't hide anything from me. I can read you like a book."
Lucci glances to the side. "I wouldn't worry about it," Hattori assures. "Be careful of the wind. Get inside before sundown."
"What about you?"
Hattori's master points towards the city. "I left some tools at Blueno's bar."
The bird smiles; Lucci stares at something far away, his expression unchanging.
With his city on the cusp of natural disaster and prowling with mayor-killing pirates, Paulie doesn't have time to linger on this. He doesn't have time to remember the value of white lies or the easiness of a smile hiding thirty silver pieces. Lucci never smiled, anyway. He doesn't have time to grip his face in both hands and make him look. He focuses only on the rising tide, Iceburg, and Water 7.
It's why he reaches for his shoulder, and not his hand, and it's why he asks, "When are you comin' back?" and not, why does it feel like you're saying goodbye?
With two fingers, Lucci straightens out the lapel of Paulie's jacket. His eyes are dark enough to drown in.
"Soon," Hattori says, his voice even and calm.
He leaves, and doesn't look back.
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The world is thrown into chaos.
Mariejois has launched a scorched-earth assault against the new Pirate King and his allies. Amazon Lily has broken their treaty with the World Government and are rushing to his aid. Soldiers of Fishman Island and warriors of the Mink Tribe—two of the Pirate King's strongholds—are leaving in a mass exodus for Raftel, following the call to war.
Jinbe. The Heart Pirates. Phoenix Marco. Empress Boa Hancock.
He reads about it in the newspapers every day. He knows that his boss does the same, scanning the lines for any news of Franky. Kokoro keeps one eye on the horizon and chuckles when Paulie asks what she's looking for.
"Smoke ish always de first sign." She takes a big gulp of her rum. "Can ye feel it in de wind, Paulie? Our straw hat boy's comin' back."
The fight crosses an entire ocean and eventually makes its way to Paradise, to the Red Line where Mariejois stands.
Paulie happens to be on Sabaody Archipelago on Zambai's suggestion, searching for Adam Wood to reinforce the keel of Water 7's ship.
He sees smoke on the horizon, coming closer at a terrible speed.
War collides with him in a blaze of fire, blowing down half the archipelago in a scorching heat haze. Soap trees around him melt like candles. Paulie grabs his rope and saves as many people as he can, until he comes face-to-face with a monster made of lava and a thousand marine cannons—
And then he's airborne, black velvet crushed to his denim jacket.
Lucci lands on the edge of the archipelago and Paulie tumbles out of his arms, swearing. He looks like the herald of destruction in the firelight, his hair coming loose from his ponytail, tonguing the blood at the corner of his upper canines.
Paulie articulately expresses his confusion: "What the fuckin' hell!"
The rest of CP9 lands around him, in raven-black tatters. "Hey, Paulie," Kaku calls. "You have pretty unfortunate timing."
"There are people evacuating at the docks," Kalifa says. "Make yourself useful and get going."
Paulie stares at them. Blueno's missing half his face. Kaku is clutching his stomach to keep his guts from falling out. Kalifa's using her teeth to tie her sleeve at her elbow. The rest of her arm is gone. Even Lucci—the entire right side of his body is burned, disfigured.
"Straw Hat's fighting Blackbeard, but he's not gonna hold out much longer," snarls the wolf-man.
"The Phoenix and Trafalgar have his back," Blueno points out.
"We gotta slow Akainu down and buy them enough time," Kaku says calmly.
Lucci adjusts his tie with a long, slow smirk, like he is savoring every sensation of this moment: his team, his pain, and carnage in front of him. "Everyone, in position."
"You can't!" Paulie yells, storming in the middle of this casually suicidal conversation. "You'll—fuck it, you're gonna die!"
They glance at each other in stoic bemusement. But Paulie can see the barest softening in Kalifa's glare, and he recognizes the small knowing grin on the corner of Kaku's mouth, and he catches a glimpse of Blueno glancing skyward in faint exasperation. Of course he knows this. He's known these shitty, lying, stubborn fuckers for years.
Lucci steps forward. He presses something to Paulie's hands, something warm and small and feebly fluttering.
"Leave," he says.
"I ain't savin' my own ass like a coward," Paulie snaps, a carpenter of Galley-La down to his marrow.
"You haven't changed at all, Paulie," Blueno sighs.
"We must look pathetic for you to be worried about us," Kaku laughs, his nose broken and bleeding. "I kind of missed this."
"A reminder of the good old days, perhaps?" Kalifa says with a mild sneer, adjusting her glasses.
Paulie hates them. He hates them all so fucking much.
The forest breaks under hot, molten lava.
Paulie grabs Lucci's shoulder. "Don't go dyin' before I get to kick your ass properly, you dumb fuck."
"It's a date," Lucci promises, and, palm to heart, throws him back.
He sees the black suits of CP9 running to the front lines of the last fight of their lives. He sees Lucci transforming into a ten-foot-tall leopard with a roar that shakes the ground; he sees the silhouette of a giraffe, a hundred million bubbles, mysterious doors. Paulie turns his back to the flames and runs, holding Hattori to his chest, shoulders hunched to protect the bird.
It's the first time he hears the lie.
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It's the last one he believes.
fin