So many things brewing up in this story. Watch me lose track of all my plotlines and turn them into a jumbled mess in the coming arcs! Who's up for a wild ride?
I've said it a few times on my tumblr (usual reminder: tackyink dot tumblr dot com; you can also copy and paste the link from my profile if you don't feel like typing) while I wrote this chapter, but both I'm excited and nervous about releasing this. Heck, you can tell I was excited because this is coming out two weeks after the last one instead of two months.
In September, this fic will be two years old. I've spent most of this time debating whether I should include in the story the things that happen in this chapter, and though I made the final decision about three chapters back, I've been dropping hints since the beginning of the story. I hope it doesn't feel forced or too much, or… ah, I'll let you judge. And I hope you like it. Please tell me what you think if you can spare a moment! I love hearing your thoughts about how the story is going.
I just want to let you know that I've been waiting over a year to drop a pun on you and I hope that it works and makes you go aauuugh. Edit: Since it's causing some confusion, I should say that it's more of a wordplay than a pun, and it's been there since Saki got her first bounty. I apologize, I was sleep-deprived when I wrote this note.
Also, I just realized before uploading this that we've hit 500 followers! Thank you so so so much! You guys are the best and never in my wildest dreams I would have thought this story would get so big!
Kalmaegi: You are onto something and you'll see what it is in this chapter! And she really doesn't like her hair color…
Jag: Thank you! Here's an early one to compensate for all the late chapters!
Anon: You know, I was really nervous when I made Felicia because I was convinced that I was going to mess up really badly somewhere along the way. I thought about not making that reveal because it didn't affect the story (and to conveniently forgo opening that can of worms), but then I thought, what's the point of putting it in the story if only I was going to know? I think we all have a right to see ourselves reflected in characters. I'm not glad I made you cry, but I am that she felt right, and I hope there's tons of good representation in the future so the tiny thing I included here becomes not worth mentioning.
19. Life in clover
(You're not the girl you think you are)
The situation was dire.
So dire, in fact, that Saki was one hundred per cent certain that never in her life she had been cornered in such an unexpected way. She had a sixth sense for danger, and after years of relentless training she knew how to strike swiftly and effectively to render her enemies defenseless before they could counterattack. But this time, the danger had gone completely over her head, and thanks to this oversight, they were all paying dearly for it.
In any case, humans are animals, no matter how wrapped up they get in their little civilization game, and one thing that happens with cornered animals is that they lash out.
Saki had been playing this game for far too long to give up. This was a fight for survival and for honor; she had not fallen in battle in her twenty-three years of life and wasn't about to pick up the habit now.
"Shit!" Shachi exclaimed as a projectile knocked his hat off, bypassing the solid snow wall they had built in the early morning. If he separated his back from the wall to recover the hat, he ran the risk of falling victim to the cold bullets raining from above.
Penguin examined the fallen headwear darkly, may its fibers rest in peace. "They are tougher than anticipated," he said.
Shachi was in an equally somber mood. "Who would have thought mud balls were more difficult to make than snowballs?"
Indeed, the other guys may not have grown up playing with snow, but the snowballs they were throwing were so compressed that for all intents and purposes they hit like hail.
Something that Saki, Penguin and Shachi had failed at preventing when they had begun their assault and the teams had spontaneously formed was that Mack had been pushed back by the oncoming snowballs and fallen in the opposing team. It had proven to be the biggest mistake they had committed,
If snowballs were rocks, they'd still feel softer than what Mack threw. They were fueled by fury, spite, and deadly aim.
Then again, he had competition in the fury and spite parts. The last one would only take practice.
"We should think about a strategic retreat," Penguin suggested.
"Piss off," Saki retorted, tossing a snowball over the protective wall with concentrated rage and hiding in one smooth motion. "Deserter." The word rolled on her tongue like it was dirtier than the back alleys of Asteria, and she picked another handful of snow and gave it shape to throw it.
Every other pedestrian that walked by stopped to watch with open interest how four pirates were hiding behind a curved snow wall while a volley of snow missiles attempted to fall on them and the smallest and angriest of them retaliated incessantly.
Days were pretty slow in Niva, so events like these warranted, at least, a thirty second curious stare.
"Okay, fine. Captain, why don't you—"
"No," said Law. He was almost lying on the floor, since with his height, no matter how he sat, his head poked over the fort.
"I haven't even finished the question."
"I know what you were going to ask. The answer is no."
"But it would be much easier!" Penguin insisted, likely feeling like the only sane man left in this senseless war.
"That would be cheating," Saki said. When she threw the next one, she heard an ouch coming from the makeshift parapet the others had built with empty crates.
"Now you're having morals?"
"It's called having pride. You know what you do when you pick a battle you can't win, Penguin?" Saki said, compressing between blueish hands another weapon of mass destruction. She needed a pair of gloves urgently, but there were more pressing matters to attend to.
"Surprise me," he drawled.
"You keep fighting until you win it anyway."
"That would be inspiring if you weren't batshit insane."
"We could be doing something if you were helping instead of complaining."
"She's right," Law said, making Saki almost drop the snowball at his unexpected support. He threw one over the fort, and another pained sound came from the enemy base. "You started this, you finish it."
"It was her idea!"
"And I'm acting in consequence!" She said. An enemy ball hit her shoulder as she peeked out to throw another one and she stumbled backwards. She knew it wasn't Mack's because it didn't penetrate her coat.
Shachi took the remains of the projectile in one hand and after a cursory glance he exclaimed, "They're putting rocks in!"
"Classic mud ball technique," Penguin said. "Disgusting."
"Are you going to take it lying down?" Saki taunted him.
Penguin leveled his gaze at her, but some of the effect was lost because his cap cast a shadow over half of his face. "Never."
They scrambled quickly to make more weaponry, and when they had an arsenal of snowballs, they opened fire at the other team, hoping that the relentless attack would make them surrender.
They retaliated, although more weakly despite Mack's deadly throws because they hadn't been expecting the pushback, and the decisive moment of the battle came when Bepo, oblivious to the war that was being waged outside while he was taking a bath, exited the inn and was caught in the crossfire.
He fell to the barrage like a drunken sailor from a crow's nest.
Another snowball hit him while he was down.
When the pirates looked in the direction it had come from, they saw a pint-sized kid with a backpack who ran for the hills as Law unsheathed Kikoku with full intention of harming and the rest yelled indignities at him because how dare an outsider mess with Bepo. They threw a few snowballs at the kid for good measure, too, and some more at a group of school kids who had stayed aside to watch, just in case they got ideas.
They may have been a bunch of nerds, but they were still fearsome pirates with a reputation to uphold.
An indefinite truce was called in order to reanimate Bepo, so they put the snowball fight past them because they were adults and playtime was over, but they also held onto great amounts of resentment because they were petty as heck.
As the guys started to talk about exploring the outskirts of Niva, and Saki stuffed her hands in her pockets feeling pins and needles all over her fingers. Not getting the gloves before pulling this stunt had been a miscalculation, and she needed a pair before she decided to do anything else.
When soon everybody began to scatter to do their own thing, she was stopped from going on her own on a late shopping trip by Law, who called her when she was already heading down the street.
She saw the others were leaving without him, so she guessed he wanted to do something in town. Maybe cut up innocent produce or look for that Devil Fruit guide.
"Where are you going?"
"Anywhere they can sell me a pair of gloves," she said, putting up a hand to show him the red spots already forming and shoving it again in a pocket.
"You should have done that sooner."
"I know. Did you need anything?"
"Remember that we need to look for Hilda-ya's shop."
Saki's eyebrows rose. "Are you sure you want to volunteer for that? I can go by myself after I'm done shopping."
Law looked at her like the temptation of not having to listen to that person again was too much to resist, but after a moment's consideration, resist he did. "I'll go."
A small smile escaped her. "Suit yourself."
The gloves took only a quick detour, since Niva was definitely not in short supply of them, and soon they found themselves wandering through the town's old winding alleys and trying to remember Ruddy's directions instead of asking, because they honestly had nothing better to do. This ended with them becoming completely lost and finding the fountain square instead of the bookstore. The water in the trough was still frozen solid.
"No kids today," Saki commented, knocking on the ice to check how thick it was.
"They must be at school," Law said from behind.
"Oh." She took a glance over her shoulder and hid the hand in her pocket again, walking back to Law. "Right, they were carrying bags," she said. "I wonder how it is."
Law's piercing, curious gaze set on her. "What do you mean?"
"Going to school."
"Are there no schools in Asteria?"
Saki's expression went blank for a second, and immediately she burst out laughing. "That would be offensive if it wasn't a reasonable question," she said when she calmed down a little and Law was giving her the stink eye.
"There are," Law answered blandly in the vain hope to cover that he was embarrassed.
"There is," Saki replied. "Just one. But I was homeschooled." Her expression became thoughtful, and she added, "I thought you knew. I must have told someone else."
"First I hear of it," he replied, sending a skeptical glance her way. "You don't seem the type to be homeschooled."
"Oh? What type do I seem according to you?"
"The one who left home with her bag every morning, skipped class, and came back in time only to tell her parents how interesting school had been that day."
She stuck her tongue out without looking at him. "Not even close. I was stuck home all day long. It was so boring. Class hours were the best thing that happened most of the time."
"How did that work? Did you have a tutor?"
"There was aunt Fern – Take and Tsubaki's mom – she was a teacher at the local school, actually. And there was my mom too. She was…" She trailed off and looked at the sky, lost in thought. Had it been sixteen years yet? In a day just like this one, though it snowed far too often in North Blue for her mind to have made any lasting association, and she was grateful for that. "…extremely smart. Not just by a child's standards, mind you. Everybody who knew her said it. She had the absentminded genius thing going on." After a brief contemplation, she said. "Guess I only got the first part from her."
Law stared at her for a few seconds before deciding to ask, "What happened to her?"
"I don't know. She disappeared." There was no deep-seated sadness in her voice or any emotion of the sort. She spoke like it was a fact of life, like it had happened to somebody else.
Time healed the gravest of wounds and only left numb scar tissue to show for it.
"Just like that?"
She nodded. "She vanished one day. We never found her. That was before the smugglers settled in Asteria, so it wasn't a really dangerous place back then."
"What do you think happened?"
"No idea. Don't think I'll ever know. But I've always wondered…" She tugged the front of her collar up, concealing her face in part. "Maybe she was tired of us. She was… too much for such a regular place. Regular husband. Regular daughter." She shrugged. "It doesn't matter." A grin. "Now you have my family's entire sad tale! Feel privileged yet?"
"If she really abandoned her family, that would only mean she didn't deserve them."
Her grin faltered and became something smaller and more genuine. Amused. "I didn't know you were a family man."
In all honesty, she had been torn between thanking him and lovingly punching him on the arm in hopes of leaving a bruise.
"I'd say that's having basic decency."
"I didn't know you had any of that, either."
He pulled the hood over her head and eyes in retaliation and started to walk towards a slope, fast. "Speak for yourself."
"I never pretended to have any," she said, hurrying towards him as he went down a small slope, crossing under a stone arch that linked two houses together. The stones that paved the street were irregular and age worn, and Saki turned around to look at the arch as she walked backwards to keep up with his strides. "Didn't Ruddy mention an arch? I think we're going in the—shit!"
The ground trembled under her feet and she tripped, threw her arms back to stop the fall and shut her eyes in preparation for the impact, but a miracle happened and she stopped way before her head could hit the stone.
The miracle went by the name of Trafalgar Law and oh how low she had fallen, or had been about to, anyway, to think about him that way, even if he was making a frowny face that was entirely too close to hers to be comfortable.
When mild earthquake stopped, he was holding her with an arm around her upper back, and spoke with infinite disdain. "Your affair with the ground is going to end up badly someday."
"I don't suppose you'll fix my head if I split it open?"
"There's no fixing your head, I'm afraid."
"You know," she said sincerely, ignoring the jab, because any opportunity to fall that ended up not materializing was one to be celebrated. "I really appreciate that you've tried to keep me from diving headfirst onto the pavement since that first time."
She was sure faceplanting into Asteria's icky cobblestones had made one hell of a second impression. And after she'd managed to look reasonably badass saving Bepo from a backstab, too…
Law's frown relaxed. "I had completely forgotten about that one."
"Damn." She had played himself by reminding him. "So much for leaving a lasting impression."
If she didn't know better, she'd say there was a hint of pity in his eyes. Perhaps she did not know better.
"Rest assured that you did."
"Enough to make a good guinea pig, anyway."
"Pretty much." He set her upright. "Watch your feet."
"I won't make promises I can't keep."
Law let out a long-suffering sigh that most likely meant he was reconsidering his life choices.
She smiled. "I'm insufferable."
"And very self-aware."
"That was my selling point, right?"
He deadpanned. "Don't make me regret catching you."
"You wouldn't let me fall on purpose."
"Wouldn't I," he said apathetically.
"Yeah, because you like me too."
Law stared at her for a few seconds, and surprisingly, he didn't throw any sassy remarks her way. He just looked away with that perpetual frown of his and kept walking along the street while Saki decided if it was safe to follow him or potential repercussions were still in the air, because there may have been snow at the end of the slope, but she didn't feel like getting intimately acquainted with it at the moment.
Another earthquake replica hit the town again, but it was so small that it would have passed mostly unnoticed, if not for the snow that slid down the roofs of the buildings nearby.
"I hope this isn't a recurring event," Saki said.
"Earthquakes tend to be," he replied, sounding a tad sour.
She trotted after him when he was at a safe distance, looking at the buildings on either side of the street. Most were private homes, and shops were far and few in between. Hilda's bookstore was hidden around a corner, easily recognizable because the owner was sitting on a simple wooden bench right outside, smoking.
"Was wonderin' if you'd come," she said, putting the cigarette out on the snow. "Where's the talkin' bear?"
"He's with our crewmates," Saki replied, sparing Law the need of talking to her. The less he did, the better for everyone involved. "Why?"
"Just curious. He wouldn't fit inside the shop, anyway," Hilda said, motioning them to follow. She pushed a reddish brown wood and glass door and led the pirates inside.
The shop could have been big or small, but neither Saki nor Law could tell, because there were bookcases as far as the eye could see, filled to bursting, leaving only narrow passages to navigate them that were further obstructed by more stacks of books that didn't fit anywhere else. There must have been walls somewhere, but they were nowhere to be seen.
And dust. There was lot of dust. Books had a special ability to gather it, and there was enough of it in that place for dust bunnies to become actual living, breathing animals. Saki wouldn't have been surprised if those were actually a thing in the Grand Line.
In the present circumstances, trying to find a needle in a haystack seemed a good idea to pass time if searching for a particular book in the bookstore was the other option.
"I've got what you're lookin' for," Hilda said. Relief washed over Saki way too quickly, because then the older woman leaned right to look though the space between several rows of bookcases, squinted her eyes, and after pondering for a moment said, "I think I saw it somewhere over there last time."
"When was last time?" Saki asked, unsure, looking in the same direction. Books were stuffed in the shelves in no particular order, and it didn't look like anybody had touched them in about two decades.
"Does my face look like a calendar?" Hilda snapped. "You want somethin', you work for it, youn' lady." And for good measure, she whacked Saki's arm with a rolled up magazine she had lying around.
It left a grey imprint on her coat's sleeve.
"I'll help you search too," Hilda said, going ahead first. "It's not like any customers are goin' to show up."
Saki and Law shared A Look, with Saki silently pleading him to not open his mouth and him declaring just as quietly that there wasn't enough treasure in the world to make him strike up a conversation with that woman.
Saki stared at the mountain of books as her Captain's 'we can take it easy' statement resounded in her mind.
Some things you cannot say out loud.
—
Hours went by with only the sounds of book-shifting and stilted conversation for company. At this point, Saki was starting to really get the depth of Ruddy's resignation with her wife's books, because she doubted anyone, local or not, would ever be interested on buying any of the copies of 'Seven Ways to Wear Your Underwear Before Changing It' or 'Garden Gnomes: Alive or Only Unsettling?' that she had found, if only so they could be spared the embarrassment of being caught owning them.
She was bored enough that she was considering asking Law how many illnesses one could catch by consistently wearing the same underwear for a straight week when something caught her eye.
Under the dust, she could make out a collection of four familiar-looking books, and she took an old ladder to reach the shelf, hoping that the titles would at least be interesting. Besides, they were looking for some sort of guide-slash-encyclopedia. Those looked like a good bet. That's what she told herself to justify breaking the methodical, highly efficient and utterly boring system she was using to search.
But it wasn't a Devil Fruit guide. It wasn't even an encyclopedia. They were four thick history manuals pertaining to the same collection, and as soon as she read the titles on the brown spines she knew why they had looked familiar. They belonged to the same series as the lone book where she kept her mother's picture, and she was excited at the prospect of finding all the volumes together. She didn't have any particular interest in history, but after having one of the books all her life, she had wondered about the contents of the rest.
But that collection wasn't complete either, and seeing which was the missing volume gave her pause.
First Civilizations, volume I. First Civilizations, volume II. First Civilizations, volume IV. First Civilizations, volume V.
She took out the first one with a hiss, the pressure to get it unstuck from the shelf hurting her bruised fingers, and sat on the ladder. The covers, unlike the spine, were squeaky clean, and the cream-colored letters under the title read 'Dr. Clover and Dr. Clover.'
She sat there in contemplation, rubbing a fingertip against the words in case she was having a weird dust mite-induced hallucination. But the names didn't budge, proudly displaying the authors of the book and filling her with the feeling that her life was nothing but a continuous string of nonsense and cosmic irony.
Tentatively and just a tiny bit scared of what she might find, she reached out for the next book and checked out the cover.
First Civilizations, volume II. Dr. Clover and Dr. Zadie.
She pulled the next.
First Civilizations, volume IV. Dr. Clover and Dr. Nico.
The first book slipped from her legs and dropped to the floor, almost toppling over a tall book stack.
"Gosh darn it, be careful," Hilda said grouchily from somewhere Saki couldn't see, and on cue, she appeared from behind a bookshelf to check out the damage. She gave a cursory glance and was starting to turn around when she noticed what Saki was holding. Her expression hardened, eyes sharp and mouth thin as she said, "What are you doing with those?"
Saki, who didn't know why he was being looked at like she had stolen a toddler's lollipop and in her rather rattled state didn't care, asked, "Do you remember how you got these books?"
It was instantly obvious that that had been the wrong question to ask.
Hilda took a step back and snapped, "Who are you and why are you here?" She hadn't finished the sentence when Law walked up to them, stopping right behind Hilda.
"What's the matter?" He asked in a glacial tone.
"That," Hilda turned around on her heels and stabbed her right index finger on Law's coat, "is what I'm askin' you. Who do you think you are to come nosin' 'round? What are you after?" She puffed out her chest and said defiantly. "Because whatever you want, I'm givin' you nothin'."
Law batted her hand away from him and repositioned Kikoku against his shoulder just to make Hilda aware that it was there and that she better watch her mouth, but turned his attention to Saki instead. "What happened?"
"Nothing!" She said quickly, and lifted one of the books in the air to show him. "I have a book from this collection and I was checking them out."
He huffed, briefly closing his eyes. "We aren't here to waste time."
"No, you don't get it—It's the same collection literally! Book three is missing and it's the one I have."
"That could be a coinc—"
"You have the missin' book?" Hilda cut him, eyes open like plates as she faced Saki. She frowned, and stared with intensity, as if she was trying to rearrange a miriad thoughts. "How?"
"That's why I was asking—I know it's a long shot, but… these may have been owned by someone I… knew?" Saki said hesitantly, realizing as she spoke how dumb that was, because it had to be a coincidence like Law was saying, and there was still the matter of the names on the books, and nothing made sense.
Hilda put her hand on her hips, her shrewd eyes boring into Saki. "Remind me your name, youn' lady."
"Saki."
"And what else?"
"Just Saki."
Hilda held her gaze, hard and appraising, and Saki was hit by the feeling that she had stumbled onto something more serious than she had imagined. "Who gave you that book?"
"My mom."
"And what was her name?"
"Dubia."
"And what else?"
Saki paused before replying. Her mother had never used her surname in all the years she had known her.
But as far as she knew, she had used it up to the time she married, and she had been sailing the Grand Line before that.
"Clover. Clover Dubia."
Hilda just stared for a long, long minute while the pirates waited for a reaction. It was a deep intake of breath and a, "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"And you are tellin' me you didn't come here on purpose? To an island where Log Poses don't point to?"
"You know what we came here for," Law replied instead. Hilda's glare could have ripped a lesser man to shreds. "We were following the trail of the shipment at the warehouse."
Hilda gave him a skeptical glance, and asked Saki, "Where's Du now? Still in North Blue?"
Saki wasn't sure how two of her conversations in the same day ended up revolving about her mother. "I don't know. She disappeared all of a sudden."
"What do you mean, disappeared?"
"She went to run some errands and never came back home."
"Never…" Hilda repeated, and the harsh edges of her face went away as she paled, but suddenly she snarled with so much rage that it was hard to believe she was able to hold it all in her body, "Those bastards."
"Who do you mean?" Saki said with alarm, leaning forward on her step. "You know something about her?!"
"She never told you, did she?" Hilda shook her head and brought a hand to her forehead. "I can't believe…"
"Could you please explain to me how do you know my mother?" Saki insisted, tone not nearly as polite as her words.
Hilda reciprocated the attitude. "Do you at least know where Du was from?"
"West Blue," she replied.
"So you don't." She pressed a temple with her left hand. "Ohara. Have you heard about Ohara?"
A few times, and only from her mother. She had been too little to be aware of the world news. "A fire burned it down, right?"
"Ha!" Hilda snorted. "Do you believe everything you read? The World Government burned it down."
"The official story said Oharans were conspirators trying to overthrow the World Government," Law said.
Considering how young he had been back then as well, Saki had to wonder if he had been looking into suspicious disasters that ended in the destruction of entire islands. She wouldn't put it past him, to look into similar incidents if only to find out if there was a thread that linked them. She also had to be in awe at his information sources. She'd been more sheltered in Asteria than she'd ever noticed, in retrospect.
"That lot of nerds wouldn't have hurt a fly," Hilda retorted. "A ship full of them spent a year in this island looking for something, and soon after they left, their island was wiped out and no one else heard from them again. Du had split from the group and stayed here to leave with that Marine boy…" She shook her head again, as if after all those years she still didn't approve of the idea. "And before you ask, I don't know what they were looking for. But I know they found something dangerous. Du never talked about it."
"Then… she was here…? And those people were all from…" Saki didn't finish the question, because she was too deep in thought to form coherent sentences, and Hilda had already answered her questions anyway.
But then, if what she had said was true, it meant… the picture Saki had, the white-haired woman in the group, the Nico and Clover surnames on those books—
"You're her captain, right?" Hilda said at Law, inspecting him from head to toe as if trying to ascertain if he was worth her time or not. "Do you know what this means, boy? You have on board one of the last links to those archaeologists. To Du's research."
Saki was feeling a headache tryingt to creep up on her, and she barely managed to utter the foremost thing in her mind because of how unbelievable it was. "My mother—my mother was one of the Demons of Ohara?"
"Du was a chillin' angel, that's what she was! Always with her nose stuck in books, helpin', always had a smile for everybody. We thought she'd be safe when she left with that Marine boy." Hilda sniffed, and Saki realized that under all the bitterness the old woman was sad. Maybe she was using it to cover how deep the feelings ran. "You don't know anythin', then? She never told you?"
Saki shook her head weakly. "I am a little overwhelmed at the moment, to be honest."
"I could say the same." Hilda sighed, and stared around, at a loss what to do. "You can keep those books. They're only takin' up space here anyway. I'm goin' to get some air."
And she moved through the narrow passages until she disappeared from their view and they heard the front door close with a thud.
Saki glanced at Law, who was looking up at her with an expectant face, and at the topmost book on her lap. She cracked it open and began passing pages without paying attention. The friction hurt her fingers.
When she didn't break the silence, Law did. "You could say something."
She stopped flipping pages and lifted her eyes to look at him. His arms were crossed, and he tapped a finger against Kikoku's scabbard while he awaited her reaction.
"I'm trying to put all this information in order. Might take a while."
"You had no idea of any of this?"
She ran a hand through her hair absentmindedly. "I knew my parents met in the Grand Line. Dad was a low-ranking Marine, mom was travelling with friends. That's how much I knew."
"So she's what the clovers are for," he said.
Saki's lips parted in surprise. "Oh, yeah. Cat's out of the bag, I guess." She laughed nervously. "My mom never liked using her surname. Makes sense if she was a fugitive," she shrugged with a humorless smile plastered on her face. It fell as soon as her eyes fell on the book again.
"That's why you reacted like that when you saw your first wanted poster." It was a statement, not a question.
"Of course! You have no idea how weird it was seeing that 'Clover' attached to my name."
He leaned lazily against a bookcase. "At least it seems to be a coincidence. No doubt the Navy would have added to your bounty more charges if it could." "What did we talk about lying by omission?"
"Hey, don't grill me about this! How was I supposed to know my mom's maiden name had anything to do with… anything?" She groaned and hid her face behind her hands, resting her elbows on the book. "Lucky Clover my ass."
Because Law didn't know tact and wasn't all that interested in getting acquainted with it, he said, "Technically you are the luckiest, considering the rest are dead or missing."
Saki gaped at him poorly concealed indignation. "When did we get to the stage where you can joke about my deceased family?"
"Around the time you said you weren't sorry about mine."
Saki put her hands on her face again, tried to smother a laugh and failing. "We're horrible."
He smirked at her. "Tell me something I don't know."
"That might take a while, too." When she calmed down, she took a deep breath and looked up again. "Hey, do you think I could write a novel about my life?"
He actually considered it. "Too unbelievable. Maybe split the drama between a few characters."
"Yeah," she agreed. "I wouldn't read a book life that, myself. I'm not the writing sort anyway." She looked down at the book cover again. She supposed that Dr. Clover that repeated itself in every tome was her grandfather. Somehow, the idea that she had found a small connection to him made her inordinately happy. Her dad had been an orphan, so for a long time she had been curious about her mom's side of the family.
This discovery made them officially a family of criminals. She had to smile at that. "So what if the Navy finds out now? That Nico Robin child alone was worth eighty million. Will you kick me out? Should I try to join the Revolutionary Army with this newfound knowledge?"
Law lifted an eyebrow at her. "You wish. You aren't going anywhere until Mack learns how to make a decent coffee pot."
"Aww. I think that's the sweetest thing you've ever told me," she said with a teasing smile.
The smirk came back. "Don't get used to it." He walked where the first volume had fallen and picked it up, examining the cover with keen interest. "Doctor Clover?"
"Doesn't surprise me. I told you she was really smart." Redirecting her attention to their surroundings, she began to ask, "Do you it's worth going through all—"
She was cut off by the sound of the door slamming open, a few books hitting the floor in the distance, and Ruddy's agitated voice filled the shop. "Emergency! Emergency in Lurte!"
—
Lurte happened to be one of the biggest islands of the winter archipelago, the one with the tallest mountain, and the one most geared to foreigners, because this was precisely the one that Log Poses pointed to. And after the last blizzard, so much snow had built up on one of the faces of the mountain that, when the earlier earthquake hit, the trees had finally given out and there had been an avalanche.
It happened sometimes, Ruddy had told the Heart Pirates when they had all gathered near the inn, the townspeople running up and down and getting ready to sail for Lurte, because they only had a small margin of time before the next snowfall came, and all capable hands were welcome to help before it was too late. The avalanche had hit the outskirts of the town, where houses were few and far in between, but several farms had been affected, and they weren't sure how many people had been injured.
This would have been indifferent to the Heart Pirates if it weren't because a dozen well-meaning neighbors had asked them to give them a lift to Lurte to lend a helping hand, since Niva only had small fishing boats and there weren't enough to carry all of them.
Law didn't like the idea of civilians in his submarine, even if it was only for half an hour. On the other hand, Law did like the idea of monetary compensation and not having to pay for their stay at the inn. He made clear that that was going to be the extent of their help, but for the people of Niva it had already been a long shot that a pirate crew had accepted to give them a ride, so they were fine with it.
As the townspeople filed in, Saki thought that Log Poses were a curious thing, because as much as pirates were a danger to coastal towns, a crew that had no intention to destroy a village was at the complete mercy of its inhabitants until the magnetic field was recorded. It was a fine line that both sides walked all the time, the civilians trying to avoid violence, and the pirates trying to avoid sabotage.
Since she had been sailing in the Grand Line, she had understood much better how people could live there. It was a dangerous sea, granted, but it wasn't as lawless as the stories told.
Of course, none of this applied to pirates who had no qualms about killing and ransacking towns. She saw a few of those when she read the bounties every morning. If the posters told the truth, and she knew she had to take them with a grain of salt, a newbie was out there racking up a huge bounty by razing every village he set foot in. Saki thought he had the kind of face you just wanted to kick in. Actually, there was a bit of resentment towards him in the Polar Tang because the crew felt that he was taking the easy way to increase his bounty and look more fearsome than he was. Besides, Law had an infinitely cooler flair.
When about twenty people boarded the sub to assist in Lurte's relief efforts, Saki stayed along with Shachi on the snowy deck, hugging her sword, to keep an eye on them, and she was reminded of Law's question the day before, about intruders at home.
These were totally intruders, and she couldn't see them get off their ship soon enough.
She wasn't the only one thinking along those lines, if she were to judge by Shachi's tense posture.
He confirmed her suspicions. "This is weird and I know it's stupid but I don't like it."
"Yeah," she said. She didn't know when agreeing with Shachi had become so easy. "They're stepping on your daughter."
Shachi glared at the villagers' boots. "They better have clean soles."
Both watched the group with apprehension, but the Nivans merely spent the entire half hour it took them to reach their destination chatting and getting pumped to shovel like there was no tomorrow. They were perfectly respectful, and didn't move around much, and that's why Shachi and Saki felt like jerks when the Polar Tang docked, and all those people went their own way, and relief washed over the two of them. They even said thank you and waved at them and all. Normal people weren't supposed to thank pirates. They were likely failing at their job.
"Did you get far this morning?" Saki asked conversationally.
She looked at the town below. Lurte definitely had a higher population than Niva, and a lot of its buildings looked newer and bigger, if still made in the same style.
"Nah, the forest was difficult to navigate. Too much snow, and when we felt the earthquake we turned back. But Bepo said he could see old paths around."
She couldn't help but think if that had anything to do with what her mother and her friends had been looking for, and she wondered if she wanted to check it out for her own sake or just to dig deeper into the story. "Cool. Will you go back?"
"Dunno." He kicked idly at the snow. "We could try to find another way further into the mountain. I mean, it's not like we have anything better to do."
"Really," Saki said. "A month is a long time to be stuck somewhere when you're used to travelling all the time."
Shachi chuckled. "Yeah. When I look back now I don't know how I was able to live all my life in the same place."
"Oh, I know that feel. It's like everything—"
"—becomes so small." Both said the last word at the same time. "So what were you doing with Captain earlier?"
"Searching for a book at Hilda's. It was thrilling," she said, tone contradicting her words.
"Did you find it?"
"Nope." She thought she could tell him that she had, however, found out that her family life until that point had been a lie, but she wasn't sure how one started telling that sort of story. It really wasn't book material. "But it turns out Hilda knew my mother."
"What?" He pushed up his glasses, which had slipped down when he had whipped his head around in her direction. "Really? What were the chances?"
"Really fucking slim."
He snorted. "So what, did you find any embarrassing family secrets that you mother never told you?"
"…Not embarrassing."
"I'm all ears," he said with a grin, and probably not believing that they weren't embarrassing.
There was no better way to say this. "Well, apparently my mom and her family and all her friends were wanted and killed by the World Government for mysterious reasons, and that's why she hid in North Blue and dropped her surname and never ever told me anything."
"Wow. That's… wow." He made a pause, and suddenly his brow furrowed. "Wait, are you saying you have a surname?! You name traitor!"
"Shhh! Not legally!" She said in a loud whisper.
"What is it?" He said eagerly. The indignation had just been an excuse to take a cheap shot at her.
"I don't have a surname." She repeated. "My dad didn't have a surname, so I didn't get one."
"That's bollocks. Everybody takes the mom's surname when the dad doesn't have one."
"What part of 'dropped her surname' you don't understand?"
"I bet it is something embarrassing."
That was a direct strike to her jimmies and made them rustled like nobody's business. No one made fun of her mom's name on her watch. "She had a very pretty surname that you've seen a thousand times, so if you can't guess it that's your problem."
"Sheesh, okay, give me a heads up when you pull the stick out of your ass."
She punched him on the arm. Someone had to receive that punch today. "Any plans for the afternoon?"
"None whatsoever. You?"
"I need to buy a coffee pot."
He shifted away from her with a suspicious demeanor. "I'm not gonna help you poison us all."
"Don't worry, you can keep your good morning coffee, you disgusting degenerate."
Shachi looked at her with pity in her eyes. There had to be a lot of it, because she could sense it through the sunglasses. "You are a nutcase."
—
After the shopping was done and the new coffee pot safely put away in the Polar Tang, Saki and Shachi joined the rest of the mechanic crew and Mack to find a place for dinner. They actually had a choice in this island, and after a short walk they found a restaurant that looked nice enough to have good food but not so nice that they'd try to kick them out when their merry band appeared at their door.
They let them in. They ate. It went so well that even Mack approved of the food. They spent longer than planned in there, talking about their days and how cold it was and that they were weenies because it wasn't that cold and what's up with your hands and why do they have red spots oh god is that a thing that happens when it's cold?
But as soon as they stepped out of the restaurant, the door opened behind them again, and a man barged out and into Uni's back, sending both of them down. There was a ruckus coming from inside the restaurant, and when the Heart Pirates turned to look at what was going on, they saw another two men at the door, and a scared waiter trying to hold them up.
"Watch yourself!" The man who had fallen on Uni said, shoving him away and getting up. The other two passed the pirates bumping into them to join him.
The first offender had a face only a mother could love, as long as a paper bag covered it and she had a serious visual impairment. Uni picked himself up and retorted, "You bumped into me!"
Meanwhile, the waiter was timidly saying from the doorframe that they had to pay before leaving. He couldn't have been older than seventeen, and he should have gotten cookie points for trying.
The man clucked his tongue with disgust and began walking away, but Saki did what generally a five feet tall woman shouldn't do when faced with a big human and his two oafish sidekicks, and snatched the guy's wrist with a quick movement.
At the same time, to her surprise and joy, a knife embedded itself just an inch away from the man's foot. Someone else had caught on.
"The hell do you—" The man began, but he stopped when he saw Saki and replaced a look of irritation with a lecherous grin.
She made a face of disbelief even before he could say anything else. This was the type of idiot she abhorred the most.
"You tired of these—"
"Give me his wallet," she said with a deadly stare, cutting to the chase.
The grin became smaller as his face scrunched up progressively. "What?"
"Give back the wallet you took from my friend."
Uni started to frantically pat all his pockets. "I-it's gone!"
The man laughed in her face, and Saki lost most of her will to live when she saw a saliva droplet rain inevitably fly and land on her face. He grabbed her by the front of her coat and pushed her hard, saying, "Fuck off, bitch."
The reaction was immediate.
Saki had honestly expected having to get up from the ground (streets paved with round stones and devoid of snow for the extra ouch factor; these people were more diligent about cleaning their street than Nivans) and as she fell she was already deciding how many times she was going to kick that son of a coconut's testicles, but she didn't have a chance to do neither. Uni had rushed to stop her fall and, in the blink of an eye, the rest of her crewmates were pouncing on the three guys, with Shachi leading the charge, and while they were busy beating them up, Mack had cut pockets with excellent aim, collected Uni's wallet and three more, and given the waiter what was owed plus a generous tip, because he knew what working at a restaurant and having to deal with assholes all day long was like.
As all these things were happening, Saki stood there and marveled at how amazing was having people who had her back, and how frustrating it was that she hadn't been able to kick those guy's nuts up to his throat and tie them into a bow. Nonetheless, she felt touched and very out of place at having people willing to commit violence for her without even asking.
She didn't think she could ever get used to this.
—
As these events took place, Law and Bepo were roaming the town at their leisure, walking through a street with several bars, when someone made a comment about Bepo.
Now, people talked when they saw Bepo. That wasn't a remarkable occurrence. He was a bear, and there was no hiding it, and surprise was a natural reaction. But there was a difference between shocked remarks at the sight of a mink and a scathing 'fucking furfags' from a middle aged sailor who had had one too many.
Law had always drawn a very firm at those kinds of insinuations, and he wasn't going to drop a good habit like that.
The aforementioned someone got a scabbard to the face and a few broken teeth to the ground. It was a big loss, because he hadn't had many to spare, for starters. Then someone else got upset for their friend's sake, and he helped him lose some more teeth so they could commiserate together. By the time about five seconds had passed, the third had jumped into the fray and Bepo was in action to assist him with getting embedded in a nearby wall, and the fourth and fifth had the luxury of trying after Law had set up his Room, so when the incident was over, they had left in their wake a trail of body parts, a few horrified townspeople, and another handful applauding them from a bar's doorway.
They insisted they drink something with them, first round's on the house because those guys were obnoxious as hell and they keep trying to grab the waitresses, and when Law rejected the offer saying thanks but no thanks, he needed to go with his crew, the patrons told him to bring them too, the more the merrier, and aren't you the captain of the ship that's brought the reinforcements?
Law and Bepo shared a short look and, in that beautiful way that longtime friends have, they knew what they were thinking without the need for words.
Why not? They had nothing better to do.
—
It was two hours and six rounds since they'd gotten to the bar when Saki realized that what Ruddy and Hilda had said about these islanders not getting drunk was true, and she watched Law's expression go through several stages, from expectation to suspicion to shock to curiosity – it was just a matter of knowing how far the eyebrows moved – in that span of time, very aware that he was adding reasons to the pile of stealing that one glorious liver for science.
She had also seen every other of her companions save for Mack and Bepo descend into a state that could only be described somewhere between absolutely smashed and beyond shitfaced, and she was ninety-nine percent sure that, morning come, Mack would be on board with waking them up banging pots and pans. Even Tuttu, who was a big guy, was starting to look like he was going to close his eyes any second.
Saki would have fallen too, had it not been for the characteristic underlying camel piss smell that the Old Man's brews had and also rose from these, and she knew better than to try to down a glass of that at any reasonable speed unless someone was betting she couldn't.
For the record, she could.
The thing was, while most of the crew was in a deplorable state, the locals thought this was really funny, and a few of them were taking advantage of the rare opportunity of having so many drunks in their midst and talking to them like a grown man talks to a baby. Saki would have also thought it was funny if it wasn't so tragic.
But some things that the locals said, no doubt soon to be erased in the guys' minds by the comfortable mind void of alcohol poisoning, were interesting.
Such as the mentions of a treasure.
A treasure, said the stories, that was somewhere in these islands but nobody had ever found.
While the guys broke into ooohs and aaaahs and tell me mores, Saki disengaged from the conversation, because a secret treasure that had been around for centuries and nobody had found despite knowing it was there was definitely a treasure that did not exist.
Such were her thoughts when someone kicked the door open and fifteen men, give or take, with the biggest and baddest of them leading the group, entered the bar.
The leader, who probably thought he would look tougher than the snow by not wearing a coat, was a muscular man with a well-cared for beard and moustache, and Saki scrunched up her nose in disgust when she saw the blurry, shapeless tattoos visible on his neck and hands.
He gave the room a glance that made clear he thought everybody present was below him.
"Commander, it's them!" One of the men behind him pointed at the two tables the Heart Pirates had occupied. She hadn't seen him before, though she thought she saw the guy she had grabbed before somewhere at the back of the group. But what caught her immediate attention were more lousy tattoos, matching his superior's, on the back of his hand. It was a mess of greyish black blurry ink that made her want to puke. She took a gulp of the concoction in her glass in hopes of keeping her dinner down.
The bar had become mostly silent, though contrary to what had happened the last time they'd been in a similar situation, many of the patrons weren't making themselves smaller on their seats. Rather, they looked ready to pick up their bottles and smash them against the table to stab the newcomers in the eye. It was so much like home she almost shed a nostalgic tear.
Oh, how she missed Asteria's joints sometimes.
And because for once she had her sword handy, and that bunch had come looking for trouble anyway, and, let's face it, she was who she was and it was against her nature not to be a smartass, she told Law quietly, eyes fixed on the rival captain's face to avoid looking at those indecencies, "Captain, I think I'm starting to see your hands in a new light."
A brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-it ray of hope shone in Law's eyes. "Does that mean you're dropping it?"
"Never."
Law threw his head backwards and sighed deeply as he stared at the ceiling.
"I should be doing that," Saki muttered.
"Wha'cha talkin' about?" Penguin slurred, leaning towards Saki and losing his balance so hard she had to catch him before he crashed onto her.
"Have you seen that dude's hands?"
Penguin squinted at him, and so did the other drunk crewmates. Even several locals seemed horrified at the sight, and the whispers in the room grew.
The commander cleared his throat loudly in an attempt to catch a more intimidating kind of attention.
"You messed with my men," he said.
"Is this happening again?" Saki muttered, interest piqued.
"Been a while since last," Penguin managed to say slowly and with a lot of effort.
The Heart Pirates shared a few glances between them, at the clock on the wall, at their drinks. It was too late for this shit.
Shachi stood up with a wobbly motion and pointed at the pirate commander. "You're wrong," he said.
"You're calling us liars?" He said with a sneer that showed a lot of teeth.
"Nah. 'M sayin' we trashed 'em," Shachi declared proudly.
Saki thought it was one of the patrons who threw the first bottle when No-Name Commander of the Joke Pirates started advancing towards them, but it didn't matter, because an all-out brawl exploded in the following seconds.
Apparently, using his breath as a flamethrower wasn't a thing only Ruddy did.
Grand Line people were made of tough stuff.
More surprisingly, though, none of Saki's companions got hurt in the middle of their own drunken stupor. They moved fast and hit hard, even if very ungracefully, but who cared a about gracefulness when the opportunity to fight evil arose? This was how Marines felt every day, surely.
The goons ended up on a pile outside the bar and the contents of their pockets in the hands of everybody who had been inconvenienced by their interruption, because it was only common courtesy that they got compensation for their time and the bar owner got the money to repair his property. He didn't look very happy at the prospect of having to replace half of his furniture.
They were nearly done collecting when Shachi pulled something out of the commander's pockets that he discarded because it was too big to be a beli bill, but Mack caught it in the air and opened it.
"You tossed a map," he informed Shachi.
Saki drew closer to Mack, along with the others, to look at the paper. It was a little yellowed, not ancient, and it depicted an island with a mountain range in the middle and a circle on it.
"A treasure map?" Shachi said excitedly.
"Do you buy everything you're told?"
Bepo took the map from Mack's hands to examine it closely. "There isn't a name on it. Do you think it belongs to any of these islands?"
"Don't ask me, you're the navigator."
"We could ask Hilda when we head back to Niva," Saki suggested. "If she doesn't know, at least she'll have maps to compare."
"Are you volunteering to find that book should it come to that?" Law asked her.
She did as if she hadn't heard him. Bepo folded the map again and put it in his pocket, and after a day of too many good deeds, the Heart Pirates said goodbye at the bar to return to the Polar Tang, just in case the opportunity to do someone a favor arose again and they somehow went along with it. A reputation to uphold, and all that.
—
Despite how tired she was, when Saki dropped on her bed, she did so holding her mother's book and no willingness to sleep anytime soon.
For a place that was supposed to be so uninteresting, she sure had had two eventful days.
To be fair, at times she thought the boredom would have been better. Finding out that her mother had actually been a wanted woman for as long as she had lived in Asteria painted the entirety of her life in a different way. The fact that she had stopped using her surname meant that she was aware that she had been in danger all that time, and she had tried to protect Saki by not telling her anything.
Had Fern and Arthur known? Had the Old Man?
She stared at the book in her hands, and she had wondered why exactly her mother had taken this one and left the rest behind when she realized that it was the only one in the collection that didn't bear her family name. First Civilizations, volume III by Dr. Gram.
She had left behind everything that could be linked to that name. She guessed it must have been important – that other Dr. Clover, Saki's grandfather if she was guessing right, must have been famous in scientific circles. If nothing else, respected enough to co-write nearly an entire collection of history books.
Saki made a mental timeline of what must have happened. Her mother had left her hometown with her colleagues, sailed the Grand Line for a while, met her father, and split from her group to go live in North Blue. Sometime after this, her friends had been captured, and the island of Ohara put to the torch. That dredged up feelings about Asteria she didn't want to dwell in. And years after this, she had disappeared.
Saki and her family had always known that something bad had happened to her, that she wasn't the type to disappear without warning.
They looked for her for weeks, but it was Saki's own dad who called off the search, way too soon in most people's eyes including Saki's, and she had never forgiven him for that. Even now, sixteen years after she had disappeared and several years after her dad had died, too, she realized she was still holding onto that bitterness.
But in light of this revelation, she realized that he must have suspected what had happened. That there was no way to get Dubia back, that the enemy was far too strong and far away, and that it must have torn him apart to accept that and let go.
Saki remembered bawling her eyes out day after day, and Arthur and the Old Man and a very pregnant Fern trying to keep her distracted, and she remembered finding her dad crying one day too and berating him for giving up.
She was the worst.
She fought back the tears threatening to spill and put the book aside without any care, deciding that all this thinking wasn't doing her any good, and she got up and left her room to go to the upper deck.
But on the way there, upstairs, she heard rustling sounds coming from the sickbay. She didn't need to look to know who it was and she didn't want to bother him, but truth be told, she didn't feel like being alone with her thoughts, not when they would inevitably go down a depressing path, and not when the afternoon and evening had gone so well while she was in friendly company.
It then occurred to her that she had something to keep herself busy with, so she sauntered to the kitchen and unboxed the holy instrument she had bought that afternoon, cleaned it, and did a couple of dry runs before she put ground coffee in the pot and set it on the stove again.
In a few minutes' time, the entire kitchen smelled like the glorious beverage that Shachi was so fond of calling black sludge, so she poured two mugs and made her way to the sickbay as stealthily as she was able to, cracked open the door just enough to allow her hand through, left a mug on the nearest counter, and closed the door again, leaving for the bridge because, on second thought, it wasn't a particularly bright idea to be on a snowy deck at night without a coat.
She set her coffee on Bepo's desk, took a sheet of paper and a pencil and began to sketch Niva's fountain.
The irregular noises coming from down below served to pull her out of her thoughts and back to reality when her mind started to drift and remember and ponder what ifs that made no sense now.
She took a sip of the coffee. It left an indelible bitter aftertaste in her tongue, and it was perfect.
She didn't remember at which point it happened, but she was so tired that she ended up falling asleep on the desk.
She didn't recall hearing anybody entering the bridge, either, fast asleep as she was, which was noteworthy, since she was a light sleeper, and even the smallest noises near her were capable of waking her up. But the undeniable fact when she woke up as the sun rose and illuminated the room, was that someone had put out the light she had been using to draw, and covered her with a small blanket they kept in a cabinet, for when nights were cold and someone had to replace Bepo on the bridge.
Saki smiled to herself. No matter how much he insisted on denying it, Law was a softie at heart.
Reluctantly, she folded the blanket, put it away, grabbed her dirty mug, and went to the kitchen to make a fresh batch of coffee so it would be ready by the time Law was up, and when he appeared half an hour later, looking like he was treading the limbo between life and death and losing in favor of the latter, Saki couldn't hold back another smile as he sleepily reached for a cup of steaming coffee.
In the end, no matter how many things changed, she could always take comfort in the ones that remained the same.