Thank you to these amazing cinnamon buns: A-Prayer-4-da-Damned, Guest, Alkitty, Opalescent Gold, SNicole25, The Novice Storyteller, geckogal077, Reaganbrie, Shiningheart of Thunderclan, Pippinsqueaks, Lucy Jacob, moonlit mage, minty, helichopper, Tamago-ya, Yukionna13, luffys, shimamia, Lucinda M. H. Cheshir, ozwoz, sxcond, PetiteBulle, Terikel, Jenny123jenjen, and pineapple sorbet!
—
methyl nitrate pineapples
hypothesis #18
growing pains, or: how to walk on sore ankles, a treatise
—
When she and Law arrived on the deck, Sophie scanned the submarine for a stalker-esque figure (her mind pictured someone wearing a floor-length trench coat, and looked vaguely like Law) and her gaze landed on Penguin and Shachi. They were shoving a man to his feet, checking him for live ammo and rigged grenades until Hippo mentioned that he once hid two BA-11s near his deep dark nethers, you better frisk thoroughly, pirate. He said pirate like he crushed a whole lemon between his molars, swallowed everything, seeds and all, and the abrupt déjà vu almost made Sophie miss what Law said next—
"…Dinner," she repeated. "…Here."
Sophie blamed this on Law's complete and utter lack of parental supervision growing up, even though it wasn't really his fault. Except, well. Flevance didn't metastasize into a city of silent stone-white angels by itself and, when she thought about it, he came from an entire country that made decisions so dumb it followed them down the ancestral line, birth to death and death and death. You'd think DNA was impervious to genetic idiocy (she didn't say that, though, because talking about angels when Hai Xing was in line for Best Zombie Starfish award and her head still aching from being assaulted by chocolate cake felt like tempting fate with crooked finger, and Sophie'd had enough casual flirtations with Death—capital D, not the one with the obscenely yellow hoodie standing next to her—to know about tempting fate).
"He looks like he could use a good meal," the surgeon pointed out. "Or just a meal. Any caloric intake at this point—don't look at me like that, I've been known to occasionally help a marine down on their luck."
See, he never had anyone to tell him no. As in no, Sophie, you can't stick your hand down a blender to see what'll happen, and put that saltshaker down, you've melted enough snails to terrorize half the reef's ecosystem, and right there, that was the problem. I bet his parents never even hit him, she thought with a scoff, and then felt a teensy bit bad, because Law's parents were weepy white stiffs in the land of the oh dearly departed, and they never got to see him growing up and tell him he was doing it all wrong.
Hippo raised his thin hands, a placating gesture. Sophie remembered holding that hand when it was a big scarred oyster-shell fist, as she walked on her tiptoes across G-13's battlements, the very edge of her known atlas; he was singing an old sea shanty and she was a half-breeze away from falling a hundred feet into the ocean. He filled about half the sky when she looked up at him, both their heads in the clouds and so dementedly happy at their tiny makeshift family, a girl and her dad, their castle in the ocean.
But his hands now were the wrinkled skin of a snake molt, skinny as the branches of a bare winter tree. Sophie wasn't sure if this was some sort of test and if she was failing it (she never failed tests before, not ever ever ever), but she was hungry and besides, someone had to hide the parathion from Law.
—
On second thought, Hippo decided that 'I am here, ready to kick everyone's ass and rescue my poor confused kid from you suspicious lowlifes' did not fit the situation. He sat in the Heart Pirates' galley, a fresh towel wrapped around his shoulders.
Avoiding her teacher's general vicinity, Sophie stuck to the corner of the galley that wasn't too far away to be obvious but wasn't close enough to be uncomfortable—next to the stove, attempting to make the pot boil faster by telepathically steaming it with the force of her glare. She barely glanced at him when she muttered, "I didn't hide my research here."
"I wasn't trying to look for it," Hippo said reproachfully. He was actually rather impressed by the galley. "This yellow monstrosity is nicer on the inside. I expected to see corpses hanging on the walls."
"We only break those out on holidays," Tweedledumb clarified.
"You're pretty brave, marine. Aren't you afraid we're going to steal your brain?" snickered the other pirate, Tweedledumber.
"I was going to be polite and wait until after dinner," Trafalgar rebuked.
Hippo glanced at his kid. "Are they always this rude?"
"No," Sophie said honestly. "They're usually worse."
"Awww…"
Trafalgar slid over a wooden flagon. "Sensei—"
"Don't call me that."
The pirate snuck a knowing glance at Sophie, who stuck her tongue out. "…Drink?" Trafalgar finished.
Hippo looked at the flagon until the pirate got annoyed and took a mouthful of it himself. "I have better manners than to poison a guest."
Sophie's cough sounded suspiciously like, 'pants on fire!'
"A guest who is also my friend's precious family," he added with a smirk, and his student harrumphed and the pirates laughed at a joke that Hippo did not understand.
This was like… this was like someone telling him that Donquixote Doflamingo was actually a giant pink chicken that'd been masquerading as a human this whole time. It was within the realm of possibility, but he never expected to hear it out loud. The world flipped upside-down. North was South. Purple and green was a good color combination. Pirates were kind benevolent creatures and marines were evil menaces.
Hippo stared at Trafalgar, the pirates, the ceiling, and took a few moments to evaluate his life and his current circumstances. "Don't bother with that." He waved away the flagon and confiscated the entire bottle. "Drinking with pirates aboard their own ship. This must be my finest hour."
"Our commitment to villainy is lazy at best," said Tweedledumb, shrugging. "I mean, sometimes it's bad—"
"It can be pretty bad, yeah—"
"But other times we're pretty laidback—"
"It's not like we kidnap puppies or steal rattles from babies."
"Oh my god." Sophie covered her face with her hands.
"You're murderers," Hippo said flatly.
"…Putting that aside, is it true you kill pirate kids? And not just the famous ones, like Gold Roger's baby and his baby momma."
"She was never found. And god, no. Of course not." Hippo took a hefty drink. "We used to only kidnap them and perform experiments."
"Is anyone still surprised by how corrupt the Government is?" Law pointed out.
"It was a different time."
"Was it, though?" Sophie sneered from her corner.
"Sure. I had less stress wrinkles."
The smell of sizzling fish and peppers wafted over from the stove. The Surgeon of Death nudged open a porthole to let the steam out and a draft of sea-salt wind whispered in, cooling the steamy galley. He watched him and his student whisper; she looked weary and more than a little irritated, and when she shoved her bangs behind her ears he saw a bandage on her forehead. Hold on—kid are you hurt are you okay what did they DO—Hippo was about to stand up when the happiest song burst from her mouth: Sophie was laughing.
The pirate might've been laughing, too; his head turned slightly and Hippo saw the edge of a smug smile on his face. It was just for a moment that all the fatigue on her brow vanished—just a moment, because she glanced up and saw him, bottle in hand. Her smile fell.
Hippo didn't remember the food so much. The food was fine, apparently reheated lunch leftovers. But the pirates' rum was great. They always did have better rum than us. Sons of bastards. Idiot A and B lightheartedly prodded Hippo to estimate how many pirates he'd killed (he was so tipsy he actually replied—hundreds, probably; he was in his forties in a job that didn't do kind things to your lifetime, by his age you either retired or you get retired). Then the conversation turned to him and his kid until she mentioned that they weren't blood-related, she was adopted as his student.
"You two could be." Idiot B squinted at them, at Hippo's black curls and warm brown face, and then Sophie with her upturned nose and hazelnut tan. "…Well, maybe if you took after your mom, Sophie-chan."
Sophie-chan. Hippo wanted to barf. Into the Captain's hat, if possible.
His kid began tapping on the edge of her plate. (A familiar, if annoying, quirk.) Then she shot a glance at Captain Asshead. (An unfamiliar, and more annoying, quirk.)
Trafalgar gave a half-assed attempt at a pleasant smile. "Sensei, I hear that you're G-13's best doctor."
He grunted.
"How would you treat a patient who's been afflicted with Red Sky?"
Ah, she told him about Vira. That surprised Hippo less than he'd like. He decided to humor the boy: "The burning. You must never forget to do the burning. It leaves contaminative residue, gets into the water and soil, so you gotta burn them and everything they touch." He took another drink, paused, and shook the empty bottle. "There should still be Revolutionaries out in the Viran fields, digging and burning with their wicker lights, long long into the night… what? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Sophie, his emotional Sophie—how he used to laugh at her adorable tantrums—was staring at him like he was a skeleton-hand crawling up from the foot of her bed.
Trafalgar frowned and turned to Sophie, pointing at Hippo. "Why's this fucker useless?"
"Don't call him that!" she huffed. "I told you there was no point… and you got all riled up hearing 'Marine' and 'doctor' together in one sentence…"
"The danger is over. Only Virans and Revolutionaries are still affected by the sickness, and nobody's going to waste their resources on—"
"We're finding a cure. Me'n this pineapple."
She flicked her fork at Trafalgar—who gave a cheeky wave—and glared at him, daring him to scoff or laugh. He did neither.
"Well," Hippo said. "You're brilliant, aren't you."
Sophie's eyes widened in surprise, shining like the sun—
"You've planned it all out. How you're going to waste the rest of your life." He didn't remember standing up, but his knees knocked against the table as he loomed over her. "Your life can't amount to this—you can't be saving anarchists and getting hurt and killed and throwing away everything you worked for to frolic with—"
She stood up, too. "Stop it!" It struck Hippo—for the first time, off pain sedatives—that Sophie was bigger than before, fists larger, biceps straining underneath her shirt. It used to be cute when she shouted at him, when her wrists were thin and her voice as high as a bird's and he could hold her upside-down by one ankle as she tried to claw at him. "It's m-m-more than that—"
"Yeah, we don't just frolic," said Idiot B.
"We also make flower crowns and braid each other's hair," said Idiot A.
"What happened?" Hippo pressed, shaking his head. "What happened to chemistry, to, to fighting pirates—this was your whole life, it's what you wanted, it's what you begged for—"
"Can you please listen to me?" Sophie was red-faced—he knew that tone. She didn't want to sound like she was begging, not in front of these pirates.
"I tried to give you everything that you wanted—" He was rambling now, vomiting out everything that had built up for a month. "I, I gave you the best schooling the World Government could offer—I adopted you, even though Lettidore and Teresa were against it—I've done all that I could so you could have a better life than I did, and I—god, I've sacrificed so much for you. Are you listening to me?"
Sophie clutched something shiny around her neck—dog tags? Her expression was like rolling thunder. Why wouldn't she smile at him anymore? She was his kid, for crying out loud.
"Silly girl, you break my heart," he almost sobbed, feeling like he was eight-years-old again, picking through trash for breadcrumbs.
"I don't care, you dumb doodoo-face!"
The pirates seemed, for a moment, rather tickled by her choice of insult, but Sophie knew how to wrangle every sneering drop of disgust from the word doodoo. He taught her that, after all. It was infuriating. Hippo reached for her arm, bypassed it, and started slapping her shoulders and her face and any which part he could get his hands on. Idiot A and B grabbed his shirt ("Mister Sensei! Let go!"), and it descended into a mad tug-of-war with Hippo in the middle, dragging Sophie over the table, them pulling him away, everyone screaming their heads off. Trafalgar slid over the table and seized her around the middle and half-hauled, half-carried her away from him.
Sophie bellowed past Trafalgar's ear, "I DON'T CARE! I don't c-care how much you sacrificed for me, I don't! CARE!" Her feet kicked, several inches from the floor. "Gonna hit m-me again? B-b-best be careful, old man; you've gotten skinny!"
He roared in bitter laughter. "And you've gotten fat, my darling."
"What a compliment!" she howled back. "Th-that means I can throw a h-heavy punch—Law-san, d-don't!"
Sophie tried to grab him as he was in the middle of drawing out his giant, compensating-for-something sword, and then ended up sort of smacking him with her torso, and he stumbled backwards.
"Get the fuck out of my ship," Trafalgar rasped, menace curling around every syllable. Idiots A and B stood in front of their captain, their good-natured smiles gone.
A man who had seen a great number of wars, Hippo knew when he was fighting a losing battle. That, and he was getting too old and had seen too many of his friends die from pirates like Trafalgar, to deal with their shit anymore.
He lurched towards the door, but then Sophie shouted after him, "What should I have done? Crawl back on my hands and knees, p-pretending the Vice Admiral didn't send a Cipher Pol agent to assassinate me?"
The Government owed you nothing. You chose to be a soldier. He had paid his dues early on. So had Lettidore and, by god, so had Teresa.
"Yes," he answered, the only truth that he knew. "It's what I would've done."
Underneath the fury and the grief was the unerring certainty that Sophie didn't even hate him. She didn't hate him after he tricked her. She sure as hell didn't hate him now, as she called for her sensei to come back, please, they weren't done, please, wait, wait. He didn't wait. He didn't look back.
The night-desert air was cold as he stumbled down the docks. What a mess. Why did he drink so much? Why… why hadn't he insisted on talking to Sophie alone? What had he been so afraid of? The wood beneath his feet creaked and rocked like a stolen G-13 battleship. And there, the young marine standing 'fore the bow, a flintlock in his hand, raising it at him without a trace of hesitation. There was no fear in his eyes; just silent obedience, the recognizing of a turncoat. Didn't he know it was a ruse? Charaka Hippo, a traitor? Never. Not ever. (Did you die thinking that? You must have. You did.)
And Sophie, panicking in the crow's nest and aiming the crosshairs, her teacherfather in mortal danger. Her bullet passed through him like knife through butter, one shot, The End. How the hell did she do that? She was no crack shot. Did she learn at Vira? (He shouldn't have let her go, shouldn't have, shouldn't have, stay in your tower, little canary, war is no place for the impressionable.) Hippo saw it again, over and over: he saw the marine-boy-child raising his gun, he saw the marine-girl-child raise hers a half-second faster. If he had just made the sure the ship was empty, if he just moved faster, if he had said or done something!
He stopped in the middle of the road, paved with foreign clay. Far away from home. Home. G-13 was a bombed-out carcass now, ruined by Sophie's hand. When Teresa gave him news of her assassination, he chucked half of Lettidore's office out the window and threw a flowerpot at his head. There was no body for him to bury. They wouldn't even write her name on the memorial. Traitors are not grieved. Why did she have to come back? He would've accepted it as the years went on. He would've made his own memorial for her, abalone shells and oysters from the reef that she loved so much. He even knew where he'd put it—atop the North Tower that she loved, by the battlements. It had the best view of the ocean. But those battlements no longer existed.
The night was dark and still and empty. His ears picked up a faint sound: a record was playing through an open window. The singer's scratchy croon was a hymn to heartsickness, and all he could think about was that it was a damn shame he didn't have a glass of bourbon to raise.
—
"Prick," Penguin said immediately after the galley door closed.
"Shit-faced wet sock." Shachi stuck his tongue out.
"The biggest case of stick-up-the-fucking-ass I have ever diagnosed," Law snarked.
They glanced over at Sophie, who was staring at her feet.
The pirates began giving each other Significant Looks over Sophie's head. Picking up overturned bowls, Shachi made eye contact with his captain and jerked his head towards her. Law grimaced and looked at Penguin. Penguin coughed and pointedly busied himself with wrapping up the leftovers as excruciatingly slow as possible. Law indicated with his eyes, 'What am I supposed to DO'. He was ignored and left to his fate. Well, a captain was supposed to lead by example.
Law strode over to Sophie, who hadn't moved from her spot. Her face was red and splotchy with either rage or embarrassment. Likely a mix of both.
"Sophie," he said firmly.
She gave a slow, wailing moan, like a despondent poltergeist.
"Wait—wait. Stop." Law felt the gazes of his crewmates pinned to his back and quickly attempted to assuage the damage. "Listen to me." He patted her shoulders, decided this was too personal, and moved his hands to her cheeks, squishing them together, her lips puckering. This made her look like a miserable fish, begging for the sweet release of death. "Father figures are a dime a dozen. Your looks aren't bad, I'm sure you could find someone who'll let you call them Daddy—"
Sophie seemed to choked.
"I'll help you search for candidates. I don't imagine it'll take long. I'll tape a sign on your back or something."
"Oh my god, you're horrible!" Sophie shrieked, pummeling him with her fists.
Law lazily blocked her assault. Penguin and Shachi were falling over each other, laughing like hyenas, as Sophie attempted to murder their captain with a spoon.
Shachi held up his hands, like he was envisioning the imaginary-sign on her imaginary-back. "Burgeoning young criminal searching for an older doctor to call Sensei," he cackled, and blinked. "Ah."
He and Penguin turned to look at their captain. "Ah," said Penguin, snapping his fingers.
A dark shadow crossed Law's face.
Penguin coughed delicately. "Oh, Sensei, I think I'm coming down with something."
"Sensei, pay attention to me," Shachi simpered, hiding his face behind Sophie's shoulder and fluttering his eyes.
Law pinched the bridge of his nose. "We are not going through this again."
Laughter rang out in Heart Pirates' mess. Loudest of all was the unrestrained brassy laughter, an octave higher than the rest: a temporary spell that turned the dark sky into an aurora of purples and blues and a thousand diamond stars, and if you had been wandering the pier beside the yellow submarine, you might've found yourself smiling along.
—
Wherever Hippo was, he was leaving Sophie alone. The long night had finally passed, and by next morning she was examining her reflection in the bathroom mirror, glaring at the bruises on her face (never again would she underestimate the warfare capacity of a well-baked dessert! Or Hippo's shockingly accurate backhands). She splashed water on her face and gripped the countertop.
"You're fine," Sophie firmly told herself. Her reflection gave her a dubious look. "Okay, maybe not fine, but close. A few miles away. You can see the d-destination, at least. Now get it t-together, you mango."
Her voice echoed in the spacious bathroom. The faucet dripped.
Suddenly gripped by anxiety, Sophie ran to the window and threw it open. Below, the Jaguar Temple's morning rush was swinging in full-force, and it was a relief to hear that noise, to fill this too-big guest room with something more than her own voice. She quickly dressed to the tune of citizens below chanting for better health services for disabled workers, as government officials offered them lemonade and more shade from the sun, and hurried out of the bedroom, not wanting to be alone a minute longer.
—
Law rested his back against the giant ceiba tree, sitting in the courtyard behind the College of Chemistry. The sun flared through the leaves, dappling the ground in pearly gold. The air was heady with Machinastein's summer aromas. If he closed his eyes… allspice and bay leaves, coriander and cinnamon. Warm chocolatey coffee from the café nearby. Sunlight in his mother's kitchen. The smell of hot sulfur. White-knuckled pain.
My son, my brilliant son, his mother whispered, be smart. Survive. Protect your sister.
"Somebooody's gonna recognize youuu."
Law opened his eyes, staring into the sun. Then he remembered where he was.
Sophie walked across the empty courtyard and settled next to him, putting down an armful of books.
"I can't help that."
His retort bounced off her like an impenetrable balloon. She reclined against the tree regardless and took a deep breath of not-stuffy-basement air.
"I suppose it's nice to work outside once in a while," Sophie acknowledged, her eyes reflecting the sky's summer-sweet blue. She cracked open a book and stuck her nose in the pages. "Ahhh, the scent of old books is the best… the chemical degradation of cellulose and lignin that produces all these wonderful organic compounds… vanillin and toluene! Mmmm, is that benzaldehyde I smell? Perhaps furfural. A bit almondy. The scent of two-ethyl hexanol is my favorite…"
Her ode to books descended into incomprehensible mumbles and borderline obscene 'heeheehee's.
It was a lovely day to work outside: golden dragonflies buzzed over the grass, cicadas hummed on the ceiba tree. Sophie felt content enough to take off her gloves and stretch out on the soft grass, arranging her dress so it didn't ride over her legs. Baby quetzels roosting in a nest above them cheeped for food. Sophie watched their mother swoop down from the clouds in an arc of emerald to perch at the tip of the nest.
"I wish I knew my birth parents," she said pensively.
Law shuffled his papers.
A dragonfly hummed close by her ear. She absently shooed it away. "Aren't you going to ask me how they died?"
"Do you want me to ask about your personal history?"
"Up to you." She certainly wasn't going to talk about it if he didn't want to listen.
He set his quill down and pressed the tips of his fingers together. His grey eyes narrowed, trained directly at her. "Strangways Sophie. Charaka Hippo. You have different surnames. You were clearly groomed to become a World Government operative since birth, and judging by his personality and strict adherence to tradition, he doesn't seem the type to adopt just anyone's child. Your parents were marines, high-ranking ones and close friends with your mentor. They died in battle. He raised you ever since and kept your surname, feeling beholden to your deceased parents." Law settled back. "How'd I do?"
"Wrong on all accounts!" Sophie chirped blithely.
He raised an eyebrow. She smiled and went back to work.
"You were an illegitimate child," Law deduced, several hours later. "The child of someone who couldn't raise you out in the open, who gave you to your mentor to raise." His eyes widened as he put the pieces of the puzzle together. "G-13's Vice Admiral. And… a pirate. A pirate who either died or left you in G-13's care. Her name was Strangways. You're the bastard child of a—"
Sophie made an X with her fingers. He leaned against the tree, deep in thought.
"You're twenty years old… significant event that happened twenty years ago… Wait… perhaps… no… but, could it be?" Law pointed at her with a triumphant scowl (how did one scowl triumphantly? She needed to learn.) "The World Noble. From Cat's Eye. G-13 gave him Odin twenty years ago, but during that exchange, he gave G-13 a child born on his ship. You. You're the secret daughter of a World Noble. You're the cat princess' half-sister. And you killed your birth father."
"Somewhere a village is missing its sociopathic conspiracy theorist."
"Truth is stranger than fiction."
Sophie shook her head. "Sorry, but my family tree isn't that sordid."
Law scrutinized her face. "…You and Sengoku have the same nose—"
"I promise you, we don't!"
—
Shachi popped out of the laundry hamper, blowing a dirty shirt off of his head. "I'm missing my socks," he announced to the cabin.
"Anko was supposed to finish laundry last week," Penguin sighed, clipping his toenails.
Kamasu was reading in his hammock. "He's not here. Probably passed out in some bordello."
"Is that why my blood pressure is lower than normal?" asked Manta. "He hasn't woken us up with a crossword puzzle in three days."
"Once again," said Kamasu, flipping the page of a sexy-looking magazine, "passed out in his own vomit."
"Damn you, Anko!" Shachi shook his fist at the ceiling. "I've ran out of underwater, and I've already started on Penguin's clean boxers!"
Penguin stopped clipping. "Excuse me?"
"Oh, that's what I forgot to tell you…"
"Take it off!"
"Right here? Okay." Shachi started opening his boiler suit, as the rest of the cabin sprang up and roared, "NO!"
—
Sophie thought she was still dreaming when she rolled over, her brain shaking awake from a world on fire. The shadow of a revolutionary was burning beneath her eyelids, metal pipe and a singed top hat, sweating in the firelight of the Viran wasteland. She rolled up on her elbows, her shirt hanging low off her shoulders, certain she was back in hell.
"Sophie," the revolutionary murmured, and she heard his voice again, echoing long ago and far away. Goodnight, marine. Goodnight, goodnight.
She lunged forward and tackled him around the knees.
They both crashed over the floor, onto hard dry dirt, bullets peppering past her helmet. Sophie blindly scrambled over him with her calves locked against his legs, and he was saying something, but—she reached for her gun on her holster—her gun? Where was her gun? She wasn't wearing—why wasn't she wearing pants? Oh, mangoes.
In one swift move, he grabbed her by the front of her shirt and rolled them both over. Her back hit the floor, his chest inches from hers. Okay, you dirty pineapple. Kill first, pants later. Sophie plunged her hand beneath the bed, searching for the weapon she kept inches from her little nest on the floor.
Sophie tore out a butcher's knife. He seized her wrist before she could poke a hole in his throat—and then they were wrestling for the knife, knees knocking together in a flurry of thrashing limbs. She bit down on his knuckles, drawing a vicious swear as his grip tightened. She clenched the knife handle in both hands, arms shaking with the effort to maintain control.
She savagely kicked his chest, ramming her heel into his ribcage, again and again. He swiftly pinned down her legs and rested his head beside hers, and she would've screamed if she wasn't already chewing on a whole mouthful of callused hand. He stopped moving, aside from that one hand on the knife, keeping it in the air, away from him, as he cut off the circulation to her wrist. Sophie struggled and writhed, to no avail. He was like a weighty stone, pinning her down. Something cold pressed against her cheek. Cold, like a pair of earrings. And then—then she smelled something familiar. Metal. Soap. Antiseptic and coffee and…
After a few spasmodic twitches, she began breathing in time to him, slow and careful. The ringing in her ears died down.
She felt his rumble, from her cheek all the way down to her toes: "You alright?"
Law's voice was muffled by her shoulder.
…Oh.
She made an 'uh-huh' noise in the back of her throat.
"Good." He lifted his head. "But by all means, keep biting."
Sophie became aware that she was dribbling all over his hand. She unclamped her teeth and jerked back, wiping her mouth. Pale grey light from the window outlined Law's messy hair and wrinkled hoodie. As soon as it was evident that she wasn't about to disembowel him, he cautiously let go. Sophie lowered the knife, rubbing her stinging wrist. Her fear was gone, abruptly switching into something she was far more uncomfortable with.
"We sure do meet in my bedroom a lot, in the dark," she laughed awkwardly, and wanted to throw herself out the window.
His finger twitched against her knee. "Last time, if I recall, a beer bottle almost killed you."
Yes, last time… Sophie had been determined to erase that memory out of sheer will.
He raised his hand to the light and examined the red crescent teeth-marks on his hand. "Do you always have a butcher's knife where you sleep?"
"Do you always a-appear inside someone's b-bedroom unannounced while they're s-sleeping!?"
"…Fair point."
His eyes meandered to her face, and downwards. His eyebrows rose a fraction. Sophie followed his gaze and squeaked. She yanked down her oversized shirt that had bunched up, up, up around her waist. When she glowered at him again—stammering a-avert your indecent eyes—Law was ignoring her, looking around the room as though searching for something…
Sophie brandished the knife, one foot pressed against his sternum. That got his attention.
"What the pineapples are you doing here?"
He glanced at her bare toes, his hands dropping to his side. For one crazy, horrible, crazy, ridiculous, crazy moment, Sophie thought Law was going to wrap his fingers around the back of her knees. She thought he was going to lean forward, ignoring the blade completely, and perhaps investigate how much further her shirt could be disheveled.
Law rested back on his knees, a glimmer of unease flashing across his face.
—
I'm leavng. Goodby, fuckers. It's ben reel. – Anko
"Oh, dear," murmured Sophie, reading the note. His writing was atrocious.
"I know." Law nodded. "He's improved so much."
It certainly made her wonder how good he was at those crossword puzzles…
Anko was missing, he'd written a note, and his stuff was all gone. It wasn't exactly… subtle. Seeing as how he wasn't hiding out in her room like a dirty vagrant, Sophie was perfectly fine with going back to sleep and letting the pirates sort this out amongst themselves. But then Law picked up a dress that was folded on the vanity and tossed it at her, telling her to hurry, they were wasting daylight.
The dress was halfway over her head when Sophie remembered she did not even want to do this. "Hold on a—"
"Ready?"
Without waiting for her response, a blue Room appeared over her head. She quickly yanked the dress over her middle, cursing him out in fruit names.
The Machinastein transportation system had just begun their morning shift. Law and Sophie appeared in the middle of a compartment full of sleeping commuters. They appeared just behind Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin, who seemed to be expected them. She quickly balanced herself against a chair, the floor rumbling as the train sped through the city.
"Alright," Sophie groused. "Where do you think Anko could be?"
"Gambling house?" Bepo offered.
"In some alley," Penguin said with a shrug. Sophie made a face. "If it was anybody else, I'd be worried. But it's Anko, so…"
"I still think he ran away because he didn't want to finish laundry," Shachi grouched.
"Is this because Hai Xing-san's a—" She froze, feeling Law's gaze drilling the back of her head.
Shachi and Penguin looked at her expectantly. "A what?"
"A… beautiful man with beautiful eyes."
"Blush," said Hai Xing, from the shadows.
Sophie's scream nearly cracked the windows.
He limped over on a crutch and gingerly sat down. Law had planned to search for Anko by himself, considering it was very early in the morning and most of the Hearts were asleep, but they all agreed the sooner they found him, the better. Also, Bepo elucidated, first one to find Anko could punch him in the face.
Law laid out the plan: Penguin would search the docks, Shachi took downtown, and Bepo had the backstreets. Law himself would scour everywhere else. That only left the desert, a rocky expanse covered with cacti and a scattering of villages. Sophie had been there before, out of curiosity, when she had woken up from the hospital and wanted to explore the island. It was decided that she and Hai Xing, because he had a Den Den Mushi, would investigate this outpost.
To Sophie, this whole thing seemed silly, immature. If any marine dared to run away from their station, they'd sooner be court martialed and tried for treason than welcomed back with open arms. If only she didn't have Red Sky to stress about, or Hippo… Even I would make a better pirate than Anko.
Sophie felt a little bit guilty for allowing herself to think that. Then she looked at the worry on his crewmates' faces and sat up straighter.
But it's true.
—
She'd seen pictures of Alabasta's desert in books: endless dunes, velvet-soft sand rippling like an ocean current for a thousand miles, everything a soft burnt orange.
Machinastein's desert was hard, stony, and green. Not the kind of fresh, verdant green found on Kunlun's forests, but a dry, tough green, hidden underneath sharp thickets and twigs. The land was so flat it seemed that if you kept walking, you could walk right into the sky itself. She stepped off the rickety old train station, the only respite from the sun for miles around. They passed by silent rangers in their serapes, riding Giant Quetzels out into the wilderness. To the north stretched maize farms, to the west, the sugarcane.
"You know," Sophie said, pulling her hair into a ponytail, "Anko's probably not even here."
"He could be lying in a ditch, blood spilling out of his eye sockets, traces of dog feces found around his mouth, castrated…"
To her relief, talking to Hai Xing still felt normal. He had called her a Tenryuubito Slayer; he had told her she had nothing to apologize for. Granted, the more she thought about it, the more Sophie wondered how he spent the past three months making casual conversation with her, without even attempting to kill her once? Half of Sophie wanted to ask him, and the other half wanted to ignore it forever. And seeing as how she was so good at the latter…
She eyed the walking vortex of pessimism. "I'm glad you're still so lively after being gunned down by chocolate gangsters."
So long as she could pretend everything was normal, it was fine. They just never had to mention anything fish-related until the end of time.
"Hm," Hai Xing said. "Comes with the fish territory."
"OH," Sophie half-yelled, suddenly feeling very panicked while knowing she had no reason to feel panicked, and as a result made her feel even more panicked.
There was a long pause.
"Um. Yeah. So, yeah, you're a fishman, or, I mean, half of one, I mean, if th-that's n-not a rude thing t-to say. Y'know what, it probably is, and I'm sorry, and you can just ignore me!" She nodded in an attempt to be upbeat, and ended up looking deranged. "Casual segue! I-i-if you w-were Anko, where would you go?"
If Sophie had a gun with her, she would've pressed it to her foot and pulled the trigger.
Hai Xing closed his eyes, tilting his head as though he was listening to something. Sophie couldn't hear anything but the rustle of the wind against grass.
He started limping eastward. Not really expecting an answer, she followed.
They walked for a couple hours, though Sophie insisted they take time to rest in the sparse general stores and bars they came across. Thankfully, the dress Law had thrown at her was airy and lightweight. She didn't mind the heat too much; it reminded her of Crawfish Island, of Nellie's inn and jambalaya and earthy tobacco. Hai Xing, however, looked like what she imagined one long cigarette felt like, burning slowly from the soles up. Did fishmen dehydrate easy?
The more she thought about how simply Hai Xing had told her that nothing that happened to him was her fault, the more she became anxious that maybe he lied. Maybe he secretly hated her. Sophie had never thought about how slaves, liberated or otherwise, felt towards the World Government. She had never needed to; it was a concept so foreign that it belonged on the other side of the universe. She never met a slave or a slave owner before, she barely paid attention when anybody on G-13 mentioned they caught pirates dealing in slave trade… she'd never been affected by it, she couldn't relate to it, so why would she ever care?
They walked side-by-side under the sweltering sky. Sophie looked down at Hai Xing's shadow, running along the grass. She matched her pace with his, in case he fell or tripped on a rock. Stop it, she told herself. It's not helping. You're not responsible for anything. It doesn't even matter anymore; it's in the past. Hai Xing's clearly in a better place now.
That makes sense, a little voice murmured, because trauma is easy to move on from, right, soldier?
"AHHHGHH," Sophie yelled, clutching her head.
Hai Xing looked at her.
She coughed delicately. "Swallowed a bug. So, anyway… tell me if I'm supposed to make you stop and rest or something."
He pressed on, tightly gripping the crutch, and she followed. Something about his expression made her curious.
"Are you worried about Anko?"
"I'd have to prepare food for the funeral service if he died," Hai Xing explained, walking vigorously. "But I already have my cooking schedule lined up for the next week."
—
She didn't know how long they walked until she caught the scent of salt and seaweed. The tumbleweed and cacti were gone, and the rocky ground became white sand. A beach came into view. They stood on top of a hill, overlooking crashing, short-way-to-heaven seafoam. Here it was, where Hai Xing thought Anko would run to. No bordello, no gambling house, no broken-down alley.
Sophie stretched—ah, that was a nice workout—and shielded her eyes from the sun. "There's the city!"
It was shimmering in the distance, down the beach. They had walked halfway back. Hai Xing leaned against his crutch, breathing heavily.
She squinted, searching the uninhabited beach. No sign of the stray helmsman. The possibility of Anko, passed out in his own vomit, was growing ever more certain. "He's probably not here. Should we head back now?"
Hai Xing didn't move; Sophie followed his gaze to a cave right below them, hidden by the tall marram grass. Well, as a scientist she couldn't possibly leave unless she observed all possibilities. She sighed and removed her sandals. "I'll check it out. Don't move."
She slid down the hill and shook out the sand between her toes, walked over to the cave and peeked inside.
Sophie had never truly noticed Anko's tattoos before. She'd seen them, briefly, when he tied his boiler suit around his waist. And she once got a good look when they were fighting Teresa and he was butt fudging naked and wow, it was getting warm in here, wasn't it? In any case, now she could see them properly: blue ink swirling around his neck and arms and down his back. The sunlight coming in from the cave's opening framed his naked back in a halo of gold. It was as if he walked into the ocean one day and the waves melted over him and went to sleep on his skin.
He was writing letters over and over on the sand with a long stick. She walked forward, then broke into a sprint.
Anko heard her footsteps and looked up. "Captain—"
Sophie punched him across the face, screaming, "FOUND YOU, MUFFINFUDGER!"
Her punch threw Anko into the sand. He rolled several feet before coming to a full stop, and jerked upright with a bright red cheek. "What the fuck—Sophie!?"
Anko was wearing shorts, thank goodness. His chest was bare, a sand dollar necklace swinging over his collarbones. His face was unmarred, only his signature scar slashing through his left eyebrow. He was fine. The runaway pirate was fine and alive and sulking in a friggin' cave.
She rubbed her burning fist and spat, "They're all s-searching for you, you sour kiwi."
"I'm not going back," Anko snapped. "I'm tired of those fuckers."
A vein bulged in her forehead. "Listen, you—"
His eyes widened. Anko didn't say anything for several seconds, and it occurred to Sophie that he was staring at something behind her. She spun around.
Hai Xing stood against the light, his expression unreadable.
Then he motioned to her. "Strangways, let's go."
Wait, they were leaving now? Didn't Law want them to bring Anko back? She turned slightly, hesitated, and looked back at the helmsman.
Anko seemed equally at a loss. "…What about me?"
"Stay here for the rest of your fucking life," Hai Xing said, and Sophie's jaw dropped. "Lonely boy blue, everyone's forgotten you."
"Why…" Anko whispered.
Pineapples, mangos, goddesses of the fruits, what do I do?
"Why… why… why are you cooler than me!?" Anko exploded, pointing dynamically at Hai Xing. "It's not fair!"
Sophie stared. "…Eh?"
Anko clawed the air. "You're the cool, silent type who says cool things and you're a cool fishman and—and I mean, what do you need these awesome powers for!? All you do is cook! Just looking at your cool, dumb face pisses me off!"
She did not know how to approach this. Was Anko insulting Hai Xing or praising him?
"I cook," Hai Xing agreed. "I cook for hours every day. When I wake up, I cook. Before I go to sleep, I prep for tomorrow's cooking. Even Strangways cleans and helps out, and she's not even one of us. You can't even finish a load of laundry."
"I'm the helmsman!" Anko cried. "It's not my fault we've been stuck here for almost a whole fucking month!"
"You're only a helmsman because Shachi and Penguin were too busy to do it themselves," Hai Xing said blandly.
Silence.
It was as if a soundless bomb had detonated between them. Sophie nervously looked between Hai Xing and Anko, and opened her mouth, trying to think of something to diffuse this horrible tension—
Anko charged at him.
"Stop!" Sophie shrieked, diving between both pirates. "No! Bad! Ow, ow! Law-san would be very disappointed—ow!"
She tried to stop Anko from reaching Hai Xing, who stumbled back, losing his crutch in the scuffle. Anko accidentally elbowed her in the forehead, right in the big purple bruise she'd gotten from the chocolatiers. Sophie staggered to the side, clutching her head.
"Do it!" Anko was roaring at Hai Xing, shaking him by the shoulders. "Spike out! Gimme another scar!"
She grabbed the biggest, heaviest rock she could find and chucked it at Anko's back. He toppled to the ground, off-balanced. Hai Xing slithered away from being crushed underneath.
She strode forward. If Sophie had seen her reflection, G-13's youngest chemical warfare director would've stared back at her, the Viran soldier, the Tenryuubito Slayer. She knew this feeling. It'd been so long since she last touched it, breathed it, let it scream in tandem with her voice.
Anko grinned at her, wolfish. "You wanna fight, too?"
She spat on the dirt. "That's the G-13 Way."
Before he could get to his feet, Sophie kicked him across the face, her heel catching across sharp cheekbones. Her face was violently dark; she had not been this angry since Cat's Eye, since she was stuffed in a coffin to become sunflower feed. "At least I try to be liked. Do you want to r-run away from your friends? You w-want to be so lonely you feel like you're gonna go crazy?"
Anko scrambled away, kicking up sand everywhere. Sophie stalked after him, a hungry black shadow in the light, and seized him by his sand dollar necklace. "You want to be so alone that you start talking to yourself!? Because you're desperate to hear just one voice, even if it's your own!?"
She buried her fist in his cheek and felt the satisfying wham of his head snapping back. Her knuckles came away bloody, but so did he.
"If you really wanted to disappear, you should've done it thor-ou-ghly!" she screamed, because didn't she do the same thing? Didn't she leave before? Didn't she force herself to make peace with the fact that she was never going to see these pirates again? "No hesitation! No sitting in a cave feeling sorry for yourself! You should be halfway to Alabasta by now! You're spineless, pirate, you're spineless!"
Anko clawed at her hands, his eyes spitting murder. Grabbing him by the necklace, she straightened up and forced him to his feet, glaring down at him.
"Go a-ahead and leave," she hissed, practically strangling him. "Maybe I'll be their next h-helmsman."
Before she could blink, he jammed his knee her in the gut and kicked her backwards. Then he was standing before her, punching her in the solar plexus—once, twice—and across the face, knockout—Sophie fell onto the sand, her head ringing with pain. Her face was on fire.
Gasping for breath and coughing, he kicked her in the back. "Come on, babe, hit me one more—oomph!"
Hai Xing tackled him to the ground and started beating him over the head with his crutch. Sophie unsteadily got to her feet and chased after them. She shoved Anko when he tried to get up again, and he grabbed her hair and hurled her into Hai Xing. There they were: two pirates and a hitchhiking chemist, slipping on the sand, clawing and kicking each other like frantic, crazed animals. She punched him for everything stupid thing he'd done, and she punched him because he was leaving the Heart Pirates, and she punched him because he didn't know how good he had it.
They somehow scuffled their way onto the beach. Anko and Hai Xing were hitting and kicking each other, until finally they collapsed onto the sand. Sophie was a few feet away, on her hands and knees, wheezing and spitting blood. He punched her in the mouth and it cut her lip.
"Maybe she would," Hai Xing panted, "maybe she would make a better helmsman than you."
"You," Anko gritted his teeth, "fuck you—"
There was a thud, and Sophie looked up just as Anko kicked Hai Xing into the tide. The incoming wave rolled over them both.
"Sophie-chan," Anko said quietly, pinning Hai Xing down, "did you know that it's legal to kill a fishman?"
The tide washed over Hai Xing. He turned his head away, coughing out water.
She raised her head, horrified. "Anko, no!"
Then it occurred to her that he sounded like… he was accusing her of something.
"Why haven't I ever heard about a single fishman in the World Government?" Anko asked.
It was an accusation. Sophie felt the threat of tears prick at her eyes. I don't know, I don't know—no, that was a lie, of course she knew, she just couldn't say it out loud because she was a big, stupid coward. She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about how she had spent her whole life in the World Government, her entire existence complicit in this awful thing that had hurt Hai Xing. That had hurt so many people in its terrible atrocity, people who weren't soldiers who knew what they were signing up for, people who were never prepared to bleed and suffer and die.
"Why has it taken hundreds of years to accept the existence of fish and merfolk?" Anko's voice cracked. "Why do you still have to disguise yourself as human or risk murder?"
And then he said something quiet, and it sounded something like 'Why the fuck are you considered less than me?' only Sophie didn't hear it too well because she was too busy drop-kicking Anko while screaming, "LET GO OF HAI XING-SAAAAN!"
Anko toppled over into the seafoam. "Ow, my eye!"
Sophie tugged Hai Xing away from the tide, onto the beach. She sat down, catching her breath and gingerly examining the bruises on her body. He groaned, wiping saltwater from his mouth.
"Are you o-okay?"
Hai Xing nodded. "He avoided my injuries."
Anko clumsily stumbled through the waves, trying to get back to shore. Watching him flounder like an idiot, all the will to fight left her. She was bone-tired. Sophie fell back on the sand, staring up at the lavender sky, stars pinwheeling all over heaven.
Hai Xing laid on the sand beside her.
She tongued the inside of her cheek, wondering and wondering and wondering until finally she said, "It's okay to h-h-hate me. Killing one World Noble doesn't make up for anything."
"Well," he said, in a tone that sounded like he'd once considered that, "I'm fine with not hating you."
She turned her head to look at him. Hai Xing's brown eyes reflected the constellations, and his hair was all matted against the birthmark on his forehead—and Sophie came to the quiet realization that maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was never going to be okay. Nobody could do anything that would magically make it okay. No matter how many people he forgave, no matter how much time had passed, no matter how many bajillion fireworks she exploded that wrote HAI XING IS A BIG OL' SOFTIE WITH THE GRACE OF BOA HANCOCK AND THE SEDUCTIVE APPEAL OF WHITEBEARD in the sky, he was going to live with it, forever and ever and ever.
Anko squished up to them and collapsed by their feet. "God, that fuckin' hurt," he complained, tilting his head forward so he didn't choke on all the blood dripping out of his nose.
"Serves you right," Sophie sneered tiredly.
After a lengthy silence, Anko pointed at the Big Dipper. "Look, it's the flying toilet."
"Ah," said Hai Xing. "There it is."
Sophie got the notion that she was listening to an inside joke, and then was quite surprised Anko and Hai Xing had an inside joke in the first place. She listened to them talk. Not talk like they were two disinterested crewmates, but like they were old friends, who knew a lot more about each other than they let on. She turned to look at Anko, at the pale scar running along his left eyebrow. Give me another scar, he had said. She wondered how exactly long they had known each other.
As though reading her mind, Hai Xing said, "This one saved me from a slave auction."
Sophie gaped. "Seriously?"
"I'm still angry that didn't land me a bounty."
"We stowed away on a pirate submarine, close to death."
"I was the one hurt!"
"We are all defective angels," said Hai Xing, quite poignantly. "…Worn down by the mortal coil of our tiny existence, shoulders burdened by the ever-grinding millstone of humanity—"
He had to shield himself from the pebbles thrown at him.
—
When Law found them, lying on the beach and trying not to get salt in their wounds, he smacked Anko over the head, then Hai Xing.
"Ouch!"
"…Ow."
He rounded on Sophie, who recoiled, covering her head. Her eyes were wet and shiny with the threat of tears. He paused.
Then he flicked her on the nose. Hard.
"Son of a plum!"
"Get up," Law ordered. "If you three give each other anymore injuries, I'll cut off your arms myself."
Anko and Hai Xing followed after him like kicked puppies. Sophie held her head high and made sure everyone knew she was only obeying his stupid order because she wanted to. The other pirates were waiting on top of the hill.
"Captain…" Anko took a deep breath. "I've been outshined by a cooler pirate for the last time. I can't take it anymore!" Law frowned at him. "I really am leaving the crew."
His captain scoffed. "Oh, like hell you are."
"Fuck you," Anko said indignantly and strode out into the desert.
Law threw his arm out, blocking anyone who was about to chase after him. He basically had to wrestle his entire crew, and was nearly bowled over by Bepo.
"Anko!" Sophie screamed, tugging on Law's shirt.
"Anko, get back here!" Shachi.
"Come back, jackass!" Penguin.
In a flash of blue, Anko stood before them. Law's palm was outstretched, glowing cerulean. They went quiet, with a collective, 'Ah, that's right…'
Anko blinked in surprise, threw Law an affronted glare, then turned his heel and marched back into the plains.
Law Roomed him back again. He was, clearly, not good with rejection.
Anko kicked a cactus. "God damn it!"
"You're not allowed to leave without my blessing."
"Dick," Anko said sullenly.
"Fuckhead," Law flatly replied.
"Unboiled spaghetti noodles," Sophie brightly contributed. They glared at her. And that was that.
Penguin marched up to Anko, surveying his bruises and bloody lip with a critical eye. "Looks like Hai Xing and Sophie set you straight," he said at last, and threw his arm over his shoulder. Anko blinked. "Alright, men, let's head home!"
"I make a better helmsman than you, anyway," Anko muttered to Sophie as he passed by her.
"For now," she dryly retorted.
He gave her the finger, and then yelped as Bepo tackled him to the ground.
On the train ride back, Shachi fell asleep against Bepo and Anko's drooped his head on Penguin's shoulder. They all looked so… close, like real family. Sitting across from them, it did not go unobserved by Sophie that no matter how long she knew these pirates, they had known each other for far longer. And that was alright. In a rare moment of unselfishness, she was genuinely glad for them. And then she had to think about explosions for five minutes to clean this horrible sappy feeling away from her brain.
Law rested his head against the window, gazing at the desert landscape as it flicked by, glowing rose-gold in the sunset. Their knees brushed gently every time the train swayed.
Now here was a pirate who'd been grinded up by the great pasta maker called Life and spat back out at the other end. She wondered if he would listen to her, genuinely, without wisecracks. Though Law probably wouldn't care… but maybe that was a good thing. She didn't even really want him to care that much. He didn't even need to say anything.
Sophie fidgeted with the hem of her dress and reached out to quickly tap his knee. He glanced over.
"Can I, um—" She cleared her throat, brushing her hair over her ear. "Can I talk to you… uh, for a bit?"
Law nodded, looking questioningly at her. Sophie exhaled.
"The Strangways," she said softy, "was a boat."
—
The Strangways. Her namesake.
Chipped paint varnished into a capsized hull. Barely anything left of it, until Hippo found her nestled between the collapsed mast and a chunk of flotsam. Perhaps it was unlucky to be named after a shipwreck, but they were already calling her 'that Strangways kid' before she could speak. There was something about only survivors that made people want to make stories out of them.
Hippo was the first to call her Sophie. He kept her surname, because old-fashioned marines had this custom of naming kids after their dead and he was big into tradition and remembrance and paying your respects, so Strangways stayed. She spent many nights huddled up under the covers, mouthing silently, over and over again. Strange-wayees So-fee. Her name had a certain whistle to it, like the snap-crackle of burning wood. She liked the harsh drag of the s's, the press of teeth against her lip and the way it almost sounded like 'free'. A boat became a girl. The girl found a home. That's how all the stories go.
Who was she, really, if she didn't dive under G-13's coral beds and pick oysters and clams during the dog days of summer? Who was she, if she didn't fall asleep to the drift of the lighthouse coming in from her bedroom window? Who was she, if she didn't watch the sun rise over the shipyard and listen to the footsteps walking down the barracks to breakfast?
Of course, Sophie knew that a home didn't define a person. It just couldn't, right? Losing a place didn't mean losing a central part of yourself… right?
Well. In any case. Law wasn't a marine, so he didn't know this, but her sensei and Vice Admiral Lettidore were kinda famous in their area of the Grand Line. Before their generation, G-13 was a hellhole. Illegal experiments run amok. Corrupt Vice Admirals holding criminals in tiny cells to torture them. Even to the point of taking the kids of pirates, the kids on their ships, to experiment with giantification. Lisbeth's Odin was one of them. Hippo was at the forefront of the reformation. The Vice Admiral always had his back. They were heroes, and she was just… a kid. A dumb kid who'd never be as good.
"So… so maybe he's done some lame stuff to me, but, but, like, he's Sensei… you know?" Sophie finished lamely.
She slumped in her seat, feeling like she was in no better place than when she first started talking.
Law spun his hat between his hands. "You're allowed to be disappointed in him."
"…Really? Can you… r-really do that? Just go up to your parent and say, 'Hey, you messed up, you weren't g-good to me, you didn't treat me right.'"
"Sure."
Sophie did that thing where she was thinking hard about something: her thick eyebrows furrowed together and she scrunched up her face like she was taking an enormous shit. She wasn't aware of Law glancing at his sleeping crew, or Hai Xing, who quickly closed his eyes in a demure impression of sleep.
Sophie could kick Hippo and call him names, but to actually say he was a disappointment? That he… failed in her in some way? She could already see his broken expression, the pain and hurt in his eyes, feel her own self-disgust rise like bile in her throat. She shook her head. No, she wasn't ready to do that. She wasn't brave enough.
Law shrugged a little, setting his hat back over his eyes.
"He could die tomorrow. Are you ready to regret all the things you'll never get to say to your dad?"
Sophie inhaled softly, the 'were you?' dying in her throat like a heavy secret.
—
It wasn't too hard tracking Hippo down; some jerk was hustling old grandpas by beating them in Go, and she retraced his steps to a bar downtown. He was sat in the corner, greasy hair and bony wrists and still somehow channeling an 'I'll arrest you if you come near me' Marine Vibe.
Hippo looked up. "My god, were you run over by a brick building?"
Sophie sighed. "It's been one of those days." She slid into the empty stool next to him.
"It wasn't—Trafalgar didn't—"
She flashed back to her bedroom, his hand on her wrist, her knife gleaming at his throat. Sophie mentally blasted that thought away with a billion mental-grenades. "N-no. I was j-just caught in a stupid fight between friends." She nodded at the bartender. "Beer, please."
"I got it," Hippo said, before she could take out her money. He slid over two crumpled bills. "Late birthday gift."
Oh. So he did remember.
He looked at her guiltily. "I… can get you something better when I have the money."
"Doesn't matter. It's just a birthday." The bartender slid over a glass of beer and an ashtray for Sophie's cigarette.
"…When the hell did you start smoking?"
She exhaled, coughing lightly. "Vira. I was bored. There are only so many rats you can shoot before you find yourself wanting to die a slow, carcinogenic death." She watched him down another glass of scotch and waved for a refill. "You should… really slow down, sensei."
"Etiquette lecture twenty," he reminded.
Never get in the way of old people and their simple pleasures. "The Vice Admiral used to get angry at you when you drank."
"Don't remind me."
"Sometimes," Sophie said lightly, "I think, because he didn't… he didn't, maybe, want to show you the extent of that anger, he took it out on me. Sometimes."
Hippo paused. "Did he?"
She sipped her beer before continuing carefully. "I told you before. He'd yell, hit me—"
"Oh, my dear…" Hippo let out a long, slow sigh. "We all go through that. It's how things are done. You get hit, you stand up and move on. Nobody complained. I didn't, and look where I am. In a… a bar, kidnapped by my own student… on a hostile island… far away from home…" He considered this, and added, "To be fair, I am quite a successful doctor."
"Are you ashamed?" Sophie asked. "I've genuinely always wanted to ask."
"Let's talk about something else—"
"You only hit me three or four times in my life; it's not bad. You've had it worse. You were beat up a lot as a kid by adults you trusted, right?"
He didn't respond.
"Do you forget when you grow up?" she wondered aloud. "Do you learn to make excuses, and drinking makes it easier?"
He rested his forehead on his palm. Cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, Sophie somehow still felt like a child pointing out the flaws in an adult, flaws everybody told you you were supposed to pretend weren't there.
"You learn to live with it," Hippo said finally. "And let it go, because it's in the past."
Then why does it feel like it's still suffocating us? But trauma was a strange thing. Trauma had a habit of following down the generational line. The great pasta maker called Life had also grinded Hippo up, just like it did with Law and Teresa and everyone else who'd ever hurt her. Sophie got the sense that this was a never-ending cycle, and she'd been a part of it since the moment Hippo found a crying baby in the middle of a shipwreck.
"I wanna show you something." Sophie dug Odin's dog tags out from her dress. "Do you remember the giantification experiments?"
He peered over his glasses. "Yes," he breathed. "How did you…?" Hippo's eyes widened. "On Cat's Eye?"
"Yeah. I recognized his tags from the files."
He shot her an almost frantic look. "How is the boy?"
"Dead. Well, he was in his thirties. But yeah, still dead."
Hippo slowly nodded, his eyes dimming. "It was so wrong, Sophie," he said sadly. "The things they did… the things the Government allowed… who cares if they were children of pirates? They were still just children… god, it still makes me so mad just thinking about it…"
Sophie cupped her half-empty beer. She felt… oddly content with his reaction. It was so Sensei-like, so unabashedly heartfelt. She didn't notice that Hippo was glancing at her as she smiled to herself.
"Sensei, I want you to know something else. I didn't become a chemist because that was all I was good at. W-well, yeah, that was a part of it, but—I did it because I loved G-13, and I loved you, and… everybody was proud of me. Everyone loved me." For a little while, at least. She stared intently at the condensation dripping down her glass. "I know you were raising me to potentially be a successor to Lettidore, and… I wanted that. I wanted… to show everyone that you didn't make a mistake."
And then she started laughing, smacking her palm on the bar counter. He stared at her. "S-sorry, I'm just—" She took a breath, struggling to regain her composure. "Why a-am I telling you this? It's too l-late, it's all too late. I'm the w-worst mistake you've e-ever made, oh my god, I'm sorry, but if you don't find this hilarious—" She broke out in a fit of high-pitched laughter, kicking the counter, beer splashing over her hand.
"You are not my worst mistake, Sophie," Hippo said softly.
Her laughter died down.
"My worst mistake was Greatcastle, ten shots of vodka, a leather thong, and two dozen assassins disguised as strippers."
Sophie and Hippo stared at each other. They burst out laughing, so loud that every eye in the bar swiveled to the raucous noise. She wiped her eyes and leaned back on the stool, trying to get enough air. Hippo chuckled, rubbing his head.
"You know, it's… not too late," he said slowly, glanced at her. "You talked about the little house on the hill, on some sleepy island in the middle of nowhere. We could… still go there."
She blinked. "You up for it?"
"Of course. You could be the local science schoolteacher, and I'd start a new life as the village doctor." Hippo leaned forward, his gaze almost dreamlike. "We'd farm parsnips and blueberries and tomatoes, raise a couple of cows and chickadees. On Sundays, we'd rake the leaves, clean the house, and take in the laundry. You'd be known around town as the doctor's lovely daughter. Of course, I'll have to shoo away the suitors who come a-calling, but eventually someday you'll meet a nice fella and settle down and then, gasp, I'm a proud grandpa. What do you think about that?"
"Sensei…"
Sophie thought about the last thing she'd ever want to say to him, should he die tomorrow, and stood up. She flicked her cigarette into her glass.
"…I would rather blow my brains out."
—
It was quiet on the submarine as Law entered his cabin. He kicked a pile of books off his bed and fell over the mattress, face-down like he was ready to suffocate. Gripped in his fist, Kikoku was singing.
He closed his eyes, trying to erase the image of Sophie talking about her sensei. The soft, sad tilt of her mouth, her achingly wistful voice, the way she set her jaw in bitter self-loathing. It was too familiar and too strange all at once, and made his fucking skin crawl.
Being a pirate just happened to coincide with his plan. He enjoyed the lifestyle, the freedom, and on good days when he gazed at the horizon of untouchable ocean, he could imagine his younger self leaving Flevance as a ship's doctor, or journeying to Machinastein to study in the shade of the ceiba trees. Sometimes he pretended that the sea had always pulled at his bones. That as a boy he, too, heard the siren call of adventure.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
He had lost so much. He lost the entire world and had to build a new one from scratch—a broken world with twisting alleyways and knives springing out from spines like silver wings and an empty, empty ocean, so vast it rippled across the universe with nothing and no one but him in a lone sailboat.
Lami was the strong one. She was two years younger than him, but she could throw a better punch, swim faster, and always talked about exploring the world. The whole city seemed to be her friend, while Law squatted alone in the muddy garden, cutting up frogs. She would've been the better doctor, had she escaped instead of him. If she'd eaten the Ope Ope no Mi, she would've been a hero. Twenty-two, brilliant, courageous, never turning her back on someone who needed her. A better doctor, a better captain…
Law fought an absurd urge to laugh. Sophie and her sensei's dysfunctional double act was dredging up some long-past-drowned memories.
He had not thought of this for a long, long time. He was a tiny boy when the amber poisoned his heart. He'd been sequestered into the last remaining bastion in the city, spinning tall tales out of firebust-gunshots for sweet Lami and the adults weeping softly behind the door. He remembered the earth splitting beneath his feet and the End of All Things; he remembered the air so thick with death he could've choked on it, he remembered his father spitting blood. He remembered his mother, growing stiff with rigor mortis. My brilliant son, be smart. Yes, he was. He was smart enough to crawl through stinking mountains of writhing white hands, as he sobbed for papa and his brain peeled away like layers of an onion. His mind had gently folded these memories into a secret treasure chest and buried it beneath the snow dunes in his head, so that he could wake up in the morning without screaming until his throat cracked.
What would they say, what would Cora-san say, if they could see him now?
…Well. It's not like he would ever find out.
"Who am I without them?" she had asked, rubbing the burn scars along her wrists.
He squeezed his eyes shut and curled up against the wall, willing his brain to shut up, shut up, shut up. Wondering about existential loss was for people like Sophie, people who still had souls to worry about. He wasn't the helpless little kid anymore. It was going to be different next time around.
The door creaked open and footsteps padded towards his bed, creaking as a weight settled against it. In the darkness, Law was thirteen-years-old again, hiding in the least smelliest alleyway he could find and shivering in the North Blue cold. He reached out and rested his palm against warm fur, rising and falling gently like a steady buoy over the waves, until his bones finally stopped shaking.
—
The next day, Sophie was too mentally exhausted to do any research and she didn't want to mope alone in her room, so she paid the submarine a visit. She had just climbed aboard the deck when a shout rang out: "Finally done!" Hacking coughs immediately followed.
With a black eye and a thin red line on his neck where she nearly strangled him, Anko sat in the middle of the deck. Piles of washed clothes, a washboard, and a large sudsy tub surrounded him. He victoriously pumped his hands in the air, spraying soapy water everywhere.
"Sophie-chan," he rasped. "You're witnessing my rebirth as the most badass washer in history."
Sophie scratched the itchy scab on her lip, where he'd slugged her. "Well done, you mango. It only took, what, a week?"
He held up three fingers and gave her a wide, shit-eating grin.
The deck door opened and Hai Xing walked out. He was carrying a cup of pudding. It was cute, actually, in a little glass cup with a sprig of watercress on top… and oh my god, was he passing it to her? Was this a dream? WAS THIS FINALLY HAPPENING?
"Eat up, Strangways—" He paused. "I guess I should call you Sophie now."
She gaped, in a mild state of shock, and accepted the offering from the Pudding Gods with trembling hands.
Anko opened his mouth. "Aaah," he hoarsely demanded. "Aaah."
Sophie dug the spoon into the pudding, edged it towards Anko ("Aaaah…"), then cheerfully stuck it in her mouth. "Mmmmm! Oh, it's spicy!"
"Machinastein special."
"What's your secret ingredient?"
"The lost dreams and hopes of everyone I've used as a stepping stone to get me where I am today."
Huh, she could taste it.
Anko glumly returned to gathering up the wet clothes.
Sophie tapped his shoulder and shoved a spoonful in his mouth. "That was for saving me at Vira," she said primly.
He blinked at her through a mouthful of pudding.
"You steered the ship, right? That day, when I was drowning, you were the one who found me. 'You saved Hai Xing, we're even'," she mimicked. "Remember? On Cat's Eye? I'm kinda pissed it took me this long." Anko was still staring at her. She ribbed him. "Give a genius some credit, you super cool helmsman, you."
Anko seemed to short-circuit. Hai Xing rapped on his head and pressed his ear to Anko's temple, searching for any signs of life. He shook his head. Welp. Alright, that was her fault. As penance, Sophie decided to help him finish his chores. Cleaning took her mind off of things, anyway. Sophie moved aside the tub and picked up a boiler suit. Now where the laundry lines…?
"Forgiving is a choice," Hai Xing said, quite out of the blue. "Not a requirement."
If she didn't know better, she'd say he sounded almost concerned. She grinned sneakily and voiced this accusation, which made Hai Xing dramatically look out into the ocean as though he wanted nothing more than to step off the plank, announcing, 'Today, you ungrateful fools, today is the day I die. After me, the deluge'.
Sophie thought of something and tilted her head. "Hai Xing-san, do you think it's easier to forgive the people we love, or harder?"
That seemed to be the limit of their rapport. Hai Xing sidled back inside the sub, sighing in one long exhale, "Don't we all die in the ennnnnddd?"
Anko finally shook himself out of his daze. "Ahh! I'm alive!"
Sophie thought about her question as she helped Anko hang laundry lines across the second deck, tying it across the mast and stringing it down to the railing. Heart-patterned underwear flapped proudly in the breeze. The Hearts seemed to suffer massive internal bleeding upon viewing Sophie pin up their unmentionables. They rushed out and insisted they take over. She ended up walking along the upper deck, watching them hang up their laundry and laugh with Anko as though he'd never been gone. No, the Hearts were not the type to court martial their crewmates and whisper traitor.
Sophie didn't see a familiar brooding presence behind her; Law had been walking inside the second deck, reading, when he caught a flash of curly black hair through a porthole. He paused and backed up three steps, his eyes sliding from the pages of his book to the porthole in question.
She heard a knock on the porthole behind her head.
Sophie glanced up and made a peace sign at Law, who merely raised his eyebrows at her over the book he was reading. He pointed and she obligingly stepped away from the porthole. He pushed it open and rested his arms on the sill.
"So," he said.
She toed the ground, suddenly shy. "I saw Hippo-sensei last night. I said everything I wanted to say." She nodded firmly. "No regrets."
Law snapped his book shut. "Damn straight."
Sophie beamed. He pressed his book to his chin with a hint of a smile and for a moment, just a moment, in the sunlight with the Hearts laughing below, the darkness between them was chased away. It would be back again, as it always would, but for now—this was enough.
"By the way, did you have to choke Anko that hard?"
"Maybe I thought he liked it."
He raised a dark eyebrow. "Villain."
"Worth fifty mil," Sophie reminded airily.
It was, she decided, relatively easy to forgive.
But the memory would never really go away. All it can do is scab over. Won't heal right, odd lumps of scar tissue, forever discolored. It will ache when it rains. And when someone brings it up again, it will be like squeezing out fresh blood. It builds up. Scab, heal, bleed, scab. Over and over again, until you can't feel your own skin anymore. Until, one day, it won't hurt at all. And you can't remember what you looked like without it.
to be continued
trivia
"…until hippo mentioned that he once hid two ba-11s near his deep dark nethers…": it wouldn't be a one piece fic if i didn't make a joke about testicles.
the strangways: since i based sophie's name off the pirate henry strangways i thought it'd be apt to keep the same spelling, without the 'e'. but it'd be kind of weird for a ship to be spelled that way, so when hippo found baby sophie, he saw the ship with the paint peeling off and the e gone, and that's what he thought the ship's name was.