Abbacchio wakes up with the ocean in his ears. His vision is a cloud of purple-black splotches that blink away into pinks and oranges and reds so vibrant that he could've stepped into the evening sunset.
A coral reef, he thinks, bleary with sleep and blood loss, he's in a coral reef. A huge one, scaled up for giants. There's a bubble of air around him, kept together by Sabaody-grade coating resin. It extends just tall enough so that he can sit up, and just wide enough that he could lay down with his head touching one end and his feet the other. A cage made of air.
"Good morning," somebody says, and they swirl into Abbacchio's sight. He's clothed in a charcoal-colored suit, with blue hair so deep it's almost black, and eyes so blue they could be the ocean and the sky wrapped in one. And then—an outstretched hand, nausea in his throat, and Déjà vu so strong it makes the world tilt.
Blue eyes, black hair, a hand, an offer, salvation; the start of a dream that always ends in red and—
And Abbacchio remembers who he is, snaps back to his skin, sees a fishman in front of him, and tries to bite off his tongue. The fishman lunges forward, shoving a slippery, almost rubbery feeling, hand between Abbacchio's teeth.
The fishman clicks his tongue. "I should have gagged you," he says, and the voice clicks and sings in a way human voices never do.
Abbacchio can't speak, but he can glare, and it earns him a glare in return. Which is—expected, of course, because this is a fishman, a revolutionary fishman, and Abbacchio is a Cipher Pol agent. He's surprised that every inch of him isn't cuffed up with seastone. It's—unexpectedly accommodating, actually. He isn't drugged, bound, yes, with his hands behind him, but—if this were a Cipher Pol interrogation room then he'd already be half dead and tortured.
Shit.
Jumping into the ocean was supposed to kill him, not get him captured. This is the exact kind of situation every agent is taught to avoid at all costs. He—he needs to either figure out a way to escape or a way to kill himself. He's Cipher Pol, intelligence, the hand that dirties itself for the sake of maintaining order. (Peace, actually, that's what they're told. And maybe it's treason but sometimes Abbacchio looks at the world and thinks, is this peace? And he has to bite his tongue and remember that it's order; it's better than anarchy.) It would be a disaster for the information in his head to fall into revolutionary hands.
His eyes flick to meet to fishman's. Now, when Abbacchio looks closer, he can see gills on his neck, skin the color of orange-bronze, white stripes cut stark and conspicuous against his skin. His suit cuts off at the shoulders, revealing neon-bright spines arc down his arms—cluster at his elbows. They're up straight and bristling. Venomous, no doubt. Abbacchio can feel them in his mouth, too, on the fishman's knuckles, they scrape against the roof of his mouth, small pricks of pain that draw blood, and he can feel the venom spread through his veins.
First, his jaw. It goes lax, loose, numb. The feeling spreads down his neck, lolling his head, coursing down like ice in his veins. Then through his arms, his torso, his legs. Lax, loose, not paralyzed, but it's a close thing.
The fishman removes his hand, lips pulled into a thin line. Steps back, out of the bubble of air. His blue-black hair blooming up around his face, stands swaying in the water. He watches Abbacchio. Abbacchio watches him. The spines gradually slip back down, laying into each other like an armor of needles.
The fishman is beautiful in they way of an exotic fish.
This is the closes he's ever seen one. At sea, they avoid most humans like the plague. They never enter waters that are too close to marine bases, they never so much as touch strongly marine-controlled water. He's seen them in slave auctions, though. Bound by chains and slipped into tanks, deep bruises on their bodies, eyes dull, colors muted. Not like this. Up close, with his bright blue eyes and orange-bronze skin and sunset-colored spines, the fishman is almost breathtaking.
A bright spot of color darts around the fishman's hair. A little pink fish. A moment, a split second, and the fishman's head snaps around, jaws opening, a mouth full of need-sharp teeth, and the fish is gone. A small swirl of blood blooms up in the water, like crimson ink.
The moment shatters, quiet wonder shoved away, and the poison won't let him walk, won't let him fight, won't let him muster enough strength to bite of his tongue, but he can form words. So Abbacchio's lips twist into something cruel and conditioned; cipher training and world government teachings— "Fish eat fish."
The fishman's head snaps around, wordless snarl on his lips, features twisted into complete disdain.
"You won't be saying that when the chief gets here," he says, lips drawn back, needle-sharp teeth bared, fishman voice carrying easily through the water.
With that, the fishman storms off, disappearing somewhere into the canopy of vibrant coral and inky black depths. Abbacchio learns back, closes his eyes, feels iron on his tongue, limbs numb, and tries not to let his stomach sink.
Abbacchio dreams like he always does, blood and guns—blue water and glittering shores. The afternoon sun hitting gold on pale stones, buildings down to the water, the scent of garlic and fresh-baked bread and salt. Alcohol.
Blue eyes and black hair and bronze skin, a hand, an offer, salvation; the start of a dream that always ends in red.
The reef appears to be some type of revolutionary base. His bubble is tucked into a petrified oyster shell, one of many. Above, Abbacchio can hardly see the ocean, much less the sky. The tangle of bright-colored coral stretch as far as he can see, like a web of neon branches, and where the coral ends all he can see is inky black. Day and night don't exist here. The reef itself is bio-luminescent, bright and glowing, but it's a gentle light. Not harsh on his eyes.
Most of the fish are also luminescent. Little splotches of color that dart around with sharp teeth, snapping each other up and dancing around in swirls of color. But—that's only what he can see. Sometimes, beyond the tangle of coral, he can see dark, looming shapes, eyes catching the light, flashes of white teeth.
It leaves a lot of time to stew. He's already discarded any hopes for escape. He doesn't know where he is, and the water is full of fishmen, there's a deep gash across his chest and a stab through his thigh, both bandaged. But he doesn't have the strength for suicide; every eight hours, like clockwork, the blue-eyed fishman comes to scrape him with venom.
Abbacchio grits his teeth, closes his eyes, and wishes he had died. He was careless—tailing a group of revolutionaries, last mission before a small break, and he got caught. They were on a standard resource ship, and two of them were devil fruit users, and there wasn't much Abbacchio could do but throw himself into the ocean. He didn't think there would be fishmen waiting there, and now he's, well—
Fishmen come through, sometimes, they glance at him, stares burning on his skin, dart around, and they all wear blue and black. Revolutionary colors. They do not approach. Abbacchio reckons they're waiting for the higher ranks to arrive.
That changes.
It's a human, fitted with his own reinforced bubble. It takes a moment for Abbacchio to recognize him. He's one of the men from the group of revolutionaries that battled him—he's missing a leg. Limping around with crutches, a mass of bandages, and Abbacchio barely has time to feel spitefully vindicated before he see's a flash of silver metal and—
The knife slices easily through Abbacchio's skin, into his flesh, biting and burning through the numb slicing clean through a muscle, down to the bone of his shoulder. The metal is freezing, and the it only takes a few moments for the nerves to start screaming. Blood pools down onto the floor, pooling against the edges of his bubble.
Abbacchio hisses in pain, doesn't scream because he's eighteen with a decade of torture training under his belt. (And he's always had an uncanny pain tolerance, anyway, never cried over hurts, even as a baby.) So he bites his lips as hard as he can and digs nails into his palms and calls it mercy, because it's only a stab wound on numb skin and he's had worse. Done worse.
By now his Cipher Pol suit is more rusty red than white. He weakly spits a glob of blood at the revolutionary. See's the man's expression contort, braces himself for another hit and—
"Stop," cuts a voice, sharp and commanding, clicking in a way human voices never quite do. Abbacchio lifts his head, as much as he can, eyes catching on black hair and blue eyes and bronze skin. "You want to be on their level? This is shameful."
The man startles back like he's been shocked. "But—Buccellati!"
Abbacchio winces. First, because there's obviously a hierarchy here, an order of ranks, and the consequences of arguing with a superior have long since been beaten into Abbacchio's very bones. And second, because there is something wrong about the way he said that name, the way it rolled, the stress of the syllables, and it's a deep, aching sense of wrongness that sends ants beneath Abbacchio's skin and bells ringing in his mind.
"Leave," the fishman—Buccellati—says, sharp, and there's a dangerous clicking edge to it. His venomous spines bristle, and the man is quick to jump out of Abbacchio's bubble, blow himself up a new one, and swing himself away through the tangle of coral.
Buccellati sighs. Eyes Abbacchio with his ocean-sky eyes, pupils dilating, eyeing the new wound, the blood pooling around in the giant oyster shell. And it's common knowledge that carnivorous fishmen eat anything but other fishmen. Abbacchio clenches his jaw.
"What?" He manages, "Gloating?"
Buccellati raises an eyebrow, shakes his head, steps over, heels clacking on the petrified shell. "Stay still," he says, takes a knife from his belt, and uses it to cut the fabric off Abbacchio's shoulder. The air catches in his throat, he can't breath—too close, a predator at his neck, and it takes all his control not to bristle.
But Buccellati's hands are almost gentle on the wound. He dabs up the blood without scraping, holds the needle steady as he stitches Abbacchio's skin into place, numbs the flesh with venom and doesn't speak a word. And on anyone else, on a human, he'd call it kindness—but Buccellati is a fishman and fishmen aren't kind.
(Fishmen aren't kind. Mer are exotic but fishmen are dangerous.)
"Why," Abbacchio pauses, almost bites back the question, but—"you didn't need to stitch it shut. For interrogation I only have to be alive. Not healthy or—or comfortable."
The fishman looks at him for a very long moment. Blue eyes, bright and glittering and utterly inhuman. "Maybe," Buccellati says, lip curling, "I'm not a sadistic government asshole with no captive standards. There's no fun in seeing your hurt."
Which would be understandable, maybe, from a human but—"You're a fishman," Abbacchio says, because it should explain everything. Because fishmen are predators, there have been studies on this, scientific ones, award winning peer-reviewed papers showing that fishmen are fish; are carnivorous beings that are more instinct than thought. Are dangerous, are threats, are cheap labor and— "You aren't—why do you care?"
(Because if Abbacchio was in Buccellati's position, if he were the captor not the captive—he wouldn't do this. He would ignore it. He doesn't go around hitting prisoners because he isn't actually a sadist but he isn't kind, isn't soft. That gets people killed.)
"Because," Buccellati says, slowly, like he doesn't know if this conversation is worth the time, "I can, and I do. The same as any decent human, or giant, or mink."
"But—" and Abbacchio's eyes catch. On the fishman's collar, where sleek black fabric had previously covered, stark red against the surrounding orange-bronze—a slave mark. Not a World Noble brand, but a branding nonetheless, and Abbacchio knows it. He cleaned up the rubble of the ring that brand belonged to. Entertainment—fighting, dog-fighting for the rich.
Buccellati is quick to shove up the collar of his shirt.
"This is what you fight for," Buccellati tells him, face pulled halfway to a snarl, and there's no question about what's he's referring to. "This is what you defend."
"No," Abbacchio says, and then, "no."
Buccellati glares. "Then what is? The World Government's black side is all you do!"
"It's—" peace, he wants to say, justice, but they burn into ash on his tongue. Because Buccellati is covered in faded scars and branded a slave and he still treats Abbacchio with something like kindness and—and Abbacchio knows the rhyme and the rhythm of these kind of things. There are studies, are principles, are history books with a story of violence but Abbacchio is Cipher Pol and he isn't foreign to forgery. "It's order."
"Order?" Buccellati says, and Abbacchio winces at the tone. "You call this order? It's not order, agent, it's systemic oppression."
Abbacchio opens his mouth, wants to says it's necessary, but he looks at Buccellati and the words die in his throat.
Buccellati leaves.
It's the coldest Abbacchio's felt since his first days in Cipher Pol.
Abbacchio dreams like he always does.
Blue eyes and black hair and bronze skin. A bottle in his hand. Gentle fingers, the bottle leaves. Water that tastes sweet and distilled. Somebody frowns.
"Abbacchio," he says, and it's a terribly sad tone of voice, "you're late. Remember?"
Outside the window, the sun is shining, so bright it almost hurts his eyes. Gold on the pale stones. Glittering on the water. Somebody wrenches open the window. The scent of salt and garlic and fresh-baked bread.
"Alright," he says, "I know. I'm coming."
"Here," Buccellati says, pausing in front of him. He digs a canister out of one of his pockets. It's plain and white, screw-on lid. Abbacchio furrows his eyebrows.
"What?"
Buccellati tilts his head. "It's food. You haven't eaten in days."
Abbacchio blinks. Wonders how long he's been here. "Ah," he says, pauses, hesitates, "I can't eat on my own. I can hardly lift a finger."
Buccellati pauses, looks at him, looks at the canister, looks at him. "Ah."
A moment. The ocean crashes vaguely in the distance. Bubbles pop. The ground rumbles lowly with magma. The petrified shell is warm on his skin—bubbling heat below it's surface. Bright fish swish around beyond his bubble.
Abbacchio clears his throat. Buccellati shakes his head, seemingly to himself, and unscrews the canisters. A silver spoon catches on the light, and Buccellati is offering him a spoonful of soup.
He opens his mouth, hesitantly tries it—(stupid, because it could be drugged, would be drugged if this were a Cipher Pol cell, but it isn't, and this is Buccellati, and somewhere along the line that began to mean some level of trust.) It's vaguely sweet, mostly savory, with a touch of miscellaneous bitter tastes and slimy clumps that say half the broth flavoring is probably dissolved nutrient pills. It isn't the worst thing he's ever had.
Somewhere around halfway Abbacchio starts to feel vaguely nauseous. It's not drugging so much as it is a sharp intake of food after a period of starvation. He closes his lips, shakes his head best he can. Buccellati's expression pinches.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah," Abbacchio says, "just—full. I was cannibalizing fat. So actual food is..." if he could, he would make a vague motion with his arms, "y'know."
"Oh," Buccellati says, nodding. "Sure. I'll come back later then..?"
Abbacchio nods, ever so slight, and Buccellati moves to leave. And Abbacchio will be back alone, is the dark and the glow and the crashing ocean and—"Wait!"
The fishman pauses, turns back around to face Abbacchio and he can feel heat rising in his cheeks because actually what the hell. He just called Buccellati back because he didn't want to be alone. Kind of pathetic.
Buccellati cocks his head. "Yes?"
"I—" he pauses, stumbles, "I wanted to apologize. For the other day. I—I'm sorry. Fishmen...minks, humans too, people shouldn't be slaves. Cipher Pol—I don't...know. I don't know."
And it's terrible because he means it, terrible that he means it. Treason.
Something in Buccellati's expression softens.
"It's alright," he says, and he's almost smiling. It's something close to breathtaking. "Apology accepted. Thank you."
Abbacchio smiles, too, if weakly. "So," he says, and clears his throat, "what is this place anyway? I've never seen anything like it."
Buccellati laughs, small and light, he settles down beside Abbacchio, spines down and dormant. "No, I don't imagine you would've. We're at the very bottom of the ocean. The trenches."
Abbacchio blinks. "The trenches? But..."
The fishman nods. "It's the coral, it's...It makes it's own field of pressure, as long as you can make it down in a bubble then you'll be safe from pressure in it's area. And it's more..alive than shallow coral. And carnivorous. It's luminescent as a lure."
"The hell," Abbacchio mutters, "no wonder revolutionaries are so hard to track if you've got this kind of place as a base."
Buccellati's eyes crinkle. "They're hard to find."
Abbacchio sighs. "Yeah. Harder than Cipher Pol's, at least, unless it 0 or 9. I don't think 0 even has a base to find." He pauses. "Then again, that's above my clearance."
Buccellati hums. "What is in your clearance?"
He snorts. "Sorry, it's not going to be that easy."
The fishman nods, slight smile. "Figured." Pauses, then, "Tell me about yourself? I joined the revolutionaries six years ago, when I was thirteen." He pauses, then blinks, almost owlishly, huffs a laugh. "I don't even know your name."
Abbacchio stays silent, opens his mouth, closes it, pauses, hesitates, "Cipher Pol picked me up twelve years ago. My...codename's Abbacchio. I picked it."
"Abbacchio," Buccellati says, like he's tasting the name. And he says it right, says it the way Abbacchio has always heard it in his mind, the way no one else has ever said. It makes something in his blood sing, beneath his bones, deeper than his memories. It feels right. "Nice to meet you, then. I go by Buccellati. Although," he gives Abbacchio a crooked smile, "I guess you already knew that."
"Yeah," Abbacchio echoes, "I guess."
Buccellati hums. "Hobbies? Favorites?"
Abbacchio huffs a laugh. "You don't really have...hobbies, in Cipher Pol, not a lot of free time when you have a whole world to run, but I like—"
"Opera," Buccellati says, "and white wine, and ruchetta salad and margarita pizza. And you hate naive people."
He blinks. He doesn't even know what ruchetta salad and margarita pizza are. But they sound right. "I—yes. Yeah. How..?"
"I don't know," Buccellati says, voice clicking and warbling and uncertain in a way Abbacchio hates. "I need to go. I'll...be back in a few hours, excuse me."
And like that, he's out.
Updates next week. Reviews are appreciated.