85,000,000.
The number rang hollow as she continued to stare at the parchment. She expected it to be a decent amount considering her "crimes", but she didn't expect to feel so empty all over again because of it.
Law sat still with a fist propped up underneath his chin, eyes gazing lazily up at her as she grazed her teeth over her bottom lip. Emotions ran, with remorse becoming prominent as the sudden faces of those who had called her their leader flashed before her eyes. Ginger tried to suppress any flicker of guilt but soon found that it wouldn't be as easy as she thought. It should've relieved her in some way to be able to take on this burden regardless if Jax had been dealt with. The more thought she gave on the situation, the more she found herself slowly beginning to dislike the very person she was becoming.
It suddenly seemed unreal. The present becoming distant as Ginger felt her chest tighten. The faces coming back to haunt her once more, each passing through her head like a never ending cycle. She was sure at some point that Law had said something, but the sudden ringing in her ears blocked his words out. The lump in her throat tightened with each breath before she glanced away from the poster to look upon the captain. He remained the same save for the fact that one of his eyebrows were raised.
Trafalgar Law appeared disinterested at her sudden moment of panic. "Are you having second thoughts, Marine-ya?" The fact that his tone had changed at the last second suggested that he was looking for a reason to catch her off guard.
Ginger slammed the poster down beside him. Hand never leaving the surface of it as the corner of her lips twitched.
"None, captain." Law's frown immediately lifted as he smirked at her. "Now, about my heart..."
"It has a label and it's being kept somewhere out of harm's way."
She had been about to drop the matter when her ears picked up on a sudden faint thumping sound. Her lips parted slightly as she looked around his room, eyes attempting to find what her ears could not. All the while, Law watched with a leg propped against the other. His eyes darted down to the left as if suddenly aware of the sound. When Ginger found nothing Law made the move to point her in the correct direction. The tip of his shoe lightly tapped the bottom drawer of his desk, causing her to jump in surprise.
"Is it...?" At this, she became horrified at the thought. "Why is it in there?!"
Ever analytical of a situation, Law wasted no time in explaining. "Your heart won't take any damage so long as you keep your end of the deal."
She supposed she should be relieved considering that it was here rather than on a shelf somewhere in his medical lab. The thought, however, that it was in the bottom drawer of his desk surrounded by darkness unsettled her. She kept herself calm about it, supposing that having it there was better than the alternative.
She nodded and said nothing while turning to walk out.
"Ginger." His voice halted her. She quickly looked at him from over her shoulder, eyes meeting his grey ones as she waited. If her heart had been back in her chest it would've begun to thump rapidly at the way he folded his arms with a look of discontent. "If you don't wear the splint your arm will never heal properly. I wouldn't be this mildly concerned if not for the fact that you need to pull your weight around here." Law closed his eyes as his mouth set itself into a thin line. "Wear the splint."
Once Ginger reached the privacy of her shared quarters she quickly closed the door and began pacing the carpeted floor. Her left arm throbbed again as she tucked it carefully underneath her other arm. Her eyebrows knitted as she thought of her next course of action.
Jax's crew was still at large, and given the fact that she had been so close meant that she was now one step behind. Jax boasted that he was above average intelligence, but for all the good it did him Ginger suspected he would have never proposed to make a deal with the Marines so quickly. She assumed that someone, a high-ranking officer perhaps, reached out to him with the deal in exchange for whatever he had. Whether Jax did indeed had information worth knowing went to the grave with him.
Ginger racked her brain, trying hard to figure out the pieces of the puzzle that seemed to have no end. She ran a hand through her hair, fingers brushing against the back of her neck as she thought back to the event on the island.
"What did you know?" She whispered, looking up to gaze at the empty space upon the wall.
I turn in my associates and the pirates I worked with in exchange for amnesty.
It didn't make sense. What would the Marines do with the information he supposedly had? More importantly, why did they care? The associates that Jax had mentioned caught Ginger's immediate interest although she had no idea what that meant. Her thoughts suddenly drifted to Law. He mentioned that day that he overheard their conversation. Perhaps he knew what it was Jax and the Marines had spoken of.
Her eyes turned away from the wall, teeth grinding against each other as she remembered how closely he had been watching her nowadays. If she prompted the question to him it would only prove that she wasn't committed to shedding her identity as a Marine. A sharp intake of breath suddenly caused her to clutch at her chest. Her fingers lightly dragged across the exposed skin as she doubled over in pain. The place where her heart should've been was causing her all sorts of discomfort. She stumbled towards Keki's bed and fell to her knees. Her other hand grasped at the bed cover as a sheet of sweat coated her brow.
The door suddenly opened as Keki walked in with a furrowed brow. When she saw Ginger kneeling beside her bed she immediately readied the demand for an explanation before it died on her tongue. She hurriedly went over to the younger woman, placing a hand upon her shoulder. "What's wrong, Ginger-chan?" Keki didn't bother to mask the concern in her tone.
"Just pain is all," she reassured her, shaking her head. "It'll go away."
"Where?" Keki demanded. When Ginger patted her chest she saw Keki immediately frown. "When did it start hurting?"
"The day after he took it out."
Unbeknownst to Ginger, those who had fallen victim to Law's power didn't survive to tell the tale. Keki remembered briefly that those who possessed a weak will didn't survive long enough after their heart had been removed. She couldn't presume that Ginger harbored a weak will. She seemed to be handling the procedure with enough grace to move on and not hold it against him. This information, Keki deemed, needed to be passed back to him should he have to decide whether or not to give her heart back to her.
Ginger's eyes held hers. "I know you don't owe me anything, Keki but please don't tell Law about this."
Keki's surprise of her request instantly turned to displeasure. "He needs to know about this."
"I can handle it," she affirmed, straightening herself as she shrugged off Keki's hand. "My body needs to get used to this. I have to teach it discipline to withstand it."
It went unnoticed at first. The slight hesitation on Ginger's part as she instinctively clutched at her chest again. A nervous habit developed when the empty void became apart of her being. The way her fingers clutched at the fabric, wanting―almost needing to tear it off as though that would bring back her heart. It was an alternative to losing her mind over the situation and becoming something she wouldn't recognize. Steadily, she rose to her feet as the feeling subsided along with the pain. Keki remained where she stood perhaps processing over what she had said.
She opened her mouth suddenly, lips parted, as her eyes met Ginger's again. "Lunch is ready." As quick as she had said it, she turned to leave their shared room.
"Don't worry, Ginger-chan."
Her eyes darted to Shachi as he cleaned his plate in one swift movement with pieces of food flying from his mouth. "85 is a good bounty to start with."
"What?" She blinked while moving to grab another onigiri from the platter.
"Your bounty," he clarified, gulping down what remained of his lunch. "That's what you're thinking about, right?"
"No."
He shrugged then while Shig, one of the engineers of the Heart Pirates, intervened. "The Captain showed us your poster. Looks nothing like you now though."
Ginger smiled as she wiped off the corner of her mouth with her thumb, chewing as she thought before swallowing. "Works for me." The entire crew ate with collective laughs all around. Law was no where to be found. It would only take another two hours or so before they reached Marineford, and although it would be a serious situation once they arrived it was nice to see that they were calm for the most part.
She took another bite out of the onigiri while looking over to find that Keki was eating in silence. She swallowed then, and turned back to find that the laughs had died down.
"Tell us a little about your mother."
The question would have caught her off guard had she not been expecting it. It was only a few days that she had been with the Heart Pirates but she assumed that word would spread among them that she was Greta's daughter. Though her mother was not exactly infamous as Whitebeard or Gol D. Roger were, she held the reputation of spreading mischief and discord wherever she went.
"She's from the North Blue. Went out to sea at seventeen. Became a pirate captain at twenty. She basically robbed the rich and the Marines and while kept half to herself she gave the rest of the goods to the neighboring towns. Among her crew were Gilda, the doctor; Ty, the swordsman; Dane Ridge, the navigator; Francie, the cook; and Aubrey, my mother's most trusted confidant who happened to be a skilled archer." She waited, gauging everyone's reaction before continuing. "Then Greta killed a Celestial Dragon and damned herself." Ginger's tone had fluctuated at certain points. When recalling her mother's crew it was warm and full of remembrance, but at the last sentence it immediately turned monotone at the memory. She tried to forgive her mother ―tried her hardest to remember a time where they were happy but it was all lost when she thought back to the day her mother surrendered.
Greta had spared her crew a losing battle and traded her freedom in for theirs and Ginger's. Iron cuffs had fastened her wrists together as she walked the plank from The Fortune to the awaiting Marine ship. She couldn't remember what incident forced Greta's hand and made her surrender.
Her recollection was over the moment Penguin spoke up. "Why did she do it?"
"Do what?" She replied coolly.
Keki looked up from her meal then. She didn't shield her curiosity, and like the rest of the crew awaited to see where the conversation would lead.
"Kill a Celestial Dragon," he said casually, as though they were discussing something as trivial as the weather.
Why? Ginger never found out why. All she knew, years later from Marigold, was that crime had marked her a dead woman. There was never a why that went with it, and so she assumed that it was because Greta wanted to. That day she found out was the day that she had sworn never to become her mother.
Ironic how that turned out.
There were no warm goodbyes. The smell of the rain pouring mixed with the scent of gunpowder had been her most vivid memory followed by the sound of her mother pleading to the Marines to let her go near Ginger. A group of four Marines had held Greta at bay while Marigold tugged on Ginger's arm, directing her towards the building to shelter her from the storm.
The Fortune had already set sail without Ginger in tow.
The memories were vivid no matter how hard Ginger fought to keep them locked away. It only served to upset her, reminding her of the mistake she had made in becoming a pirate.
"I don't know," she finally answered after a moment in silence. "I wish I had the answer."
A/N: Title change because I wasn't really feeling the first one all too much. Hope I didn't confuse anyone!