Limit

Characters: Law, Shachi, Uni. Rating: K+. Warnings: None

"I'm fine."

Law had come to despise those two words. They usually prefaced an argument, whereby he – as the ships' doctor and captain – had to forcibly dismiss any such claims as thoroughly as possible until he could get the offending nakama to sit down in the infirmary. Anyone who claimed they were fine was very probably not, in his experience.

Where Shachi thought he could pull that concept from in this particular scenario, Law would love to know. Not only was the ginger, returning from some skirmish or other he'd ended up embroiled in while on the shore, not quite demonstrating his usual energy – a red flag by itself – but he was full out limping.

By no definition could that be called fine, especially as it had long since passed a simple favouring of a single leg to instead progress to a fully formed limp of both legs, and Law was utterly flabbergasted that Shachi thought for a single moment that he wasn't destined for a spell in the infirmary until the injury was treated and he was capable of walking again.

"No, really, I'm fine," the idiot continued to insist. Law might have given him the benefit of the doubt (well, not really, but at least allowed him to get the infirmary under his own steam) if his face hadn't chosen that particular moment to twist into a brief expression of pain. He was not fine, not under any definition, and it was child's play for Bepo to scoop him up into his arms at a single uttered word from Law.

"How many times do we have to go through this charade?" Law demanded, keeping pace with the mink easily as they headed to the infirmary. "You are limping and wincing; neither of those symptoms all under any definition of the word 'fine', which you should be well aware of by now."

"Yeah," Shachi began, sounding as though agreeing was an unimportant factor, and Law waited for the- "but, I'm not injured, so it's all fine."

Well, they'd managed to progress from 'I'm fine' to 'it's fine', which Law counted as a minor victory. A very minor victory. More pressing was Shachi's confidence that he wasn't actually injured, despite the faces he was pulling and the occasional hiss of air escaping between suddenly-clenched teeth when Bepo jostled him accidentally.

"If your pain and inability to walk is not caused by an injury, then what do you think the cause is?" Law asked, hoping that Shachi could come up with an answer to the impossible question just so he didn't have to deal with the apparent insubordination the older man was showing him. There was only so much he could take, especially when his nakama's welfare was involved.

"It's just cramp," Shachi said flippantly, as though a simple cramp was enough to cripple him. Law had not spent so many years flinging him and Penguin around the training room for them to be brought low by something as simple as a cramp. He didn't waste his breath responding, instead lifting a dubious eyebrow as he waited for Shachi to elaborate.

It didn't take long.

"You know that… that thing some of those Marines do?" Shachi attempted to explain, and Law sent him a withering glare because thing told him nothing at all, never mind the fact that he highly doubted Shachi of all people was casually picking up Marine tricks. "The really fast thing," he clarified. "Where they disappear and go whoosh and then reappear where you don't want them?"

"Soru?" Law hazarded a guess, starting to see where he was going. One day, he'd remember how much of an idiot Shachi could be.

"Yeah, that thing!" Shachi grinned, far too pleased with himself considering the punishment he'd probably just put his body through. If he'd been trying to emulate their high-speed movements without limbering up properly though years' worth of exercise (and Law knew he hadn't been training that long), then it was no wonder his legs were complaining, to put it mildly. "I-"

"You tore up the muscles in your leg trying to emulate it and now you're trying to pass that off as cramp," Law cut in, unamused. Shachi had enough common sense – barely – to look abashed at the scolding. "Idiot. You could have crippled yourself."

"Well I managed it!" the ginger grinned, and Law wanted to groan because that meant he'd be trying it again. Not that high speed movement was a bad idea for Shachi, with his complete lack of Armament Haki and mastery over Observation, but Law was willing to bet he'd leapt straight into Soru as soon as he'd figured it out the same way he threw himself into anything new – with no restraint or consideration for consequences.

He didn't bother giving Shachi's claim a response, directing Bepo to set the idiotic ginger down on a bed so he could perform a Scan and assess what damage, exactly, he'd done to himself. Shachi let out another discomforted hiss as he settled on the bed, and Law tried not to think of how much pain he was in that he was letting it show.

Shachi had been lucky, he eventually surmised. His flexibility and limber body appeared to have absorbed most of the stress, leaving him with a case of tight muscles. Of course, because this was Shachi and he could never not do things all the way, it was going to take more than a simple operation to get the muscles functional again – and Law was not letting Shachi go anywhere on those legs until they were fully healed, otherwise he'd just make himself exponentially worse.

"Bepo," he said, catching the attention of the mink, who'd rested a paw on Shachi's shoulder while they waited for the verdict. "Get Uni."

"Aye, Captain!" Bepo chirped, picking his way around the bed with an elegance his bulky frame didn't seem like it should have and disappearing out of the room.

"No more walking until further notice," he told his idiotic nakama, who pulled a face.

"How bad… is it?" he asked, and the sudden hesitance made Law want to hit him. If he hadn't been certain about his own condition, he should not have attempted to play it off as 'fine'. He refrained, barely, and idly wondered if Shachi knew how close he'd come to being slapped.

"Somehow, you've avoided permanent damage," he said instead, leaning in to start on the minor operation. "I don't know how, so you are not going to be trying that again until your legs can handle it." Shachi made a disappointed noise, but Law was unrelenting.

"And what's with the operation right now?" the ginger asked, peering down at where his legs were now in pieces as Law skilfully manipulated the different parts.

"I'm just accelerating the healing process," he admitted. "Stay still." The order was redundant – even if Shachi was mobile he knew better than to mess around while Law was working. "This will shave a few days off the recovery process, although I'll still be having you take it easy." Shachi made a noise of comprehension, but if he was planning on saying anything else it was cut off by the arrival of a confused Uni.

"Captain?" he asked, his gaze immediately zeroing in on Shachi's legs, and Law gestured for him to sit.

"Shachi's damaged his legs," he explained shortly. "I'd like you to try and relax the muscles. I'm accelerating the healing, so you'll be able to start immediately."

"Yes, Captain," Uni agreed, and that was all Law needed to hear. Sure enough, no sooner than he'd finished putting the last pieces of Shachi's legs together, Uni was there with skilled hands that coaxed far more pained sounds out of Shachi than Law had been hoping for.

Still, Law knew from personal experience that Uni had magic hands, and while Shachi was groaning to start with, it wouldn't be too long before they'd be pleasant sighs instead. Shachi was a vocal character – Law wasn't sure it was possible to shut him up if he didn't want to (barring bringing up traumatic events, but that was never an acceptable tactic to use on his own nakama) – and the background groans and sighs were no exception as Shachi let them know exactly how successful the treatment was being.

"Feeling better?" Uni asked Shachi several minutes later, although from the pleased noises Law considered that a redundant question.

"Hell yeah," Shachi mumbled. "You're awesome, Uni."

"This isn't going go get fixed all in one go," Uni pointed out, to Law's approval. "What the hell did you do to yourself? There are far less destructive ways to get a massage, you know."

"Tried going a little bit faster," Shachi muttered, sounding vaguely sulky as though he couldn't comprehend that Uni was also scolding him. "It isn't as easy as the Marines made it look." Law could hear the raised eyebrow as Uni tried to reconcile the idea that Shachi was trying out a Marine technique, and apparently failed.

"There are better ways to try and get a massage," the tall man eventually grumbled, and Law didn't comment on the way he'd moved beyond Shachi's legs now, easing the muscles of his abdomen and edging towards a full-body massage, to Shachi's obvious delight. "Like asking."

Thanks for reading!
Tsari