Chapter 4: Belonging
Summary: Drake and Hawkins after Wano, prompt: belonging.
Notes: For you Astely! Thank you so much for doing this trade with me!
The ocean roars, a challenge. He must get there.
Pain pulses, neck, stomach, chest. Must keep going.
And Hawkins. Small small small in his grip, teeth cannot bite, blood like cocaine.
Swim swim swim across the rainfall sea. Swimming is new, strange, an old memory. Tunnel to the true world dark and cold. The catch release on the ship to escape Wano enters freefall. The crash into the water below is a second small death. Onigaishima in the distance, home that never was.
At last, at last, sleep. Sleep.
Drake awakens and nearly wishes he hadn't. Throbbing fire arcs in every vein, every crevice of his physical form. The smell of burning coats the insides of his nose, tongue thick with blood and shattered gums. He is healing, thanks to his zoan abilities. But it is still truly terrible.
The thing with pain is that there is only through it. Those who say suffering is something noble are fools. There is nothing righteous or grand in pain. It just is, and because it holds one's soul fully and utterly in the inescapable present, it is horrendous. Monstrous.
The ship sways on waves that are calm for Paradise. A ticking time bomb. He must move. Move soldier! MOVE! It takes everything Drake has to open his eyes. The sky is bright with midday. Looking at it may as well be staring down a god.
A thousand years pass before Drake gathers the strength to roll over. And thus, his view changes. A little piece of his present here on his way to his past. Blonde hair somehow so soft even dyed red with blood.
Hawkins. Hawkins. Move soldier.
A warship is not meant to be run by a single person. It is meant to be run by a small army. Navigators are meant to read layouts and make corrections. Cannoneers are meant to be cleaning and polishing and loading and preparing. Riflemen are meant to watch from the Crows Nest.
And Drake wishes for all the world that he wasn't the most useless part of the army that should be. The Captain. He is not an expert marksman, engineer, or cook, nor shipwright, or navigator. But worst of all, Diez Drake is no doctor.
And Hawkins is dying.
The medical bay is slippery with blood. He has used every skill he knows to try to staunch the bleeding– pressure on the wound, cauterization. The smell of burning flesh roils his all too weak human stomach, but the beast always slumbering within pulses with desire.
Drake has seen many men die. Knows the signs like an old path home. The labored breathing, the ashen skin, the sunken eyes. He sees them in Hawkins, the whispered one percent chance of survival swirls in an eddy within his head. He must get help, this Drake knows.
But where he is going, Drake does not know if help is what he'll find.
Hawkins does not die in the night. His chest continues to lift hypnotically and Drake would stay to watch if he did not have the mere act of survival to maintain. He checks the eternal pose, doing his best to keep the ship on course. The weather is holding. He prays it will hold a little longer.
His former Naval warship (though was it ever truly former?) is full of ghosts. He sees them out of the corners of his eyes. His old cook, a man he recruited first after defecting keeps motioning Drake closer. But that way lies madness and regret.
But he'd rather see the cook, a bastard in his own right, than the pained faces of terrified women from Amigasa Village.
A clock hangs on the wall of sick bay. It can be heard over the waves slapping against the hull. Seawater and rain run the creases of his boots, over the crags of muscle and scars to drip onto the floor. The lantern hanging slipshod from the ceiling swings wildly back and forth. The weather did not hold.
But Hawkins still breathed, in and out, though the shadow of death still sat upon his face. In the wavering light, he looked like a fallen angel.
Drake pressed his fingers– stiff from cold– over his eyes, pain from fading bruises pinging. He should end this folly now. The chances of G-14 lending aid to a high class pirate, a man whose heinous crimes haunted many, were slim. They would not see the terrible beauty in Hawkins' loyalty, would not lend a sympathetic ear to his terror and entrapment at the hands of Kaido.
But still, he must try.
It is morning when Hawkins awakes, though the storm darkens the sky still. Awash in a perpetual twilight, or if Drake had time for optimism, the hour before dawn. Drake offers him water, nearly refused by chapped lips. The ship rocks, waves roll.
And Hawkins asks him why.
But it's like asking why birds sing, or why children burn ants with magnifying glasses. "I'm a Marine," he hedges, the truth of his allegiance at last. His justice says to protect those in need. The ghosts in the doorway beg to differ. He wishes they would. He wishes, as he always does, that the world and his place within it were not as black as the ink upon his skin.
If his justice were as simple as that, he would not have left Ulti, or Who's Who, or numerous others behind. But they are alone on this ship.
"I am a poor prize in comparison to the likes of Kaido, or Queen," Hawkins rasps. Bounties never crossed his mind, his own only serves to remind him of the burdens he carries.
"Always with numbers, there is more to life," Drake sighs, the lantern light gleaming gold off Hawkins' hair. He bears pain so well, so nobly.
Hawkins sleeps once more.
G-14 is in sight, the telescope in Drake's hands trembles. The time has come. For judgement and retribution, for ruin or absolution. He slips below decks, to the medical bay once more. Hawkins is awake, gazing at the lantern above, the flame low.
"We are almost at the end of our journey. I apologize, I do not have any cards for you to determine your fate." Hawkins turns to look at him, and Drake wonders if tying their fates together was a mistake. But it is too late now, and only time will tell.
"That's fine, I do not wish to know," Hawkins murmurs. There is a beat of silence, acknowledging the terror of uncertainty, letting in into the room, into the present to dog the steps of their future.
Drake covers Hawkins' hand with his own.