Chapter 3: Shrapnel
Summary: Smoker handles Drake's return so well.
Notes: Art by CrowSizna on twitter!
Goddamn bastard!
His fist smashes through the table in his quarters, splinters of wood exploding outward–
Undercover?! The fucker!
His chair goes flying across the room, slamming into the wall–
A lie! All of it!
The lumpy old couch flips, cracking in two–
Pirates will always be pirates after all! Hadn't that been what Drake told him?! Stated so blandly above him, mace dripping with his blood. Fuck the scar burned across Smoker's collarbone!
Churning smoke obliterates the remainder of the room, shelves collapsing, metal bending and shrieking, papers bursting through the air–
The coin flips over and over, landing in Smoker's palm. Heads. Then tails, then heads, heads, tails. The cigar between his teeth does little to take the edge off, nothing to stop his skin from feeling too tight, from the embers of fury lurking just beneath the surface.
Spies, lies, traitors. Vergo's blaise face as Law's sword slices him from chin to crown flashes before him. Not enough punishment for that bastard. Forgetting Vergo in the past is more fitting than the rage that his mere memory triggers. Let him rot forgotten.
If only the current Traitor in his thoughts was so easy to leave in the past.
Smoke swirls in wild whirls overhead. Gray snow flutters down and melts into slosh on the wooden platform beneath his boots. Slate clouds block out the stars, a thick oppressive blanket settling over the base. He had never hated winter before, but, as the memory of wicked slicing strings and petrified soldiers creeps across the back of his neck, Smoker thinks he might now.
His ship is mostly empty, his idiot soldiers off partying with the morons of G-14. Any other time, he'd likely be out there with them, at least for a round of poker. With Hina here, she'd probably have dragged him to some bar, Doll giving him the stink eye the whole time.
As if she couldn't believe that he and Hina were a thing of the past. His scar throbs. A past suddenly rearing its fucking head now, in the present. The embers of rage start to flare once more.
"Smoker-san! There's been trouble!" Hurried footsteps on the ladder leading to the crow's nest. Tashigi's black hair and red glasses peek over the top of the landing, her eyes wide as she scrambles up to him. "Your quarters! They've been ransacked!" she gasps, tripping over her feet to tell him what he already knew.
"I know."
"Who could have d–! You know?" she freezes, glasses falling properly into place on the bridge of her nose. She blinks a few times, pupils flitting from his face to his clenched fists and back. He grunts an affirmative, looking away at the shitty wintery base.
Tashigi steps closer, coming to his side. "Are you alright?" she asks, voice softer. A tone she didn't normally use on him, because he was always alright. Fine when that pink fucker Doflamingo nearly garroted him, when that shithead Captain Kidd almost took his eye. When the ground below his feet was slick with the blood of his comrades during the Paramount War. Fine when he told his shitheaded superior officers to suck it after the Alabasta fiasco!
And fine when he was demoted and posted in fucking Loguetown after–
The breath catches in Smoker's throat, the burning across his collarbone white hot with memory. "Smoker-san…? Smoker?" Tashigi's gloved palm is on his cheek. The gray of the sky reflects off the corners of her chocolate eyes, concern bright in their depths.
"I'm fine," he mutters, but now she's noticed his hands, knuckles cracked and oozing with sluggish blood, the leather of his gloves torn and clinging to his frayed skin.
Her eyes drift back to his face. "I have bandages in my quarters."
The space heater on the floor glows a warm bright orange, the gentle light blending into the layers of throw rugs coating the floor. Not regulation, only ever unrolled when docked. A trip hazard for Tashigi's clumsy ass, but Smoker can't deny he likes the feel of them underfoot. Blades of various sizes, sharp and austere in stark contrast to the plush floor and patterned handmade quilts on her bed are carefully displayed on the walls.
Tashigi rummages in the chest at the foot of her double size cot. One advantage to being of leadership rank is the sleeping arrangement improvements. Becoming a captain had at last given him the privacy to think the damn unrushed way he wanted too. For Tashigi, it seemed to have given her the space to collect more and more swords.
Reaching Vice Admiral had only given him more damn trouble, despite the flexibility. He preferred the size of Tashigi's quarters, or maybe he just preferred that it felt lived in. Though he'd taken over Vergo's old quarters, old office, and filled his fucking shoes better than that rat bastard ever could have, something still felt off.
"Aha!" Tashigi pulled out a first aid kit triumphantly and trotted the few steps to seat herself in the chair next to his at her small wooden table. Someone had carved TJ x Amal into the worn surface, other names scratched out and scattered. Typical reused Navy furniture right down to the visibly repaired legs from some firefight or storm.
"The children missed seeing you today, Mocha-chan specifically asked me to tell you that she's a whole meter shorter and that she can't wait to be shorter than you. They made a competition for who gets shortest fastest," Tashigi smiled at him, eyes crinkling in the corners as she peeled his gloves off, the leather tugging on barely formed scabs.
"How are they adjusting to G-14?" he grunted, thankful Tashigi hadn't asked about his meeting with Doll. Yet.
A slight frown crossed Tashigi's face as she dabbed alcohol onto cotton. "I think… they like Doll-san, and the base doctors, Shin-san and Nagamura-san, are very kind but… I think seeing familiar faces of people they can trust is good for them. The treatment from Dr. Vegapunk is not painless, and only being able to have limited visits from their parents must be very hard."
The precise sting of the alcohol brought the color of the room into acute focus. "You will visit them won't you?" she looked up into his face, eyes large behind her glasses. A heartfelt smile blossomed on her lips at his nod.
"I bumped into Kujaku-chan with Lieutenant Helmeppo earlier too. They are very worried about Koby-kun, Helmeppo-san especially. Apparently he has been here for the last week begging Doll-san to take action," she pursed her lips.
"Tch, Doll isn't SWORD, she won't do shit without orders," he growled. Tashigi raised an eyebrow at his tone.
"That's true, but neither are we." She broke out the gauze, fingers deft in a way her feet never were, except during a fight. "Smoker-san, may I ask you something?"
"You just did."
Tashigi tilted her head, looking apologetic, and Smoker sighed. She didn't deserve the pedantry. "Fine, what?"
"Why aren't you SWORD?" The clock on her bedside table ticked, the low ever constant sound of the sea a background hum. The heater buzzed. Hina's face, dark accusatory circles under her eyes asking him the same thing after she bailed him out of trouble yet again for going outside protocol flashed before his eyes. She'd asked him nearly the same thing, only it wasn't a question but a damn recommendation.
If he had joined SWORD, would he have known about Diez sooner? The thought ignites the rage that had been sitting so innocently in his chest for the last half hour.
"Because I'm not a coward," he snarls, hands curling into fists again, screwing up Tashigi's gauze wrap, aggravating the bruises forming, cuts hissing open at their seams. She stares, surprised at his outburst.
"The Navy should have to live with whatever actions you take, and vice versa. You sign up to represent justice, not to wiggle out of it when it gets ugly. No matter how ugly!" he spits, voice loud in the small space.
A tense silence settles between them, Tashigi focuses back on his hands, re-wrapping gauze. He almost bats her hands away, he can do this himself. He's no stranger to injury. He doesn't even need to cover these. Small dumb cuts from actions fuelled by his own stupidity!
"There, they shouldn't scar now," she says gently after a few minutes. Her fingers are settled on his own, carefully, like one would handle a spooked dog.
"What's another scar," he mutters, longing for a smoke. But Tashigi doesn't let him smoke in her quarters. She still hasn't asked him about his meeting with Doll, and it sits on his shoulders, pushing down.
Her thumb brushes against his, a small circular motion. The scar on his collarbone twinges.
"...Did I ever tell you how I got this?" he gestures to the ragged brand on his shoulder, stretching down over his collar and onto his pectoral. Not a neat sewn up mark like the one on his face or the small nicks and smooth lines that covered other parts of his body.
She shakes her head, eyes tracing the shape of it.
"I got it hunting down someone I used to call a friend," more than a friend , he doesn't say out loud. To dredge that up into the open is too soon. The old wound isn't ready to shove that piece of shrapnel out.
"Idiot defected, and I went after him. 'Pirates will always be pirates' is what he told me as he gave me this and left me to die."
She looks like she already knew. Probably did, Hina was a gossip when drunk, or maybe she said it sober. He couldn't decide which was worse. But his physical reminder was probably better than the lurking monster he knew dwelled beneath Hina's calm exterior.
"True enough," Tashigi whispers. He can hear the "but" coming. Their experiences with the fucking Straw Hats certainly didn't fit. And now…now he didn't know. If it was true, then what the fuck was Diez doing here?! The scar gave another weak throb.
But the 'but' never came. Just a slight squeeze of his hand. Her skin is warmer than his, the callouses on her palm like his own. Handling a sword isn't so different from a jitte in the end.
"But now the idiot is here, and it turns out "Rear Admiral" Diez Drake wasn't a traitor in the first place," the words come out in a tired rush. Her eyes go wide. "Yeah, that's what Doll's stupid little meeting was. To tell me not to attack him on sight."
"Do you think he's a threat?" Tashigi asks, cutting right through to the heart of it.
"I don't know, but I plan to find out. I'm tired of rats," he growls. Choosing a path of action eases the fury in his heart.
"And if he's not?" Smoker can see himself reflected in Tashigi's glasses, the pinched look between his eyebrows, like a man haunted. Or hunted. Diez Drake, sitting in the hall, expression eerily similar slaps him across the face.
He doesn't answer, because he doesn't know, isn't ready to let go of the monster he'd created in his head to make sense of the pain. She doesn't seem to mind his sudden silence. Instead, Tashigi gets to her feet, fingers intertwining with his, shyly, like they hadn't found comfort in one another for the past year.
"Let's go to bed," she tugs gently and he follows, grateful not to be alone.
Notes:
Smoker so mad lol