Let it be said that when Elynna sees an opportunity to fuck (with) someone, she will absolutely seize it.
Friend or not, and life or death situations notwithstanding.
Challenge of the day (or however long it takes you to read this little monster): keep a straight face through the whole train ride. You owe me a comment if you fail, and you'll get an acknowledgement of your Greatness from yours truly if you succeed.
(Just kidding.
About the comment part obviously, not the challenge.
I definitely dare you on that.)
And shout out to A Hoe (RaIsSoInvested) from ao3 for their fanart, which you can find here: https: slashslash www dot tumblr dot com slash sitting-around-and-fantasizing/714510067233357824/she-takes-a-deep-breath-and-one-by-one-lets-her.
Trigger Warning 1: Spandam is here and alive, with every disgustingly trashy behaviour this implies.
Trigger Warning 2: Suicidal thoughts and trauma. Robin's backstory in general, actually.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, so anything that you see in this fic and that you can recognise as belonging to One Piece is not mine. If I did own it, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. Duh. Also, I don't own the picture.
Part One - Dive|rgence
THIRTY
And if you say that you want to stay, but that the choice rests
in the hands that are holding you away
Then what's a little more blood on my hands, if they can touch you long enough to wipe away your tears?
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
The silence ticks by, stealing more and more of Robin's breath as seconds slip through the cracks of her clenched fingers, leaving her to wait and wait and wait—
(For the blood to spill,
for the smile to dim,
for the warmth to fade—)
Until she has no breath left to answer, and Elynna's eyes slide away from her and towards the man still sitting on the other end of the bench.
Her smile flinches just a bit wider, and—
She straightens up, hands slowly rising in the air in the classic look at me I'm harmless pose, forcing the three agents around her to take a step back.
When she opens her mouth to speak, her smile has been swallowed back and away, leaving behind half-lidded eyes and a bland sort of calm that wavers on the edge of disinterest.
"Wow. I know you've got the license for it, but let's not resort to murder right off the bat."
The three agents standing around her don't retract their fingers.
They hold still, don't even seem to blink.
Their leader turns his head to look at her, and he definitely looks disinterested, although on his face cruelty somehow manages to leech into it seamlessly.
"Perhaps," he intones with the droning monotone one could use to discuss the morals of murdering insects, "we would not have to proceed with such caution if you did not behave suspiciously, Miss...?"
Elynna raises an eyebrow in his direction, and entirely sidesteps the implied question, sending a hot wave of panic rushing dizzyingly through Robin's veins as she struggles to think through it and find a way to save her currently very stupid First Mate from the consequences of disrespecting a man like Rob Lucci so blithely.
And to his face, at that.
"Suspiciously? Are you seriously telling me that my boss didn't actually call you to—" She pauses, and her shoulders slump with a short sigh. "Wait, don't bother. Of course he didn't."
She straightens up, and folds one arm into a fist at her back while saluting with the other, somehow managing to look crisp, lazy and mocking all at once.
And then—
"Heidi Alice Schwarz, member of the Marine forces under Garp The Fist. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but you're still threatening me with capital punishment in response to unfounded accusations of breaking and entering, so. Something for the future, I guess."
Lucci's eyes narrow with recognition at the name.
Elynna stares back, unflinching and unyielding.
Robin stares down at her knees, every bone and muscle straining to contain their shaking inside herself.
This is not stupidity.
This is madness, pure and simple.
Just... Why would someone so smart pretend to be a Marine soldier —especially one under the orders of such a famous man— in front of CP9 agents?
A regular soldier might not think too much about it, if at all, but these people are bound to—
"I'm afraid we will have to ask for proof of that assertion." Lucci enunciates clearly, looking the opposite of afraid as he tilts his head ever so slightly, prompting his three colleagues to lower their hand but remain in the same spot.
They are bound to check, and Usopp's falsified card is unlikely to fool someone with keen senses and years of experience in undercover work.
So what is she thinking?
Absurd things, it turns out when Robin's First Mate answers with a nonchalant shrug.
"Sure. Wanna call him? He should be having his second snack break right now."
Over the blank, circling rush of static in her mind, Robin thinks that Elynna might just be trying to kill her before the CP9 can do it by way of a heart attack.
Somehow, that thought is the thing that makes the most sense in the entire situation, and it pushes her to lean against the window next to her, the cool solidity of the glass welcome against the feverish sense of distant shock that is draping itself across her mind like clouds of lead.
And when she glances back to the side where Blueno is stepping back into the room from thin air with a Den Den Mushi in hand, she realises that no one is even looking at her.
She might as well be a ghost.
(Already dead.
She knows it to be an illusion, knows that even the barest hint that she's leaning towards the door will shatter it.
But the foretaste is so very delicious.)
Elynna's voice as she rattles off a series of digits without the slightest sign of worry is the one thing that reaches her through the blanket of cotton-like heaviness.
She's so far beyond panic that the desperation feels like lucidity, and so she realises that this is Elynna.
This is Elynna, and Elynna loathes uncertainty.
As a pirate, and even more as a First Mate, she had to learn to gamble, but there's a big difference between taking a gamble and carelessly taking a gamble.
Elynna just doesn't do careless.
Unless right in the middle of a fight, she weighs pros and cons and makes plans within plans to eliminate all the uncertainties she can eliminate.
So if she's here, saying those words, then—
Either this isn't Garp The Fist's number, and someone on the other end of this call is willing and able to fool CP9 agents into thinking he is,
or this story about Garp is a cover for something else, because with Elynna or Heidi or whatever else, you never really know how deep things really go,
or—
Robin shuts her eyes tight enough that her whole face crunches up with it in violent rejection of the possibility that registers faintly at the back of her mind, like water dripping drop by drop and wearing down walls of stone.
(Or Elynna really is working for a Vice Admiral of the Marines.)
No.
It's not possible.
It's not possible.
A few weeks before, maybe—
But not now.
Not now, after—
(After seeing this girl-woman scream and scream and scream—
—perhaps for the first time since Robin has met her—
After seeing the weight of everything she didn't say and that they didn't see curb her into something shaking to implosion and too weak to keep going and a hurt kind of broken that leaves no space for anything other than the cracks.
After seeing fear and grief drive her to the edge and then over it, and how indifference made her fail to reach up and out of falling in death.
All of it because for a moment, they left.)
It's not possible.
No one can fake that kind of marrow-deep, love-induced desperation.
Especially not Elynna, who knows how to lie but not so much how to act.
(Unless that is an act, too.)
It's not possible.
If it is, then she can't believe it.
And even if she could, she wouldn't be able to care about it.
Not anymore.
So when the next round of ringing is cut short as the call is picked up, Robin closes her eyes, and pretends that it means her ears are closed as well, and that the burn behind her eyes is only due to the headache drilled into her skull by the sharpness of the sound.
(—that the dizzying hollowness caged behind her sternum is only here because she breathed out too much too fast—)
"Who's this?"
But the voice of someone like Garp The Fist (or whoever answered) is not the kind of voice that can be ignored.
"Is this Vice-Admiral Garp?" Lucci asks, going straight to the point.
"Have you never heard about introducing yourself before asking for someone's name? Kids these days have no respect." The man's rough, gravel-like voice shoots back, so nonchalant he hardly seems to actually be addressing the CP9 agent.
Rustling follows, along with the sound of munching.
Lucci's jaw twitches.
His two colleagues stiffen, the only woman of the group having disappeared through the door.
Elynna stares up at the ceiling with an expression of Who did I kill in my last life to get a boss like this please don't shoot the messenger that is mild enough to make it hard to tell how sincere it is.
"... Pardon my manners. I am Rob Lucci, from—"
"Ah, the CP9 brat. What 'cha calling me for? I haven't insulted your boss any more than I usually do in the meetings."
"You shouldn't be doing it at all." Someone else's voice deadpans in the background.
"He's an idiot." The man replies as if it explains everything.
"Is this Vice-Admiral Garp." Lucci repeats, stiff to the point of snapping at the flippant way they're being ignored.
By now his subordinates look like statues of stone, and Elynna seems to be trying (and succeeding) to facepalm without actually moving.
"Obviously, that's my Den Den Mushi. You sure you didn't hit your head, kid?"
"Yes." Lucci speaks, too tight and too calm through the clenched teeth that they can all see. "I took the liberty to contact you regarding an intruder who claims to be one of your soldiers. She says her name is Heidi Schwarz."
"Alice." Elynna interrupts him without any regard for the clear thinning of his patience (or Robin's health and sanity). "Heidi Alice Schwarz. Heidi Schwarz was my grandmother. Trust me, no one wants to be compared to my grandmother."
If the CP9 were any less formal (and murderous), the air around them could be read as something like we don't give a fuck.
As it is, it reads more along the lines of whether or not this is your boss, deadly traffic accidents can always happen when a train goes through a tempest.
"Schwarz?" The man on the other end of the call hums, drawing out the word long enough that Robin can already hear the ghost of the negative answer that will follow.
(Whatever is left of her alive and with will to move lurches inside of her
ready to tackle the girl-woman she remembers loving under this disguise through the door if necessary
—no matter how futile, how hopeless, how stupid—
ready to use the overconfidence of the people who deemed it unnecessary to shackle her
until that part of her has nothing left to give, and then still some more.
Even if it might turn out that she was fighting for a heart-rendingly heart-warming illusion all this time.)
"I ain't got any soldier with that name." He eventually answers, and goes on before Lucci's thin, hungry slash of a smile is even fully formed. "She'll be one after she has completed her training."
"Keep dreaming, boss." Heidi snorts. "The contract I signed specifies that I can prioritise my self-preservation over my pay. Which is shitty by the way, but you can't enjoy money when you're dead, so I'll let you off."
The government agents stare at her, Blueno's eyebrow raising in mild disbelief at the way she's talking to someone who is not only her supposed superior, but also much older than her and a war hero.
And a man, which is worth noting among the Marines.
But the most famous Vice-Admiral of the Marines only laughs, loud and booming and raucous like pebbles crunching together.
"You're lucky I like your spunk, girlie. But don't think you can escape my special training the next time you get back to base."
"Please. I'm a breath of fresh air among all the boot-lickers."
"Damn right, so why should I let you go gallivanting around with the CP9 and their idiotic chief?"
"... Well, they might have beaten me to the punch, but there's no harm in making it known that the Marines came this close to getting Nico Robin. I mean, we've been getting so much grief for how she kept escaping all this time."
A shrug.
"Plus, you told me to go up in rank on my own. Getting noticed during the closing of the Nico Robin case seems a pretty good way to do just that. And I've never seen Enies Lobby."
Another round of crunching.
"Do I look like a tourism agency to you, girlie?"
"Obviously not. The leave policy of the Marines is also shitty."
"Watch your mouth." The Vice-Admiral chides her with more amusement than anything else. "You have the honour of exercising the most noble job in the world."
"Yeah, sorry, not gonna cut it. My sugar baby only eats hard cash." Elynna deadpans, and next to her Kaku lets out a sudden snigger.
Robin, for her part, would almost be glad that she's already sitting if she wasn't so focused on not fainting, and generally surviving the conversation and whatever outlandish thing her (formerformerformer, she can't forget—) First Mate will spout next.
"I expect you back in two days at most." Garp goes on as if she never said anything in the first place. "If you stay any longer at Enies Lobby you'll end up arrested for attempted murder on the Lucci brat's boss anyway."
"Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence."
"And I better get a full report of your last mission on my desk the next time I see you."
"Ugh." Elynna groans with a distasteful twist of her mouth and a muttered fuck hidden in her breath.
"What was that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. And remember, girlie. Two days."
And then he hangs up.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Bogard eyes his direct superior and long time friend-or-something-close-to-it, feeling the building frown pulling at the skin of his forehead.
"Are you sure about this?" He eventually blurts out, because he's learned a long time ago that subtlety is really not Garp The Fist's forte.
The man in question looks up from the letter he's reading to squint at him, and then bursts out laughing for seemingly no reason.
It's pretty common, but Bogard still hears a squeak coming from the secretary's desk behind the door, and finds himself strongly considering handling the next hire, if only so he can finally put perfect heart condition and expert at surviving haunted houses on the job offer.
"What's there to be unsure about? Take a biscuit, Bogard. You'll scare your grandkids if you don't learn to relax a bit."
And then he bursts out laughing again.
As if he's not the one with two grandsons alive, who also happen to be two pirate grandsons.
Bogard is still half-convinced that the two boys became pirates because their relationship with their grandfather can be summarised with pick a fight that you can't win and then run as damn fast as you can.
He pushes Garp's hand and almost-empty biscuit package away with a sigh.
What's there to be unsure about?
Pretty much everything, where Ryan Alice is concerned.
About her actual abilities, first of all, because she's just given herself a solo infiltration mission within the CP9.
The level of danger that comes with such a task is on an entirely different league compared to dealing with internal corruption and a Warlord so arrogant he turned complacent.
The CP9 members Bogard has seen in his life are arrogant, but certainly not complacent.
And yet, the former-Marine-turned-pirate-spy seemed determined rather than nervous when she called Garp just a few hours before to tell him that she was planning to use the current conflict between the CP9 and the crew she infiltrated for the CP1 to investigate the former.
Not that Bogard is surprised that the girl wants to use the occasion, or that he isn't willing to use the opportunity she offered them.
Spandam is as self-serving as his father, and somehow even more power-hungry. The kinds of things he might have gotten up to as leader of the CP9 definitely should be looked into, and an internal investigation is even less likely to happen than Garp going through one day without making even one person want to strangle him.
At this point, the fact that he even got the position is considered in some circles as a sign that the Five Elders are getting actually senile.
But on top of Garp's support to confirm her false identity, Ryan asked for information to solidify her cover.
Information on Spandam and the CP9's relationships with other high-ranked Marine and Government representatives.
Information on his relationship with Garp and his unit.
Information on the rumours going around about Spandam and the CP9.
If she's found snooping through the agency's internal affairs, Spandam is already likely to come after Garp simply by virtue of her being 'part of Garp's unit'.
But if he knows that the girl is technically a deserter —even if a well-liked one?
He's capable of spinning this into a legal issue.
And even without that, he's not above ordering the CP9 to launch an actual attack on Garp or any of his soldiers and make it look like an accident.
It's a risky gamble to take.
It's even riskier considering her excuse.
He's worked with Monkey D. Garp for much longer than she has been spying on Monkey D. Luffy.
He knows, perhaps better than anyone, how charismatic the men of the Monkey D. family are.
After what has been calculated to be about a year of infiltration in the Straw Hat crew, how much is her involvement only about investigating the CP9 when her crew is also in conflict with them?
And how will that affect her ability to play her role well enough to keep Bogard's unit (annoying Vice-Admiral included) safe?
"We don't know her." He says simply.
Garp grumbles a dismissal around his last biscuit and a wave of his hand.
"The lass has guts, and her heart is in the right place. Been good help, too."
"I know that."
And he does.
It's true.
Ryan Alice has done few things given how many similar problems are still unsolved, and in two cases out of three they weren't even big things, all things considered.
But as far as individuals go, she has done more than most Marines to try and make up for the failures of the institution they work for and represent.
Still—
He can't help but wonder, whenever he thinks about it.
Because dealing with the cases she dealt with publicly might have been somewhat necessary given that she was on her own and dealing with cases of abuse of power.
But didn't she go a bit too far?
Was it necessary to leave that letter to the mayor of Cocoyashi, when she already called Garp and seemed to trust him to handle Nezu's embezzlement of money in collusion with Arlong?
Was it necessary to forward the incriminating documents from Crocodile's office to King Cobra so he could launch a trial even before the high-ranked Marines could decide on a course of action, when she already gave them to Smoker (and his straight-laced reputation) and called Garp to give him a rundown of her findings?
And if she really was involved in the Zephrim case, was it necessary to get a journalist involved, not to mention give him access to the proof she found and that he promptly published, sparking weeks of protest against the Marines trying to investigate what happened and clean up the rest of the gangs in the surrounding islands?
It was all painfully public, in a way that reminded him of the stunts the Revolutionaries like to pull.
It might just be inexperience, an overabundance of zeal in the way young people are so prone to, or an attempt to secure herself some public presence and some added security in the process.
But then Bogard thinks of the scripts he read from the interrogations of Nezu and his subordinates.
None of them could describe Ryan Alice very precisely.
Something perhaps normal considering she was reported 'dead' almost a year before Garp was first called by her.
But there was also very little information about her personality, where she came from, her beliefs.
No close friends could be found, either.
She was just… there.
He has no proof to make sense of Ryan Alice, and no evidence to support any possible interpretation of her.
But he wonders, sometimes, if she hasn't been a spy for much, much longer than what everyone believes.
After all, there have been attempts to plant spies among the Revolutionaries.
Why wouldn't they try to do the same?
Most of all, the very crew she's supposed to have infiltrated in order to better control them in case they do turn out to be a big fish of the new generation has only been growing more powerful since its formation, the actions of its members seemingly left unchecked.
But Garp has insanely good instincts.
So Bogard sighs, and gives her the benefit of the doubt.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
The only female member of the CP9 agents steps back into the carriage, sliding her glasses up her nose with lips pinched thin.
"I checked with the chief's secretary. This number is indeed that of Garp The Fist."
"Wow, no need to look so happy, I didn't mean to make you cry or anything." Heidi drawls, and then pauses. "Then again—"
"I didn't attend a lot of meetings before going on this mission, but I'm pretty sure that was his voice, too." Kaku adds without acknowledging the words at all as he eyes Lucci for confirmation.
Their leader closes his eyes in thought for a moment, and releases a breath.
"You are welcome to stay, then, Miss Schwarz. Although I would advise you not to try anything else without warning us first. You were lucky the first time around, but in the CP9 we tend to eliminate the threat first."
"Noted. We good, then?" The youngest woman of the group asks, even as she proceeds to undo the last buttons of her mostly dry raincoat and nudge Lucci's foot aside. "Nice. Now scoot over, sweetheart, 'cause I ain't gonna stay standing for the whole ride."
She turns, and lets herself fall into the seat, forcibly wedging herself between Lucci and Robin with all the nonchalance of someone who is either too powerful to care about strong-arming a supposedly demonic criminal and an experienced assassin into accommodating the space she takes or too stupid to notice how close she is to getting her neck snapped.
Blueno leans strongly towards the latter, Kaku is too busy trying not to show his amusement to care, and Kalifa is just plain offended at the sheer audacity of what she's seeing.
Robin, for her part, sits stiffly in her seat, and tries to ignore how familiar the contact feels from hours spent talking about a book at the lunch table of the Merry.
(Or in that coffee shop chosen by Sanji last week, on a small Spring Island far away from everything Water Seven dragged back to the forefront of her mind.
The smell of blooming flowers unfurling lazily through the heat of the air and curling in her throat, loose and thick and almost too-sweet,
somewhat alike to Elynna's toneless voice as she expanded on all the needless, gory details of the mythology they were talking about just to see Chopper's horrified reactions and call them cute afterwards to avoid him being angry at her,
all of it pleasant against the freshness of the lemonade Nami bought for her with Zoro's pocket money after he annoyed her that morning.)
Then Elynna reaches into her coat for something, and suddenly finds herself subjected to the razor-sharp focus of four government-licensed killers.
(The weight of all the reasons Robin has to give up has never been as heavy as it is today
but still her spine straightens up some more with tension, pushing back against the weight to leave some space for the will to fight.
She wonders if, in the end, it will break upwards or crumble downwards.)
After a bit of shuffling, Heidi takes out a lollipop, and proceeds to unwrap it and stick it in her mouth.
Kaku blinks.
Kalifa's mouth goes slack.
Lucci's pigeon cocks its head on the side.
Blueno's features tighten, and then settle into the blandest what the fuck.
Heidi looks up at them, and raises an eyebrow.
"What's with the faces? Did you think I was taking out a weapon or something?"
"What is this." Kalifa hisses out with a barely-there sneer of disgust.
The younger woman looks down at the piece of candy, and back up at her with a blink that looks mildly worried for the possible brain damage the agent might have suffered.
"… Candy?"
The sneer widens.
"My shot of the day? I dunno lady, some people drink coffee like it's going out of style, and I happen to be addicted to sugar. Satisfied?"
"Don't they teach you self-restraint in the Marines?" Lucci asks with a polite, bored kind of curiosity that can only be called condescending.
"Tell that to your blood kink, dude." Elynna scoffs as she raises her free hand to lazily fan herself. "Speaking of, tone down the murder-y vibes, will you? I get that beating up no-name pirates for the last few years probably wasn't enough to satisfy someone like you, but there's no need to throw all this around."
Lucci's fingers twitch against the tense, black-clothed muscles of his biceps.
Kalifa's eyes go wide.
The younger girl stares back, unblinking and obnoxiously loud in the suckling of her lollipop.
Diversion, Kaku signs to Blueno with a long blink, because they really can't afford to piss off a major political figure (who already doesn't like their boss) because their leader didn't get his fill of blood and said political figure's protégé is being a smart-mouthed brat.
"How did you know that Nico Robin was in Water Seven?" His colleague's voice suddenly cuts through the conversation, his eyes tightening with the faintest edge of suspicion.
It makes Robin's heart tighten, too, and then stumble.
Kaku somehow manages to not facepalm through sheer force of will and the discipline beaten into him during his training, and lets himself fall into the seat opposite to Lucci's.
This is so not what he meant.
Elynna barely raises an eyebrow.
"Did you think that you guys were the only ones Aokiji gives intel to? Because with how fast you got to her, I guess that he also told you. The boss sent me here to retrieve her."
Kalifa elegantly raises a thin, blond eyebrow with something not unlike disbelief.
"And how were you supposed to… 'retrieve' her? You don't strike me as good enough of a fighter to keep up with the likes of Nico Robin."
Her nose wrinkles slightly at the idea, and she shoots it down with a light scoff.
"Doesn't look like any of you fought her either, though. But nah," she goes on as she unfolds her arms above her head in a long, stretching motion, before settling back down, one arm coming to slip behind Robin's waist and curl around her as she tilts her head towards the prisoner with a suggestive tilt to her lips. "I work more along the lines of seduction."
(And Robin stills.
The weight tightens around her ribs along with all the other chains,
and this one is so, so warm—
a heartbeat and a promise to not be alone in feeling all these weights,
to be there as a buffer between her hollow, caving bones and tearing muscles and the chains,
until the time comes that the chains won't matter, because nothing matters to an empty, dead body.
She can't tell if the promise is real or a trick of a heart so starved it would eat anything and call it love.)
Lightning cracks down far away in the frame of the carriage's window, flashing across the panes of Kalifa's glasses as the woman readjusts them on the bridge of her nose, mouth thrown in shadows for a fraction of second and reappearing twisted with distaste.
"How vulgar."
Elynna rolls the piece of candy towards the right side of her mouth with a twist of her tongue, throws one leg over the other in a move that almost brushes against Kalifa's legs, and smirks wider.
"Aren't you glad to have found someone you can be vulgar with?"
The blonde woman stiffens, not budging an inch despite the fact that the train lurches to the side for a moment, and her eyes flash.
This time, it has nothing to do with the thunderstorm raging around them.
"We certainly do not use such methods in the CP9—" She starts tightly, because she's spent too much time refusing such suggestions from her superiors, even after all the training she went through to become an actual agent, to let herself be debased like this—
"Woah, hold your horses there." The Marine interrupts her, the dark red of her painted lips relaxed and bland in a way that shouldn't make Kalifa feel as if the insolent little girl is grinning at her. "I'm just saying, there's not much difference between seduction and all that work you did with the mayor. No shame in it. It's fun to see someone's face when they realise, right?"
It takes a moment for the implication to register in Kaku's mind, and he side-eyes the girl carefully for a moment.
"How much do you know about our assignment in Water Seven?"
A shrug, candid and nonchalant and dangerous to interpret when her features are lax with casual carelessness.
"Not much. But there were a few newspaper articles about Galley-La in the last few months that featured you three." She looks at them almost pensively, lollipop trailing in the air between him, Lucci and Kalifa. "Politicians are either the easiest or the hardest nuts to crack, and I'm pretty sure that for him to have run a city like Water Seven for so long, this guy belongs more to the second category than the first, so this is a testament to your skills, I'm sure."
There's maybe an implied and to the fact that you're pretty much persona non grata in that area for the next few years tucked in the drawl of her voice, but Kaku can't be sure —hasn't quite made up his mind yet on whether the girl is stupid, reckless or just a smart ass.
He winces all the same, though, because it wasn't supposed to happen like this. But Iceburg definitely turned out to be a tough nut to crack, and gaining his trust meant both blending in and standing out from the rambunctious bunch of people working for him.
He's not looking forward to all the measures that will have to be put in place the next time he goes on a mission to ensure that he and the others aren't recognised.
"It's a job." He still says. "We don't do it for fun."
She hums, but the arch of her eyebrow spells out some kind of whatever you say.
It's then that Robin suddenly recognises the beat that the other girl is drumming along the skin of her waist through her clothes.
She recognises it as the melody of a piece of music that plays often from one of Elynna's Tone Dials, when she and Sanji are working in the kitchen while Robin sits and reads and forgets about the world outside of her book.
(The way she hasn't been able to since she was a child,
but better, perhaps.)
Her mind immediately paints a thick layer of the sounds she unconsciously memorised onto the rough, silent foundation laid by Elynna's fingers, and it's a struggle to keep herself still and stiff and ready for anything and everything to be taken from her, when suddenly she can almost—
Smell the food.
Hear the muted whispers.
Feel the warmth of the morning sun filtering in through the window.
(It's all so startling, and so achingly close.
A still-warm corpse of what her life was, just two days before.
A stillborn corpse of what her life could have been, in a word where she would be just a little less of a living, breathing, disaster-wrecking peril for everyone she loves.
But so close, still, just close enough to do the most damage.)
It's a dream that settles over the back of her eyelids like a bandage, protecting her from the way this nonsensical world hurts her eyes all the way to her heart.
But it doesn't quite work, because the contrast between dream and world fractures everything down to the fabric of reality and could leave her heart in pieces if it was whole, and so instead it gnaws at the solidified knot of tears in her throat like a dog at a bone, until her fingers shake under the strain of don't cry.
It's a slap in the face over cheeks too salted over with tears, and yet it fails to quite register, sliding over the blankness of her consciousness and into her subconscious as every piece of her that is not too busy with regret to think focuses on this contrast.
This contrast, not between dream and world, but between memory and world, between past and present.
And the memory bleeds and tears into the present of this nonsensical world (this wound—), and Robin looks, really looks.
Looks at the bare bones of this wound.
People say that the past doesn't matter, Robin-chan, but they're wrong.
Listen, and remember this, yes?
They're wrong, because it's when you know the past, that you can look at the world, not as it seems, but as it is.
And suddenly, she realises.
Realises that really, what is the most probable?
That Heidi, Garp The Fist's personal spy agent, decided for some reason to infiltrate the not-yet existing pirate crew of a boy from East Blue, whom someone like Garp The Fist has as far as Robin is aware no reason to be interested in, or even know the existence of? That the fear on her face when she backed herself into falling off that cliff was only the fear that she was discovered before her attempt to shake them off could succeed?
Or that Elynna, the Straw Hats' First Mate, somehow managed to gain Garp The Fist's favour, and is using it to get herself as close as she can to the crewmate who left her without even a word of goodbye, because she made herself into a killer to stay with those she loves and almost made herself into a corpse to not bear the loss of them?
The actions are ambiguous and muddle the underlying motives, but—
She thinks of Usopp, telling her how his First Mate cut short the corruption of a Marine Lieutenant by making a superior of the man intervene.
(A man whose integrity she somehow trusted, when Robin knows better than perhaps anyone else how little faith Elynna has in political authorities and their representatives—)
She thinks of Crocodile's trial and how it was all the rage in the newspaper for at least a week. How almost all of the papers pondered the identity of the one who gave all the information necessary to have him locked away, and how Garp The Fist vouched for their credibility.
Most of all, she thinks of Elynna.
The moments Robin spent watching her, the way she watched every member of the Straw Hats.
The moments Robin wasn't watching, because she was too busy living them.
The facts are ambiguous and muddled, but the fingers drum against the bone of her hip, and for the first time in so long that it feels like the first time ever, Robin decides to put the facts aside and just—
Believe.
She might be wrong, cannot be entirely sure.
Still,even though with each beat her body could shipwreck with the sheer danger of the situation they're both stuck into, her heart takes up all the space in her lungs, cradling tighter instead those cherished memories in the trembling grip of relief, and—
(—and she decides to believe that the woman whose heartbeat she can almost feel through her own ribs is Elynna, and not Heidi.)
She breathes in, easier now that her heart somewhat holds in place, and turns her head just enough to have Elynna's full face in her field of vision, movement minute to register as little as possible on the field of the agents' sharp senses.
In the space of her first breath, some of the weight under and behind her eyes comes a bit loose with a different kind of exhaustion, unbidden and helpless.
(The kind you allow yourself when you think yourself safe enough to feel the exhaustion,
safe enough to rest.)
With the second comes the distant wonder at how much Usopp has managed to make Elynna look like herself and yet not, in a game of equilibrium that only furthered her confusion once the words coming out of this painted mouth first whispered doubt in her thoughts.
And in the third breath, she worries, barely stopping the thinning of her lips after years of being hyperaware of every little thing from inside of her that comes out on her face.
She worries, but mostly the flavour that dominates in her mouth is guilt.
It isn't in her First Mate's habits to simply walk into a potentially explosive situation and somehow still manage to remain unaware of the tension that inhabits the air —enough to incarnate as a weight on anyone's shoulders.
It is more the taste of her Captain.
But it's Elynna who is here at her side, and it costs her.
It's as easy for Robin to see Elynna under Heidi, now that she knows (believes—) that there is someone to see there, as it is to know that Elynna is tense, more than she normally is.
It's in the unusually high number of torn patches of skin Robin counts on her lower lip compared to those she numbered less than forty-eight hours before, slightly wet with blood.
It's in the way she eats the piece of candy in her mouth.
(It's to be expected.
Stress is stitched in Elynna's being the way grief is stitched in Robin's, for so long now that the stitches are not needed anymore, because the wound cannot be cleaned anymore, has become a scar that cannot be told and taken apart from the body it mars.
She's learned to accommodate the weight, to make bigger decisions, to be not just a crewmate but also a leader.
Just like Robin has learned to keep getting out of bed and to keep running.
But all the time she spends obsessing over the decisions she will make out of fear that she will fail and of what failure will mean is still curled in the words she speak and nestled in her silences, just like all the bad days and the bad moments of the good days still shadow Robin's eyes and nights.
And Robin doesn't think any of it will ever leave either of them alone.)
Elynna is here, tense instead of as peaceful as she could be.
For Robin.
Because of Robin.
Because Robin wants to find peace, too, but can only find it for good at the end of the process she just started, will never be allowed to find it any other way—
(Because Robin, as people and life have been telling her since before she was eight and the small scraps of happiness she was allowed to have went up in flames—
Robin has no right to live.
So being happy?
The thought should have never been allowed to feel so much like an actual possibility.)
Elynna's fingers drum against the dip of her waist, looping back to the beginning of the song.
Robin blinks, and finds an agent of the Government standing at the door, smile self-important and beard cut clean and sharp around the thin scar slashing down his face.
"Lucci-san, everyone. I thought I might find you here." He simpers while rising from a quick bow hastened by the shallow respect of a sycophant. "Have you decided to change the security set-up? If so, please tell me so that I can adjust—"
He pauses.
Stares.
Elynna stares back.
The lollipop breaks loudly under the idle bite of her teeth in the silence.
"… And who… are you supposed to be?" He intones carefully as he drags suspicious eyes up the length of the Marine soldier's side that is pressed much too close to the Devil Child's to be professional.
He reaches her eyes, then, and the raised eyebrow that says you done checking me out?
He coughs.
The girl hikes her oval, frameless glasses up her nose in a way that lets her fingers span the lower half of her face loosely, but he's almost sure he sees dimples, and it makes him scowl.
"Never heard about introducing yourself before asking for someone else's name?" She says, and Kaku doesn't know whether to hold back a laugh at the sight of the offended man or a sigh at the way the reminder of Garp The First' earlier words is enough to make Lucci's fingers twitch again.
None of the CP9 agents say anything, though, whether about the girl's presence or her lack of manners, and so the man sniffs, and takes it upon himself to be the bigger person.
"I am Corgi, the head of security during this trip. If I can ask your nam—"
(It's just too bad that Elynna will only take it upon herself to be the pettiest she can be.)
"Ah, so you're the one I should thank for botching the job so thoroughly? Because man, the efforts you put in to make it this shitty are impressive."
The man sputters.
"I beg your pardon—"
"Meh, I'm not really interested in seeing that. Can we come back to the main topic? You know, about how this train is pretty much a free entry zone?"
Now the gaze of the other agents feels more sharp than disinterested, and Corgi starts to sweat, cursing the fact that his superiors insist they keep wearing that damn suit in all circumstances —revolution included.
"We have guards at every—"
The girl cuts him off with a click of her tongue, chiding and impressively patronising when coming from a girl who barely looks of age and directed at a man at least twice older.
"Anyone with a Marine or Government uniform could walk in and none of your so-called guards would even pause, stranger or not."
The man reddens violently, and Robin finds herself observing the phenomenon through a kind of out-of-body experience triggered solely by the sheer audacity of the girl sitting next to her.
If the people around her keep talking, she doesn't hear it, ears and mind filled with static.
It takes her a long moment to string together a coherent thought.
It's a thought that tells her that Elynna isn't just tense because of the stress.
Of course, there is the stress.
But she's also tense because she's apparently having the time of her life and trying not to show it.
Right now, despite the danger and the low chance of success and the fact that she's alone in this, that she knows Robin won't be able to get her out alive if she's found out, no matter how hard she tries—
Right now, Elynna is purposefully messing with everyone else in this carriage, purely and simply for the fun of it.
It takes Robin another beat of blank-minded stupor to understand that the shadows lining the corners of the Straw Hats' First Mate's mouth aren't a tell of how tightly she's gritting her teeth against the stress, but a sign of how hard she's trying not to laugh in everyone's face.
She remembers the stories she heard of the Straw Hat Pirates at their beginning, far away from her reach in the weakest of the Four Seas, and finds it hard to reconcile the Elynna of those stories with the girl sitting next to her, mockery hidden behind nothing but the misdirection of her usual brand of wit, because Elynna is a bad actor, and so most often doesn't bother to try.
(It works, somehow still manages to get her the indulgence of their enemies when she wants to, because for all their differences, she shares with Luffy a kind of magnetism that makes it hard to not be at least a little bit interested in her —at least enough to not kill her within seconds of meeting her.
Perhaps it's Luffy's blatant lack of care towards understanding or following social conventions, the way he refuses to be anything but true to himself
—how he makes her feel like he sees all the good and the best in her and chooses to believe in that.
Perhaps it's Elynna's easygoing understanding of social and moral conventions as subjective constructs that she more often than not doesn't care to judge and her patent lack of ambition
—how she makes her feel like she sees all the bad and the worst in her, but won't even blink when she tells her that she loves her.)
It's the same person. From what she heard, what makes her Elynna in Robin's mind was already there.
The intelligence.
The at best shaky moral compass that unshakingly points at love as the center of every important decision.
The humour.
But despite being a pirate, that Elynna was still too much the girl freshly ripped away from her peaceful, civilian home to really be a criminal, her challenge to governing authorities limited to her thoughts and words uttered with people trusted.
The Elynna sitting next to her right now is a pirate in every sense of the word, with a stance and shoulders solid enough to bear the weight of the stress that comes with being responsible for others and taking the risk of not just speaking but actively challenging these same authorities, and have space left over to enjoy herself while she's at it.
It's the same person, but the difference is noticeable, and Robin wonders—
How much of it can be attributed to the life she has lived for the past year, really?
How much of it was always present but silenced, because love is the magnetic center that holds Elynna's life together, and the people she loved for so much of her life gave her no reason to stray from a passive acceptance of the law?
"This is all well and good," Kalifa says, soft but clipped enough that it tugs Robin away from her thoughts, "but we should go back to our carriage. It is the security arrangement we agreed on."
Lucci must agree, because he gets to his feet with a silky hurry up, Miss Schwartz that Robin mindlessly obeys, leaning forward so 'Heidi' can more easily get her arm away from around her—
Except she can't, because the arm tightens, and firmly tugs her back into place.
The four agents still, quietness spreading like liquid weight through the air.
Robin freezes, sightlessly staring ahead and barely breathing.
"… What are you doing?" Kaku eventually asks, steely soft and deceptively mild.
"Afraid I can't do that just yet. I'm under orders to ask a few questions to your prisoner."
"Very well. Go on, then." Lucci allows, making to take a seat again.
He doesn't have the time to do that.
"Alone."
Lucci slowly tilts his head, curious in a way that suggests he's not used to being so blatantly refused, and has no intention to become used to it.
"The information I could get out of this is classified. I have to talk to her alone."
"Which Rank?" Kalifa asks, voice sharp and eyes suspicious.
"Rank 9."
"Our authorisation goes higher than that. We are staying here, and that's final, Miss Schwartz." Kaku parries easily.
Silence follows, but Robin feels the way Elynna's ribs shift against her with her silent sigh.
"Alright, let me rephrase. Rank 9, Type U."
Lucci's jaw ticks, and he draws himself to his full height, shoulders further broadened by the coat draped over them as he considers the girl looking up at him from her seat to meet his eyes.
Did she really think she could invoke the excuse that the information is limited to the agents who were initially given the mission and be done with it?
"Do you have proof that you're telling the truth?"
"Do you have proof that I'm not?" The girl snarks back with a barely-there, dry kind of exasperation that conveys very well the stop being a pain in my ass and let me do my job that she doesn't say.
His jaw ticks again over the urge to bare his teeth, but Lucci stays still.
While he would like nothing more than to shred through the girl's throat and screams with his claws and puncture holes through the cheeks that surround that mouth of hers until he can watch her tears put salt into the wounds and drink up her resulting agony, she's neatly and clearly placed herself under the protection of Garp The Fist.
Garp The Fist, who is well-known for being protective of his soldiers, for his distaste of the CP9 as a whole and his general disregard for rules.
Even if there is no evidence left, he would never let them go, just like a dog with a bone, and while he might not be able to dismantle the CP9 itself, he can certainly do enough damage to convince higher authorities to get rid of the current personnel.
Because Garp The Fist is a war hero, and Rob Lucci is an expendable shadow.
So he stares at the girl in front of him to remember every detail of her face and better imagine how it might twist with every new wound he'll tear into her in his mind, and then spins on his heel to make for the door.
If he stands behind it, even the tempest outside will not be enough to completely nullify his augmented hearing.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
It's barely ten seconds after the door closes behind the last CP9 agent when Elynna shrugs off her coat and pushes herself to her feet to stretch, muttering something like finally in English.
Once her arms fall back down, she turns around to rifle through the pockets of the Marine coat now thrown over the back of her seat, taking a small, well-used notebook and a pen from one of them and walking backwards to fall into the seat opposite to Robin's, where she promptly starts to scribble something on a new page.
All of it, without once looking at Robin.
It makes Robin's throat tighten and her eyes sting.
(She wonders if this—
—if leaving Elynna behind the way they almost did to her not so long ago and hurting all her nakama in the process—
if this is what it takes to lose the love of someone like her.
If losing Elynna's love means losing any right to exist in her field of vision.)
Perhaps, as well, it makes her speak her name instead of her title when she opens her mouth.
She's going to die, after all.
She can be weak all she wants, now.
"Elynna."
"Darling." Her former First Mate replies without pausing in her writing or looking up, the touch of mirth in her voice carrying the memory of the annoyance and shock that flickered on and off across the faces of the agents since Elynna stepped into the carriage.
Clearly, she's still willing to talk to Robin, and still smugly amused about being able to make experienced killers lose their temper as much as they can without suffering so much as a scratch for it.
It all leaves Robin torn between distant, far off delight that feels like it comes from another life and the desperate realisation that even she doesn't seem to understand—
It's the latter that wins out, but it doesn't prevent her from switching to English like Elynna hinted at to ensure the privacy of their conversation.
"What—" She stops as the desperations slips out with her voice, and hastily reins it in, aware that she's can't afford to show weakness here if she wants to convince the one who took responsibility for her life and well-being as soon as she joined the Straw Hat Pirates to leave her alone. "Why are you here? I don't need your help—"
"Of course you need my help." Elynna interrupts her idly. "I mean, even for us this is a new level of 'fuck me sideways we're so dead' on the scale of All the Shit We've Had to Deal With So Far —and we've had to deal with a god. The real question is: do you want my help?"
Robin stays stiff and silent, thin-lipped and eyes cautious as her mind races.
The question is rhetorical.
They both know how desperately she's been running for the past twenty years. If she's sitting in this carriage with no handcuffs and no injury to speak of despite having met some of her former crewmates before leaving, then she means to be here.
"… What are you playing at?" She asks instead, pointed stare sifting between the unfamiliar sights of her skin, hair or glasses to find the actual person behind them.
(the slight curl of her hair, the roundness of her face, the breadth of her shoulders—)
She's not sure which meaning of the question she wants answers to the most.
The reason why someone she wasn't supposed to see again is here, within reach of Robin's hands, when they were supposed to give up?
Or the reason why, for as long as Robin has known her and without the knowledge of most of the crew, Elynna has been going off on her own pretty much every time they stop at an island under one of the fake identities that Robin started helping her build background for at some point, with Usopp taking care of identity papers, most of the disguise, and adding some livelier anecdotes to Robin's factual information?
She fears the answer to the first the most.
But how much does the answer to the second matter, to someone living on borrowed time?
"The long game. But you don't need to worry about that." Elynna hums absently. "Let's focus on this clusterfuck right now. What's the deal?"
If anyone else of the Straw Hat crew —apart from Zoro— was asking, she would simply keep pushing, because explaining is much more likely to make them even more stubborn about following her.
(It's more than anyone else would do.
But even they wouldn't accept everything they will lose going down that route as a sacrifice worth the few more hours she'll get to have them in what's left of her life.)
Elynna is a more complicated case.
As her nakama, she's likely to cave in if only Robin keeps her stance firm enough on what she wants.
But it's her First Mate who is looking back at her right now.
The girl who doesn't just think about her but about her in relation to all the other members of the crew, and about what her Captain wants and will do.
This Elynna needs to be convinced before she'll let her do something that everyone else is blatantly disagreeing with.
So Robin explains the deal.
(Explains it like she would explain any centuries-old tragedy they've ever discussed,
a thing made of facts and numbers and no feelings, because time heals all wounds and everyone who would care
—would remember the faces and the names and the stories—
is dead and gone.
She's close enough to it that it counts.)
Elynna writes down a few more things as she talks, but says nothing.
Until Robin's mouth falls shut.
The sound of the notebook closing is too soft in the heavy, loud silence that follows.
"You know, this is actually quite reassuring."
Robin's mouth slackens.
The words spin in her head and leave a blank echo, because what about any of this can be called reassuring?
"I mean," Elynna goes on, "it's nice to know that even a genius like you can be this stupid sometimes."
Robin stares back blankly.
"Did you even take the time to think? At all?"
"What are you—" She chokes, brain finally jolting out of its shocked blank. "There wasn't anything to consider—"
Is there anything clearer than an ultimatum that says do what we want or we'll ruin everything you love and take everything you have a second time?
Elynna leans back in her seat and crosses her arms, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
"Really." She says flatly. "Tell me, then. Once you have fulfilled your end of the bargain and saved us all, once you're dead, what do you think the only unit of Government agents with the authorisation to kill will do with the information you'll give them on what is supposed to be the most powerful weapon to exist? This is the Golden Age of Piracy, Robin. Who do you think will be their first target?"
But she can't.
Robin can't think.
The knowledge that she was doing something good was the dam keeping everything too much away, keeping her together.
Now it's just a void in her chest around which her lungs are being crushed into collapsing, every breath painful with the weight of having to stay alive for one moment more.
She would burn the world for the nakama that spent twenty years haunting her heart as the fading hope that the first friend she ever made left to her with the last of his breath—
(She would.
No matter the fact that, even after twenty years of surviving in the seediest parts of this world, she's still a researcher in heart as much as in mind, and not—
Not a killer.
Only fear and the bitter, helpless knowledge that no one alive wants her to live kept her walking among the corpses of everyone she killed to get here.
She's not a killer, but she has killed, and would do it again for these people.)
But what use is it if these same nakama live in the world she's so ready to raze to the ground the same way her life was?
"Look at me, Robin."
It's a struggle, but Robin does, and Elynna leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees.
And then she keeps pushing, mercilessly factual and eyes burning the devouring dark of eternally sunless waters.
"It's fine. This is what I came here for. At last now I know what I have to prepare us for, thanks to you."
A sound hitches up Robin's throat, garbled and hysterically torn between the sob and the hyperventilating breath that the numb, thoughtless panic eating at her can't quite form.
"Prepare? Elynna, you— Because of me, you're all going to—"
"Maybe." She cuts her off, soft in the way only cruelty can be, sometimes. "Maybe not. Give us some credit, Robin. We're not Ohara."
Robin lurches to her feet, the leather suddenly feeling as if it's hot enough to melt at her skin (like the heat of the flames and the cold of the ice on that day—), breathing in so much and so hard it hurts (lungs burning like they did that day, choking on heat and ashes and the screams—) and clenching her eyes closed against the dizziness.
(Her eyes that burn like they did that day,
with the tears and the smoke and—)
There's fire spreading on the back of her eyelids, and she can't remember who was being burned alive and whose screams she was hearing in her last nightmares.
Then hands snag her wrists, pulling until her knees knock into someone else's and her palms dig hard into the reality of the Sea Train's plush, luxurious leather seat cover.
She flinches awake, eyes wet with almost-shed tears and skin clammy with cold sweat.
Elynna's words waft across her face, hot like the tears she did shed, on that day that seemed like a night with all the black smoke that hid the sky, made thick and greasy with the burning of human flesh.
"The Buster Call is a powerful weapon, but we're not Ohara, Robin. We're not researchers and civilians stuck on an island with no defense of any kind. We're pirates. And in Water Seven, we were pirates on one of the most independent islands that is full of some of the best ships you can find in this world."
She doesn't say anything about all the civilians from that same island who would have died anyway, and so Robin says nothing either.
Because her death will burn the world down.
Because these people are innocent, but compared to the people who took the loneliness away, who replaced heartache with the lightness in her chest that made it so disturbingly easy to get out of bed on the good days—
They don't matter.
When she opens her eyes, Elynna has to crane her neck back to meet her gaze.
Robin is the one whose arms are bracketing her into her seat, but it feels like she's the one being crowded in by those eyes, how they take her in and hold her there.
(It's impossible to feel completely alone, with those eyes and the fingers around her wrists supporting more of her weight than the seat she's leaning against.
Robin wonders if she'll keep living in those eyes
—and the tears they'll shed,
and the dreams they'll see,
maybe—
once she'll be dead and gone from this world.)
"Robin. What was your leverage? Did you ever have any at all?"
Robin swallows, hard and painful like the answer that makes her close her eyes again.
(It's both an answer and an attempt to blink away the memories of that day in Water Seven that spin loud with shame.)
She doesn't bother to say anything.
There's nothing to say, because she had no leverage.
Still has none.
Nothing to make sure that these people who barely see a person when they look at her will respect their end of the bargain as long as she cooperates.
Cunning has never come to her as naturally as it does to Nami, Usopp or Elynna, but she's learned to mold her intelligence into this shape through scars and barely-escaped deaths.
So how could she have been so foolish?
How could she possibly have accepted a deal offered with such an unfavourable balance of power without asking for even one guarantee?
Her mind only leaves a long stretch of flat blankness in response.
The same way it blanked as soon as she heard the words Buster Call.
Robin takes a breath, and—
(She wants to die. Right now.)
Her eyes flinch shut tighter, hastily cutting through the thought.
Still, it tugs something free, and—
Fingers slip away from one of her wrists, and then there's a hand settling over her eyes, warm and so heart-bruisingly gentle Robin doesn't know if it unravels her resistance to the few tears that slip down her cheeks or if it's what makes her cry in the first place.
Whatever the case, it shakes the words loose from her lips along with them.
The whispers come from the same world-weary, shattering place as the already-drying tears, and feel more like the end of something dear than they ever could have in her mind.
"Do you… think my death has any chance of being painless, Elynna?"
Elynna's hand tightens just barely around Robin's eyes, leaving her to wonder how much her face might be doing the same.
All the same, the words still weigh heavy in her mouth after they have fallen out of it.
(Heavy with guilt, and heavy with shame
to see that it has all come to this.
That it has all come to asking this girl who loves her
—this girl who only hears love when someone tells her life—
to help her die.
But it's the only way she sees out of this, the only way she can leave this world as a member of the Straw Hat Pirates still, even if only in her heart.
Because if the people she so loves are going to keep pushing until they finally reach the breaking point of the sacrifices they're ready to make for her
and her complete surrender will only delay the unstoppable force that will crush them and so many other people,
then dying before the information she holds can be extracted is the only way out, and she can't guarantee that she will be able to do it herself when every CP9 agent will be watching her.
And they'll be watching her, but not the Marine soldier who came here because her nakama want to keep Robin safe.
And even if she has stooped low enough to ask this,
then she at least hasn't stooped low enough to not feel strangled by regret for doing it.
She figures it's the best she can do as she is now.)
"Well—" Elynna starts, and the sound is so threadbare Robin can't tell if it's hoarse or a whisper.
This time it's not just her hand that tightens but her whole weight that pushes back against Robin at the points where Elynna holds her, and Robin lets her, falls into the slow push until the back of her legs hit the seat where she sat just a few minutes before.
She falls into it again, vaguely aware of the heat of Elynna's arm as it passes by her head.
The hand falls away, and half-dried tears cling to her eyelashes, burning her vision as she opens her eyes.
If her First Mate ever looked as desperate as the tightening of her hand felt, there's no trace of it left.
"—guess that depends on whether or not you want my help."
Then she grabs the standard issue raincoat near Robin's head and marches out of the carriage without looking back.
The quiet doesn't manage to taste lonely quite as well as the quiet she sat in right after the train left.
She would go back to the first taste in a heartbeat if it meant that none of her former crewmates were here.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Elynna only allows herself a handful of seconds of standing in the howling rain between the two carriages before she opens the door to join the CP9 agents.
Staying longer would only mean a bigger risk of arousing their suspicion, and a bigger chance for the hold she has on her tears to come loose instead of tightening.
(The only good thing about the way Robin's pain tears through her every time her eyes close and how her own heart quivers as if about to crumble in the grip of the fear that they're too late already—
is that there's no place left to be afraid for herself.)
"You were speaking one of the dialects." Lucci says as soon as she comes in.
She barely restrains a roll of her eyes.
Dialect.
Figures the World Government wouldn't grant the term 'language' to Kankol, Portan or Neerleg.
"Couldn't wait five minutes to hear my voice again?" She evades with a raised eyebrow after dropping her weight on the bench where Kalifa and Kaku are already sitting.
Lucci's upper lip curls, more beast than human.
Evasion technique number two it is.
"Nico Robin is a genius." She shrugs, throwing one arm over the back of the seat and crossing one leg over the other. "We have intel confirming that she knows all three of the dialects —and that she probably spent some time in the Low Lands when things would get a bit too hot for her. Going into the Low Lands as a Marine is one hell of a hassle, even for an infiltration specialist like me. The paperwork is just insane. My boss is even lazier than me when it comes to paperwork, so I was told to interrogate Nico Robin about it if I did manage to get her. She's the type of prey that tends to keep an ear to the ground."
"So there's something going on in the Low Lands." Kalifa muses, the muted blue of her eyes observing Heidi carefully.
One corner of her mouth kicks up into her dimple in response as she props her chin on her fist, the tilt of her head and lopsided smile practically spelling Rank 9, Type U.
The growl that ripples out of the female agent's throat would make her leader proud.
"And how did someone like you learn a dialect?" Blueno asks dully.
… Does she look like an idiot somehow?
"Hmmm…" She leans forward until it's only her elbow that is hooked over the back of the seat. "Not telling. Everyone likes a bit of mystery in their lovers, right?"
She thinks it's really pretty impressive how the man manages to look so utterly disgusted without his expression changing at all.
"Should we report you for insubordination and uncooperative attitude? That wouldn't look very nice in your file, especially if you're looking to go up in rank." Kaku comments perfectly politely from Kalifa's other side.
She leans back with a sigh.
"Man, chill out. I'm here on behalf of a war hero. What more do you need?"
"Our respective superiors hardly get along, and it's not uncommon for people to stab each other in the back even in high circles."
"Nah. Well, maybe for your boss, but mine prefers to punch people. In the face."
"You're still avoiding the question." Kalifa hisses.
Yeah, because she doesn't see how which language she may or may not speak ties into that argument.
But she's not looking to make them even more suspicious, so she gives in.
"Don't get so riled up. I just grew up in a place where there were more than a few Low Landers. It was just easier to get their trust if I could speak their language."
The CP9 agents exchange a glance.
There are a number of Low Landers who emigrate in search of a better life than the one on their islands where any hope for development and higher life standards is pretty much stifled by the lack of resources and rampant corruption, but given their status and how they're perceived, most of them end up—
"Street rat." Lucci concludes as he scans Heidi up and down in a way that feels anything but flattering, lips curling as if he can smell the thrash and the grime she used to live in.
"Wow." She deadpans. "Elitist much?"
"I should have guessed." Kalifa sniffs. "Garp The Fist is infamous for picking up randoms from the street rather than the actual recruits who put in the effort to enter the Marine ranks."
Elynna snorts.
"Correction. He recruits the people whose trap he falls into because he's an idiot, after beating them up because he's an idiot but an absurdly strong one. And he doesn't recruit them so much as he coerces and/or blackmails them into joining him, because the prim and proper recruits he gets saddled with are way too boring for his tastes."
She uncrosses her legs to idly stretch them.
"Anyway. What are we doing now?"
"We wait." Blueno states, earning himself a somewhat incredulous look.
"There's hours left until we get to Enies Lobby."
Kaku shrugs easily, his back to the wall rather than the seat so he can better see all of them.
"It's not like we can really spar in a train."
"... I thought only Lucci-san equaled beating people up with having fun and getting off, but okay." Elynna drawls, barely pausing even when Kalifa almost chokes next to her as she plunges a hand in the right pocket of her raincoat to fish out one of the items she bought just that morning. "Guess we can just beat each other up in another way."
The woman next to her eyes the deck of cards she's holding with clear distaste.
"Unless you don't know how to play poker."
"Why would we want to play such a game with a former street urchin who probably used it in dishonest money-making schemes?"
Elynna cocks her head, observing her for a moment before shrugging.
"That's a preconception." She says, and then smirks slightly. "But if it makes you feel better, you can use your tricks too."
When she says that, she doesn't exactly expect to see Kaku's body bend like paper over both Kalifa and her to see both their hands, or for Kalifa to avoid that by moving faster than her eyes can track, or for Blueno to send a strongly weakened air blade in her direction to send her cards flying while Kalifa bounces through the air to snatch them up.
She learned a number of card tricks from Usopp and Nami, and her poker face is good enough even against CP9 members because she backs it up with comments embarrassing or insulting enough to distract pretty much anyone from analysing her reactions, but her luck isn't quite up to the par, especially against all that.
Needless to say, she loses three games quite fast.
Except she's never really cared for that kind of win, so all of it fails to tamper her desire to let a cat-that-just-ate-the-canary smirk take over her mouth.
"And what are we supposed to win?" Blueno asks boredly after winning his second game in a row.
"What, my pride ain't enough?" Elynna returns as she massages her foot after she tried to —playfully— kick the man for winning and suffered for it when he hardened his whole body to the point of reinforced steel.
The look he gives her clearly tells her that he thinks her pride is perfectly worthless.
"Too bad for you, then. If there's one thing I learned on the streets, it's not to squander money in games."
"It's the tradition with poker, though." Kaku muses as he collects everyone's cards. "Except with strip poker, I guess."
Kalifa's head whips towards him, jaw unhinging slightly and earning herself an absent-minded shrug from her colleague.
Elynna blinks at him.
"Oh, well if it's just that."
She abruptly stands up, shrugging off her coat in the process and reaching down to grip the bottom of her uniform shirt so she can tug it up.
Kalifa lets out a noise that is embarrassingly close to a squeak, and lashes out a leg to swipe the Marine's feet from under her, knocking her to the floor before anything more than a sliver of skin can be revealed.
"... What the fuck." Elynna says blandly as she stares at the ceiling, prompting Kaku to finally burst out laughing.
"What is wrong with you, you shameless girl?!" Kalifa spits, reaching to plant a foot against her sternum when she tries to sit up and pushing her back down. "Do you think this is one of the brothels you come from?"
"Hey, don't blame me. It's Kaku-san who said it." Elynna reminds the older woman flippantly as she eyes the glossy black of Kalifa's high-heeled shoe and the fishnet stocking that crawls up her leg.
"Yeah, but I didn't say you had to do that—" Kaku starts before he has to cut himself off in favour of letting out a new wave of chuckles.
Blueno seems ready to throw him off the train, and Lucci somehow manages to look even more condescending than when he categorically refused to play with them.
"And you! Don't laugh, you're just encouraging her!"
"Hey Kalifa-san?"
"What?!"
Elynna slowly looks up at her as she reaches out, fingers closing into the lightest hold around the heel still digging into her sternum.
And then she smirks.
"If you're going to step on me, do it harder."
Kalifa rips her foot off her so fast she almost loses her shoe, and only Elynna's foresight saves her from getting actually kicked in the face.
"You—" The blond woman's voice stops half-way up her throat with a strangled noise before she snarls as she takes a step forward.
"Alright, ladies, let's settle down." Kaku chuckles as he steps between her and the only Marine in the carriage.
He gently nudges her towards the spot he was sitting in before, watching his colleague stiffly follow his implied request to primly settle there before he turns to offer a hand to the younger girl.
"Sorry, Kalifa-san." Said girl says easily as she settles back on her side of the bench, although she doesn't quite manage to sound sincere even after smothering her smirk, given how her voice still sounds like she's on the verge of laughter. "It's not like it's exclusive or anything, but with the way you dress I thought you were part of the community."
There's a deep silence as Kalifa looks at her blankly, staring straight through Kaku who's now sitting between them.
And then Kaku chokes.
"Kaku…" She says, slow and thunderous. "What is she talking about."
"I think—" He stops, snickers, and wipes a tear from his eyelashes. "I think she's referring to the BDSM community."
Another silence, longer and deeper except for the occasional chuckle from Kaku and Elynna's bland face that somehow manages to radiate innocence and smugness in equal measure.
"If you're coming with us to get noticed by the higher-ups, you're going to fail, and I'm going to enjoy it." Kalifa eventually bites out.
"Really? Shame. And here I thought spilling everything I learned about how to make Nico Robin talk would get me a spot with you guys."
"We already know how to make her talk." Lucci tells her with an almost-scoff.
"No. From what she told me earlier—" She pauses at the way everyone's eyes sharpen on her. "Don't look at me like that, I was just curious to know how you beat me to the punch. Anyway, you just know how to terrify her into not thinking, but that woman's scary smart. Even traumatised, she'll figure out you tricked her before the day ends, and she'll be a lot less accommodating after that. Plus, she's good enough to give you false information or hide some stuff. It's much quicker and much cheaper to get on her good side for information than to outright torture her."
"... Did you just say you want to get into the CP9?" Kalifa cuts in before Lucci can possibly respond.
"Well, yeah. As I said, pay's shitty, especially when spies are pretty rare among the Marines. Probably because that asshole from the HR department knows my background." She scoffs. "Like it's my fault he couldn't pass the entrance examination even with all the bribes he gave. Anyway, since I'm the only spy from my boss' unit, I often have to work with other units on the missions I'm given, and that means I usually get fucked over when it comes to getting credit for success. But if I get that promotion? Better pay and the opportunity to lord it over all these imbeciles who practically worship the ground you guys walk on, plus a murder-all-you-want license to dangle in front of their faces if they so much as look at me the wrong way. Best power trip I can think of right now."
"... Has anyone ever told you that you're quite petty?" Kaku tells her thoughtfully.
"That, and that I run my mouth way too much for my own good. Got compared to the boss' last secretary, actually. Apparently, she was little red riding hood and I was the big bad wolf."
Blueno eyes the ceiling, looking even more done with the conversation than before as both Kalifa and Kaku blink at her.
"What?"
"Sorry, Heidi-chan, but we already have a wolf —and a big mouth."
"It's really too bad." Kalifa sneers.
Elynna pauses.
"Competition already? Come on, spill the beans."
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Sanji-kun! How are you two doing?"
Sanji takes a moment to wipe the rain away from his face, and huffs when it's immediately replaced by another rush of raindrops battering his face.
"Perfectly fine, Nami-chan. Our infiltration was a success. What about—"
"A success? You call that a success?!" Usopp rages from behind him. "You should have let me handle it!"
There's a pause, and then—
"It's not exactly an infiltration if you beat up everyone who notices you, Sanji-kun."
Sanji barely resists the urge to pout at the Den Den Mushi.
"No one conscious knows we're here. It's the same result, Nami-chan."
"It's really not." Usopp deadpans, and then yelps as he slips on the rain-soaked roof of the carriage they climbed on.
He barely avoids smashing his face against the sheets of metal and catches Franky's ankle for safety —or maybe to bring him down with him, which is exactly what happens.
"Sanji-kun?" Nami's voice surges again against the background of the two teammates he's —very unfortunately— saddled with. "What's happening?"
Sanji strains a smile, and tries to glare hard enough to cow both idiots into being quiet at the same time.
He's going to be hearing their voice way too much already.
Like hell he'll let them cover Nami-chan's voice on top of it.
"Just two shitheads, Nami-chan."
"How lucky of you that I was here to help you, Franky-kun."
"You're the one who pushed me, you little runt!"
"You may have heard of it before, but my name is Sogeking, from Sniper Island. It is a pleasure to meet you, truly."
"Cut the bullshit! I beat you up yesterday, and if we weren't so deep in shit, I'd be paying you back for destroying the Franky House!"
"Ah, yes, I heard from my friend Usopp. A truly brave warrior. He asked me to put the past behind us for the sake of Robin-kun, so I shall spare you. However, in the interest of our prolonged cooperation and mutual respect, I should tell you that I find your behaviour most tasteless. There was no need for such senseless violence."
Sanji sighs, and barely manages to make it big enough to cut off the smile about to spread hugely on his mouth.
"Is that Usopp? Who's he talking to? Why is he even talking like that?"
"We found that Franky guy tied up in one of the carriages. Apparently he told Usopp that he admired his reason to fight while beating him up, so that idiot decided to untie him. Guess he's getting some kind of revenge though, so he's not a complete lost cause."
"You have bandages! And the same nose!"
"Ah yes. It is most kind of you to worry."
"I'm not—"
"However, you are, in this instance, sorely mistaken. Back in my home, it is in fact customary to wear bandages before a warrior goes to war for the sake of a friend who was made a prisoner, as an acknowledgement of both the pain this friend must feel and the sacrifices the warriors are ready to make for this very same friend. You would of course know that, if only my dear cousin Usopp was not so enraged by your theft that he forewent this most important custom. Truly a shame, and I will be sure to remind him of the traditions we must preserve."
"... Cousin." Franky says flatly, looking far towards the rolling thunderclouds in the horizon as if he's about to reach illumination.
"Why yes. Third cousin, to be precise. By alliance. A most fascinating story, which began long, long ago, on the sunny shores of an island far, far away—"
The blue-haired man lets out a loud scream of frustration that sounds close to something like what is reality?! as he throws his hands up.
The Den Den Mushi remains silent, but its eyes are so bright with laughter that Sanji can almost imagine Nami being right next to him under a blue, cloudless sky.
"And where—" She begins before choking, visibly struggling to hold in the laughter. "I mean, have you seen her yet?"
"I'm afraid Robin-kun is in one of the front carriages. And Elynna-kun is currently in infiltration." Usopp announces, unclear on which of their crewmates the navigator is talking about but making sure to switch to a thickly accented English halfway through in an acknowledgement of the fact that okay, maybe they shouldn't spill everything in front of a man who's not only a gangster, but was dead set on offing them not so long ago.
He's suddenly close enough behind Sanji to shield his back from most of the rain, and the cook pivots slightly so that his crewmate's voice can better reach the Den Den Mushi.
"Oi, Straw Hats. You two called him Usopp just now, didn't you? Don't lie to me." Franky glares.
Unfortunately for him, the threat factor is severely diminished given the fact that he still looks as if his own confusion punched him in the face.
"... How did you know that, Sogeking?" Sanji asks, tightening his fingers around the receiver to stop himself from preening too much at how Nami's smile widens all over again.
"The only good thing about this situation is that you lot can't create more havoc than you already have on my turf."
"Elynna-kun called on me through Usopp to help her prepare for her mission."
"...You can drop the bullshit when we're speaking in English, you know."
Usopp sniffs.
"You obviously have no taste in theatre if you have no understanding of an artist's dedication to staying in their role."
"Oi." Franky tries, clearly not appreciating the way he's being excluded from the conversation with no subtlety whatsoever.
"Whatever you say, shithead. I haven't seen her in any of the carriages so far, though." Sanji mumbles, ignoring the gangster hovering at their side.
"That is to be expected. I dare say that she would never infiltrate this train only to spend the entire ride away from the one person she did it for in the first place."
Any trace of laughter left immediately vanishes from the Den Den Mushi's little face.
Sanji couldn't stop the worry clawing up his throat from making itself known even if he tried.
"You mean that she's somewhere close to the assholes who took Robin-chan?!"
"What is she thinking?!" Nami fumbles through the languages, the battering of the rain doing nothing to hide the sudden panic in her voice. "We can't— We can't help her all the way there! What if she's already—"
"Please calm yourself, Nami-kun. Our common ally is well-versed in the art of espionage, and rarely prone to recklessness. I have no doubt that she is perfectly fine—"
"She's reckless when it concerns us, Usopp! And she only played that kind of game once or twice! She wouldn't even have gotten out if it weren't for you and Robin on Zephrim—"
"Nami." Usopp cuts her off firmly, leaving Sanji to stare down at where his own fingers are trembling around the receiver and wonder where the confidence that steadies the sniper's voice comes from, when it's usually doubt that shakes it instead.
"What?!"
"It's fine. She's fine."
"Yeah, Nami, don't sweat it!" Luffy laughs in the background. "These guys are strong, but Ann is super smart!"
"I know that—" Nami hisses out, only to be cut off by another loud bout of laughter that makes Sanji sigh.
He just knew he should have taken her with him.
Their stupid swordsman and even stupider Captain are the last people suited to reassure her right now considering their unshaking faith in Elynna's abilities as a pirate and a First Mate, and Chopper is probably too busy freaking out to be much help.
At least she won't be really worried about her own safety.
That's pretty much the only thing those two imbeciles are good for.
"Ah, and Sanji!"
The cook pauses in his attempt to relight his cigarette one-handed.
"Yeah, Captain?"
There's a scuffle before the face of the Den Den Mushi changes abruptly to a wide smile that shows disturbingly human-like teeth and gum —and frankly looks quite deranged on a face this small.
"Go all out!"
Sanji has better manners, so he doesn't show as much teeth when he grins around his damp cigarette, but he still hears Usopp sigh loudly behind him.
"Didn't need an order for that, Captain."
"Ah," Luffy goes on without acknowledging his response in the least, "but it's Ann who decides things until we catch up! So if she tells you something else you gotta follow what she says!"
Usopp snickers as Sanji feels his face fall, and he launches his elbow backward to knock it into his crewmate's knee, making him yelp.
He's not really in the mood to deal with this in a level-headed way, but if it'll keep his First Mate's cover from being blown, he'll play along.
"Fine, I got it." He huffs. "And you better take good care of Chopper and Nami-chan, you hear?"
"As if you need to ask." Zoro scoffs.
Sanji rolls his eyes before the swordsman even finishes his sentence (it's practically a Pavlovian response at this point), and promptly hangs up.
"You know, some of us might have wanted to speak as well, Sanji-kun." Usopp says dryly in the tempest-filled silence that follows.
"Sorry." Sanji deadpans.
"False politeness does little in the way of getting forgiveness, Sanji-kun."
The cook shoots an exasperated look at the colourful mask behind which his crewmate is hiding what is probably as close an imitation to Luffy's shit-eating grin as the sniper can manage.
"You guys done?" Franky asks in a dangerously calm tone considering all the yelling he's been doing since Sanji met him.
Arms crossed and seemingly perfectly at ease standing on the unshaky foundation that is the roof of the Sea Train, his eyes flit slowly between Sanji and his crewmates in consideration, the corners of his mouth curving down just a touch even though his brow remains smooth.
"Yeah." Sanji confirms simply with narrowed eyes.
"Do feel free to speak what is on your mind, Franky-kun."
The older man's face doesn't even twitch at the continued solo role play, which only makes Sanji more tense.
"I still gotta pay you all back for beating up my men and wrecking my house, but I guess it can wait until we're back to Water Seven." He sighs, one hand shifting to his hip as the other rubs at the back of his neck. "I've got my own reasons for wanting Nico Robin out of here, and I need all the people crazy enough to go up against these guys that I can get my hands on."
"... You offering to help?"
The look Franky gives Sanji suggests a strong opinion on the cook's actual level of intelligence.
"Watch your mouth, kid. I ain't offering nothing. I'm telling you that I'm gonna kick these guys' asses, and you can either get in the way or stay out of it."
"Your message is received loud and clear, Franky-kun. What my comrade meant to say, I believe, is that threatening our friends in the middle of a negotiation process concerning our potential alliance is somewhat tactless. What is more, you have to understand that we are pirates of the seas, rather than of the land. We are thus sadly unaware of your reputation in this particular circle of what some might call the underworld."
"Yeah," Sanji grunts, "what he says."
"I figured that when you had the gall to stick your nose in my business twice in one day when no one's had the balls to do the same in my city for at least three years."
"You made it our business when you stole the money for our ship and hurt our crewmate. We didn't kill anyone, so don't complain."
Franky stares at him for a moment.
When he opens his mouth, it's not an insult or a threat that comes out.
(That would have been so much better.)
"You put your ship in one of my hideouts."
"No we didn't." Both boys answer in the same breath.
"The guy who gave you the address was one of mine." He goes on without acknowledging them. "I was waiting for your Captain to come find me there when that asshole Blueno and the others found me."
It takes Sanji a beat too long to understand the implication, and by then Usopp is already wracked with a shaking that has nothing to do with the rain pelting them.
"Franky-kun." He says, voice threadbare like the cover story he holds onto the way a child would onto the blanket covering him from everything outside his bed. "Tell me. The Merry…"
"They sent her to the sea."
The noise that comes out of Usopp sends him slumping forward into a fall as if someone ripped out his heart from his back and took his spine along.
Sanji reaches out to grip his shoulder and steady him, teeth gnashing so hard they almost cut through his cigarette.
"You cared for her more than most of the sailors I've met, and given her state I'm pretty sure it's proof that the Klabautermann exists, because you shouldn't have even reached Water Seven with a ship like that. But even that won't be able to keep a ship together in the middle of an Aqua Laguna, especially this year's."
"I know that!" Usopp screams, louder than he needs to even with the sky raging around them. "But we didn't even get to say goodbye—"
He cuts himself off, jerking upright under Sanji's hold as he starts marching towards the roof of the next carriage.
Sanji curses, scrambling to catch up and stop him again with a hand on his shoulder to force him into turning around.
"What are you doing?"
"What we came here to do."
"The hell you are. You'll get yourself killed going in with that kind of attitude. We're taking a break."
"Luffy-kun told you to go all out."
"But Elynna-chan is already there, and Luffy will definitely approve if I prioritise your safety over his orders. Even if you insist on keeping up that ridiculous cover. Right now, prioritising your safety means making sure that you won't do something incredibly stupid because you feel too much like shit to think things through."
Usopp sniffles behind his mask, and then takes a deep breath, holding it and releasing it as he follows the counts Chopper gave them during one of his first aid classes.
And then he repeats the process, until he can square his shoulders and trust his voice not to waver when he says—
"I can't call myself a good pirate if I let this beat me when Robin needs us. We're going. Now."
Sanji stares back, clearly still hesitant.
"—and when we're done with all this, we'll find a way to say goodbye to the Merry. Properly."
This time the cook sighs, and fishes his lighter out of his pocket to carefully light his cigarette from behind the cover of his free hand.
Then he puts away his lighter, and blows a cloud of smoke made silent by the sounds of the ocean and the clouds that draw a raging kind of quiet around them as they stand under the gaze of their temporary ally and the glare of the sky.
"You better keep your head clear, dumbass."
"I'm not Luffy or Zoro."
"... Fine. I have a plan."
"Me too."
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Where did you say the kitchen was, again?"
"Two carriages away from this one." Kalifa informs her slowly with narrowed eyes.
Elynna keeps her face blank in the face of the suspicion in her eyes.
"Could you do me a favour—"
"I am not inclined to."
"—and stop looking at me like I'm going there to find the ingredients for an artisanal bomb?"
"This is suspiciously specific." Kaku chimes in mirthfully.
"Your actions so far are hardly conducive to trust."
"I will destroy you in the next round, Kaku-san. I'm just going to get a drink. Do you guys want something?"
No one deigns to respond to her offer or even look at her, except for Kaku, who is watching her with the beginning of a smile playing at one corner of his mouth.
She thinks that he's probably waiting for her to step out so he can cheat and look at her cards.
With an easy shrug, she turns to walk to the door.
"Fine. Sex On The Beach for everyone it is, I guess."
Kalifa's knee jerks, hitting the tiny table they brought for their game hard.
"It's the name of a cocktail." Blueno reminds her dully.
"Wow, straight into the gutter I see. Sorry, Kalifa-san, but that's really not my scene, no matter how pretty you are. I mean, you gotta have a few screws loose to get naked and sweaty in the sand—"
"I'm coming with you." The only female agent announces abruptly as she suddenly stands, cheeks flushed with the annoyance that makes her grit her teeth.
"It's fine, it's fine, I'll do it." Kaku laughs lightly as he flips himself over the back of his seat.
"Our reputation is at stake, Kaku. I can't risk you letting her run her mouth for your own amusement. I'm going, and it's non-negotiable—"
The next moment Kaku is right next to Elynna, calmly tucking her into his side and out of the way even before a blurry shape slams through the door of the carriage and rolls to a stop just past where Lucci and Blueno are still sitting.
She doesn't look at it, eyes focused on the one who caused the commotion in the first place.
She's not surprised to find Sanji standing there. Out of everyone in the crew, he's the one she trusts the most to analyse the situation effectively enough back in Water Seven to make it on time aboard the Sea Train.
It's not hard to hide her relief at seeing him, because—
Well.
She's not particularly relieved.
In fact, she finds herself holding back a wince instead.
She knows that her whole crew is not here, because Zoro and Luffy would have made themselves known if it was the case.
It's a problem, because having them all there is the most ideal, if not necessary condition she wants to fulfill before letting a fight with the CP9 break out.
Not just for the fight in itself, but because the more of them are here, the more chances they have to get Robin back.
(She needs help, for that.
She always fears that she doesn't have the right words, in the face of the pain her nakama can feel.
But this time, she knows that she won't find the right words.
It's not about needing to understand more so that she can find those words.
It's about how she understands too much.
She thinks of everything she knows of Robin's life so far, and—
She understands too much to not feel a horrendous, selfish kind of cruel when she considers forcing her to stay alive.)
And even then, the Sea Train is really not her preferred place for a fight.
Regardless of the fact that her crewmates who have Devil Fruits and would fight as recklessly as usual in the middle of the sea, there's not enough space to really get away from people who use skills like the ones the CP9 agents have, and getting thrown into waves this stormy with no guarantee of help is almost a death sentence, Devil Fruit or not.
So she doesn't let her eyes linger on all the scratches and bruises that litter Sanji's face and bared forearms, trying to focus on figuring out the best course of action she can take instead even as Franky comes crashing down from the roof in the carriage between her and the cook, shaking off pieces of wood and metal alike before kicking another man in the carriage she stands in.
The man in question lands almost perfectly at her feet, and then slides further back, coming to a stop inches away from Lucci's shoes.
"And what… is that?" The leader of the agents asks softly, utter indifference and cold distaste somehow blending seamlessly in his voice.
"I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's Nero. The new recruit Corgi told us about." Kaku informs him, milder but just as indifferent.
Idly, she wonders if he would look different from how he did when they were playing poker, if she was to glance at him now.
She's not interested enough in the answer to contemplate it further, attention snagged by something far more important.
"That's your future colleague?" She asks with a raised eyebrow and a point of her finger. "Dude, I could have told you that he was shit at the job before he even lost to a gangster —and wasted the money we invested in his training. I mean, what kind of government assassin doesn't know how to tie his pants?"
Kaku's chest shakes with near-silent laughter against her shoulder blade.
Kalifa's lips twitch as Blueno's mouth thins, and there's even something that might be called amusement shadowing Lucci's face.
This is officially the best joke she's made since getting onto this train.
"You should file a complaint against the HR department."
"We don't have one." Kalifa informs her.
She blinks, eyes slowly drifting to Blueno's horn-like haircut, and then blinks again.
"That explains a lot of things, actually."
The man's face drops straight back into utter apathy.
At the same time, a loud cough alerts them to the fact that Nero is still alive.
Unfortunately, Lucci isn't in the mood to let that continue being the case.
Elynna watches dispassionately as the man's (or boy, really—) body is flung through a window to disappear in the tempest that surrounds and presses against the groaning wood of the Sea Train.
One pest down, seven more to go.
Eight with the boss that they probably have.
"That's the justice every Marine keeps saying they fight for?"
"And then they have the gall to call us the villains." Franky agrees with Sanji's mumbled comment even as he rotates through a series of frankly weird stretches.
Lucci goes on to give Kalifa detailed instructions on the report he wants her to give their boss upon arriving, and Elynna keeps the roll of her eyes firmly internal.
"Wow, Kalifa-san. You get the salary of a secretary on top of an assassin? You must be pretty loaded." She says, coating the barb in enough blandness to leave it to interpretation.
"... This is not work that one does for money."
"Guess you're out of my marriage options, then. Pity."
The tiniest noise of exasperation escapes the only other woman in the carriage.
"You must be another one from the Straw Hat crew." Lucci says, and the unblinking way he looks at Sanji is more than enough to undo all the effort she's put into unwinding the tension that stifles the air.
(In the whole carriage.
In her lungs, too.)
"And given the way you have… invited yourself here, I'd wager that you are as uncivilised and incapable of putting the greater good before your own desires as your Captain."
"Yep." Sanji confirms simply. "We've got no manners."
"It's really too bad," Lucci goes on softly as if the cook hasn't spoken at all. "Because you see, you're poking your nose in something that not only isn't your business, but that is much, much bigger than you."
"... The hell are you on about?"
Lucci smiles, then, thin and razor sharp like a naked blade.
"Some people are simply born unlucky, because they can only make the world happy if they die. That's just how it is. Nico Robin is already lucky enough that she had twenty years of freedom to become a criminal by her actions rather than simply because of her continued existence and that of the knowledge she holds."
Sanji has already attacked by the time 'freedom' comes out of the CP9 leader's mouth, but the man in question simply blocks the kick with his forearm, not even flinching as he calmly goes on.
"No matter how much time it takes us, or how much pain she must go through, we will extract every bit of information and knowledge that we can from her brain before—"
"As if we'll let you—"
"Woah, wait a damn minute." Elynna cuts off her crewmate, unsure of how well Lucci will take another physical attack so soon after the first one. "Are you telling me that if I don't make it into the CP9 by the time you get all that information, I'm gonna be eliminated for my 'continued existence' just because I know some stuff about her? No pressure, man."
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Seeing his First Mate in a Marine uniform didn't end up being an actual shock, really.
He already expected it, after all.
Still, the sight is downright… bizarre.
(A bit like the way he grew up, once.
How everyone around him kept insisting that it was what it was, that it was normal, that it was how things should be.
That he was the one in the wrong.
And yet, he was never able to shake off the idea that it wasn't right, that things could and should be better.
That the world couldn't be this cruel.)
The glasses throw everything off, the colour of her hair is just a tad wrong, and there shouldn't be any makeup at all.
The uniform is the worst.
Or it would be, if it wasn't for the fact that in so many ways, this stranger comes so, so close to being the girl who should be at his side.
(The girl he should be able to look at as much as he wants without putting both their lives in danger.)
The blankness of her features is only a bit stiffer than the mellowness he knows, and she looks so much less out of place than the dumbass Franky beat up despite being the only Marine amidst World Government agents —and a fake one at that.
There are cards on a table on the other side of the carriage from where he stands, and the words that come out of her mouth are barely restrained compared to what they would be if she wasn't telling a lie, and the hold that the fake Usopp (whose face he would like to kick in if the muscle cactus wasn't bound to give him grief for it) has on her is allowed to stay like only theirs and perhaps Luffy's brother's should be.
"How else do you propose we ensure your loyalty? You're certainly not worth a 24/7 surveillance arrangement."
"... Bribery?"
Sanji watches exasperation or amusement slink around the group, and concludes that the less his First Mate has to use her infiltration skills, the better off he will be.
"Street rat." Lucci sneers with a look that could just as well be a warning that he's about to try and literally bite her head off.
"Mad dog." Elynna hisses in return with a snap of her teeth that says 'try it and I will kill you slowly with every communicable disease you can find in a rat —or the streets', too lazy to really be threatening and looking more amused than anything else.
(Or, well, that's how she looks to him.
He doesn't think that anyone else in this carriage cares enough to see the glint in her eyes and barely-there shadow of dimples in her cheeks for the amusement it is.
He's probably more pleased by that than he should be.)
The underlying tension that seems to sway all five of the people in front of him on the edge of violence in a way that never happens at home —even when the stupid swordsman and Elynna's mutual goading is at its worst— jolts him out of his unease, and it's easy to blink it away in the next second.
(Doubting Elynna-chan's love for them and absolute lack of it for anyone who hurts one of them is as close to impossible as Sanji imagines the Straw Hat Pirates can come.)
But when Usopp pulls off his magnificent, simple-solutions-are-genius-solutions-and-hooray-for-my-smoke-stars plan and they manage to jump into the previous carriage to break away from the one their enemies are still in, the unease slinks right back into his veins.
Elynna's absence, even more than Robin's absolute lack of cooperation, tells him that their chances might be even lower than he first thought.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"There's… something else, right?" Usopp heaves around a mouthful of blood that trickles down his chin from under the disturbingly cheerful yellow of his mask. "It's fine. You don't… have to tell us. But don't forget this, Robin. A pirate can't… A pirate can't leave their crew… without the Captain's agreement. So you have… you have to trust in Luffy, okay?"
Robin can't answer.
She can't even move, barely remembers the words he said to her first, because he's on his knees, frozen in pain and bleeding for her just like her first friend was when he told her she would find people to trust, one day.
She's vaguely aware of how Blueno moves to hurt Usopp again (hurt him one last time like Aokiji did to Saul, maybe, because Usopp is already so, so hurt, wouldn't be standing if it wasn't for the incredibly brave heart hiding behind his bandages and poor jokes—), but his hulking form of black silk reminds her too much of the wild shadows of black smoke dancing across the sea as Akainu blasted through an entire ship of innocent civilians, and Sanji's yell as he rushes in from somewhere behind her is incomprehensible, just like the screams of the archaeologists and her mother as the Professor laid dying and the Tree of Knowledge burned burned burned, and the rush of her own breathing in her ears is like the all-encompassing, crackling rush of that day, as everything heated and broke down and burned and fell to ashes and died—
Elynna lunges out of the Air Door Blueno left open, knocking Robin out of the way and out of her memories in the same movement as her First Mate reaches for the CP9 agent's impressively broad shoulders to flip herself over him.
She lands in front of him, and a light shove is enough to send Usopp sprawling back in his state.
She's pivoting around Blueno's large form before the sniper's back even meets the floor, and a kukri leaves her grip in the next second to bury itself in the back of the seat Sanji is about to jump over.
Except when he does jump, his foot catches onto something, and he curses as he suddenly finds his face rushing to meet the carpeted floor instead.
Then Elynna's hand latches onto the back of his collar, and she pivots on one foot, using his momentum and her own to throw him towards Usopp.
The cook grunts as he crashes right next to his crewmate, then rolls over and back to his feet, chest heaving as he scrambles to make sense of the last few seconds.
"Man," Elynna says as her kukri already disappears back under the Marine uniform she's wearing, the bland sheet of her face just a bit too bland, "it's the weirdest shit ever inside these doors. Feels like walking through jelly or something. Sorry, Blueno-san. Figured it was better to take care of them before you accidentally kill them, since the prisoner has been behaving so well."
Sanji heaves out a quiet breath, heart rate settling back into a slower rhythm.
He knows Elynna has been training with Zoro for almost a year, now.
He knows that she still loses most of the time, but not all the time, and that at this point Zoro might be holding back more for the sake of the Merry than because he thinks she can't handle it.
Hell, he knows that when the frequency of their skirmishes with Marines reached its peak right after Alabasta, he wasn't paying that much attention to her during said skirmishes, most of the energy he used to keep an eye on his crewmates dedicated to Chopper, Usopp, and Nami.
He knows, and yet until a few moments ago, it didn't feel like he really knew.
As if his brain had all the pieces, but didn't bother to actually do the puzzle.
He saw Elynna come out, but didn't stop his attack, somehow didn't even think that she might decide to intervene this directly.
Somehow, someway, despite all the times he caught glimpses of her fights not so far from him, he got used to thinking of his First Mate in terms dedicated to taking down a threat, in terms of that lung-emptying power that isn't quite her and of all the wounds he's ever seen her suffer.
(—how they will never be as deep as the cracks she showed, or bleed as much as her eyes bled tears over all the things they never saw her have because she already lost it all—)
And he never quite stopped thinking of her that way, it seems.
Because otherwise, he thinks he would really know how close his First Mate is to being his equal.
How far she's come.
How strong she's become.
He tucks the fact into the back of his mind to apologise for later, and shrugs away the thoughts to focus on the situation in front of him.
"Oi, Nico Robin." Elynna calls out as she leans around Blueno's side, scarily flippant in her ease when addressing their crewmate like a common criminal. "Be a dear and go back to the carriage. Lucci-san doesn't seem to be in the mood for patience, and I don't particularly want to wash blood off my clothes. Bet the boss would make me do it by hand again."
"... You should learn to keep things professional. This won't get you any respect, whether from your colleagues or your prisoners. I've heard about Garp The Fist's reputation, but even he knows better than that."
Elynna gives a minute, disbelieving raise of an eyebrow, not seeming surprised that such a big name made its way into the conversation seemingly out of nowhere.
"Even the most conservative textbook out there talks about the good cop-bad cop strategy. You guys should consider training your relationship skills instead of just the whole one-of-my-fingers-is-enough-for-you-because-I'm-the-closest-thing-to-God-you'll-ever-encounter thing. It's what saved your ass on this mission, but it took you five years because you're so shit at it. I'm telling you, pillow talk is a much better interrogation technique than torture."
Blueno's blank features warp ever so slightly downward, but it seems to be all exasperation and not the slightest bit of suspicion towards the small ways Elynna has been stepping in in favour of the people who should be her enemies.
If the situation wasn't so horrible, Sanji would love very few things more than to stay here and watch her sell the merits of emotional manipulation and lies to a man that she's also selling the most bald-faced lie to by pretending to be a Marine.
As it is, he watches Robin step past the Air Door without a glance in their direction, and grits his teeth.
But he doesn't speak, or move, and at his side Usopp doesn't either.
Their First Mate's message is clear enough.
Back off now, and come back with the others.
And while he certainly doesn't want to back down here, when Robin is so close and this asshole is so goddamn indifferent towards the pain he's causing her—
He's not about to be as stupid as his Captain and the brainless gorilla they got stuck with as their resident swordsman and ignore the fact that he's weakened, Usopp even more, or that Blueno doesn't seem the type to go easy or play around like the others might.
Besides, Elynna can't help them much more without blowing her cover.
Cover that might put her in a better position to help Robin right now than he can on his own.
Still, suddenly submitting like this might just end up being more suspicious than anything else.
(—and he really just can't bear the thought that Robin might go back to these fuckers again
with her last memory of him that moment in Water Seven when he almost believed that she meant it all—)
"No, Robin-chan! Come back! We can deal with the Buster Call, just come back with us!"
But Robin keeps walking, and Blueno turns around to give him the heavy, idle kind of attention one gives to something small and inconsequential in fleeting moments of boredom.
"Mentioning the Buster Call only makes things harder for her, you know."
"Don't speak like you care." Sanji spits in return.
"I pity her, actually."
He glares at the luxurious black silk that covers the man's back, until the agent suddenly turns around to walk closer to him.
"What 'cha doing? I thought the deal was to not hurt any of them." Elynna asks from where she stands next to the door.
"He attacked first. And if he still has eyes like that, we better get rid of him now. Nico Robin won't know anyway."
Sanji coils tighter onto himself, lips pulled back in a wince over the grit of his teeth with the realisation that he's just pushed too far and made things ten times more difficult for all of them.
Elynna blinks, and the next moment she's jumping on Blueno's back and wrapping herself around his torso like some deranged koala.
"Don't be daft. She's probably murdered as many people as you. I doubt you'll be able to hide it from her, especially if the rest of the crew is coming as well."
Sanji gapes, and loses his cigarette in the process.
Usopp makes a weird noise that tells him that he was just playing dead up till now.
The CP9 bastard pauses, and gives a slow blink of disbelieving exasperation.
"What are you doing."
"I'm trying to see if it feels different to go in there while touching the person who creates the door in the first place. Also, I was curious to know if looking down on people literally really adds something or not."
Blueno closes his eyes for a long moment, seemingly gathering his patience, or maybe praying for more of it, and slowly turns around to stalk towards the door.
"Your entire existence brings shame upon the institution of the Marines."
"It's for the sake of science, man."
"I doubt that science is worth the time and energy I'm wasting on you."
"I knew I just had to be patient to witness your true feelings."
"What."
"Don't worry." Elynna goes on as she pats the edge of his shoulder. "The line between hate and love is so thin, it must be confusing for a tsundere like you, especially since there's no training about emotional self-awareness and heart-to-heart communication in your job."
"I will drop you and close the Door on you."
"Do it." Elynna goads him further even as she casually lobs the piece of paper she barely had the time to finish writing on while she was walking between the Doors over her shoulder, disguising the move behind the gesture of flicking her currently brown hair behind her shoulder. "My ultimate goal in life is to become a ghost and haunt my boss and that fucking bitch from the accounting floor. The effect will be better if I decay in radioactive green jelly first."
The Door closes behind them, and disappears back into thin air as if it was never there in the first place.
"... Crap." Usopp moans as he tightens his hold on the paper, his other hand clutching what could be either his heart or one of his wounds —Sanji decides to look for medical supplies in the sniper's pouch just in case. "I shall henceforth bless the day Luffy found her before the Marines could. That was terrifying."
Sanji winces in agreement, but really, he would bless that day for the fact that Luffy found her. Period.
Imagining Elynna as an actual Marine is just as bad as imagining her not being anywhere near this train at all.
He's pretty sure that if he didn't have the knowledge that she's just beside Robin right now and likely planning something, he probably would cry.
(—even if he's not supposed to, ever—)
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Robin is already disappearing back into her carriage when Elynna slips off Blueno's back.
Franky, however, is still there.
And he's staring at her.
The changes only throw him off for a few seconds.
In the end, they're details, even if the whole thing put together is good enough to mislead pretty much anyone who isn't familiar with her.
But their only encounter is recent, left a deep impression on him, and more importantly Frankly has always looked at the bone structure of people first and all these details second, the same way he looks at a ship's structural integrity first and cares about all the fanciful stuff added onto it for style second.
Her bone structure hasn't changed.
His eyes narrow.
"You." He says.
Heidi stares back at him blandly.
(On the girl he met in that alleyway, it looked like the vaguely feline-like sort of laziness of a chill kid who has one hell of a kick and that he'd like to take under his wing —before she can get too lost or end up in the hands of some of the gangs he has to keep a close eye on.
On the girl before him, the white of the Marine uniform cools the look into something closer to the aftermath of the worst snowstorms of Winter Islands, when everything is blanketed by snow thick enough to kill every sound.
Everything blank, still, and dead.)
"Me." She answers.
There's nothing kind left in the roundness of his eyes when they tighten with the grimace that takes over his mouth, as if he can taste the memory of how he liked her enough to almost invite her into his home and the taste is rancid enough to make him gag.
"You were with them from the beginning."
"... Not quite, but close enough."
"You know each other?" Kaku asks, somehow managing to hit a perfect middle between airy and suspicious.
Heidi's eyes flicker to him and then back to the man that Blueno is roughly dragging towards the carriage Robin disappeared into.
"He saved me the trouble of having to deal with killing two idiots and all the paperwork involved. Would have set me back at least a few days in trying to seduce Nico Robin enough to get her to come with me. She's especially careful, that one. Always crowded places, no late night dates…." She pauses, and tilts her head sideways as she tries to remember the name the CP9 used when they received reports that the gangster escaped. "Guess I should thank you again for that, Cutty Flam."
Franky's face contorts violently as he digs his heels in, straining against Blueno's hold on him for a moment.
Elynna blinks, and when she looks at Kaku again the slow, slight curl of her mouth somehow chills her face instead of warming it.
"See? I told you that it was fun to see them once they realise—"
None of them expect the fist that shoots through the air, and so none of them reacts quite in time to stop it from impacting the only Marine of the room right in the face, Kaku's kick only managing to redirect some of the force behind the blow to soften it.
It still sends her flying back against the wall of the carriage.
With a curse, Blueno reaches out to grab the chain attached to the fist and forcefully drag the latter back towards its owner, strengthening his grip on his struggling prisoner at the same time.
It's only the snicker coming from the girl who is still sprawled on the ground that stops the steady stream of threats coming from the leader of the Franky Family.
Elynna's cheek is already swelling, ear ringing and pain radiating along the whole lower half of her face as she cups her nose between two hands to snap it back into place before reaching into her mouth to tear out the molar that was dislodged by the brutal blow.
She throws it on the ground and spits out a glob of bloody saliva in the same direction before wiping her mouth on her forearm.
"You good?" Kaku asks as he crouches in front of her.
And Elynna just smiles, the movement enough to feel like the corners of her mouth are being torn apart as the pulse of pain fuses into something constant.
"Y' know," she starts to speak, and it's excruciatingly satisfying, the way it feels as if her jaw is falling apart with every word, "another good thing about getting criminals with feelings is that if you do it well, you're already past their guard when they realise. And then, they're so hurt, like you so much… It makes them so weak."
Kaku doesn't recoil so much as he carefully leans back on his heels rather than his toes, but still it makes Elynna smile wider, until the blood trickling out of where her tooth was shows.
"What did you just say, you sick—"
"Stop screaming, Cutty Flam." She tells him, raising her voice against every pain signal sent by her brain to carry it across the aisle that separates them. "Better yet, hit me harder. Maybe then I'll change my mind."
(Maybe then it'll be enough.
Because it doesn't hurt enough, right now.
It doesn't hurt enough to make up for all the things she has to say, all the ways she can't help, for the distance she has to keep and the hurt she might have to inflict, has inflicted already.
It doesn't hurt enough to silence the pain that might make her hesitate, if the time comes that Robin looks at her with eyes that say the time has come and you promised and please—
It doesn't hurt enough to silence the guilt and the regret that will always follow her, if this time does come and they really can't do anything to save Robin in a way that means she'll stay alive,
if that time comes and she makes good on her promise and she has to speak to everyone else again, because none of them would have been weak enough to promise what she did,
and Robin's death will be all over her hands, her corpse between her and them like a fracture that might never be repaired—)
The door of the carriage shuts before Franky can try and take her up on her challenge, and she clicks her tongue at the realisation that she'll have to settle for what she has.
"For once, I agree with that unrefined criminal." Kalifa comments, adjusting her glasses with pinched lips and looking none too pleased with her own words. "You are sick."
"... Nah. There's this thing called impact play—"
"I was talking about your methods."
Elynna pauses, and blinks at the only woman of the group who was ready to raze down an entire island to make good on the threat of killing seven people.
"You're funny." She snorts and then pivots to raise a hand towards where Kaku is rising to his feet. "Help me up. If I try it on my own I'm gonna see stars —and not the good kind."
"I'm sure you're fine if you can still talk like this." Kaku rebukes her amusedly even as he tugs her off the ground and places a hand on her shoulder to stabilise her when she sways.
She hums, inspecting her face in the rattling window of the carriage and noting the streaks of already drying blood around her mouth and the ugly colour her left cheek has taken.
"Think I look scary enough for your boss to take me in yet? You guys set the bar pretty high."
"... Just smile again like you did, and you'll do fine."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Pensively, Franky stares at the woman sitting on the other side of the central aisle from him, her back a stiff, straight line and her shoulders bunched with tension.
As a regular in some of the seediest places of Water Seven and the surrounding islands, he's heard more about Nico Robin than most people.
The rumours aren't pretty.
Systematic betrayal of those who show even a hint of the intention to sell her to the Marines or otherwise double-cross her.
A woman ready to do pretty much anything short of sexual favours in exchange for money or information.
(A woman cold and slippery and burning like ice, the strangest ones say.
A woman who saw no need for a heart and so traded it and Ohara with the Devil himself in exchange for knowledge and genius so vast she'll always be thirty steps ahead of you and a distant, sculpturesque beauty made only to ensnare and never to be loved.
He always liked that one, if only because it doesn't take a genius like hers to deduce that the World Government was involved in the destruction of Ohara, and 'the Devil' seems like a fitting moniker.)
None of them speak of a woman who waits for her death with the quiet compliance of someone who has resigned themselves to it, maybe even wants it.
None of them speak of a woman kind enough to tell him that one of the few people he has left from his childhood isn't dead, and that it would be best to keep it to himself to ensure Iceburg's safety.
"Did I get that wrong, or were you being nice to me just now?"
The woman stares back at him for only a moment before she looks away, silent and tight in a way that is completely different from the way the Marine soldier looked at him.
(So much more caring,
and so much more pained for it.)
His teeth clench at the memory, and he sighs.
"Well, anyway… The World Government sure lucked out this time around. Between the access to the plans of an Ancient Weapon that they get through me and your ability to wake up the dormant ones, they went from zero to two means to get what they want. With the current context, there's no way that their goal doesn't include putting a definite end to the Golden Age."
The woman flinches so hard that even from the corner of his eyes, he sees it clearly.
He pauses, considering how to best use that clue to convince her to actually do something about her situation.
"I don't actually know much about the Ancient Weapons, but my mentor told me enough for me to know that those things are pretty damn terrifying. They won't just end piracy, they'll make the world go up in flames. Tom-san certainly didn't give his life to protect those plans for things to end up like this."
He watches as Nico Robin's shoulders draw themselves even tighter around the spot where her chest caves in, and gives himself only a second to wince over his blunt use of words that very well might have brought up memories of Ohara before he goes in for the kill.
"All this to say that I can't escape on my own. You gotta find a way to get back to your crew, otherwise it's useless."
Nico Robin closes her eyes, and her entire body slackens, but none of it looks like the kind of giving up that he wants to see.
"I can't. I will only hurt them by staying with them."
What Franky hears is if my existence hurts them, then I don't want it, and he remembers a day when he said something too similar to make the memory as easy to stuff back into the dark as usual.
But he remembers the words that were said in response to his own, too, and wonders if Nico Robin has had anyone to tell them to her in the last twenty years.
"You're not the one hurting them. Those guys from the Government are saying that your existence in itself is a crime—"
"—and whatever the World Government says is law. Sometimes the discourse about an object is just more important than the ontological nature of the same object. There's no use debating that—"
"Well I say that they've got it all wrong." He interrupts her forcefully.
Perhaps too much, but he can't help it, because this isn't just about escaping.
(It's about the fact that he sees a future he might have lived in another life through her,
and he's not liking any of it.)
"The simple fact that you exist isn't, and can never be a crime."
The woman is looking at him like he's just told her that the sea isn't actually a liquid, and he sighs again, but figures that she might need some time to adjust to the notion.
It's not like he can really escape from a Sea Train with seastone shackles, either.
He scowls down at the shackles in question, rotating his wrists to try and ease the ache caused by the tightness of the metal.
The movement only serves to highlight the fact that Blueno didn't let him reel back his fist correctly, causing an annoying kink in the chain that reverberates along his whole arm.
It makes him think of the youngest of the Government dogs sitting in the next carriage over, and how she said something about seducing Nico Robin.
"Got tricked by glasses girl, too? The dark-haired one."
His co-prisoner tenses up again so fast it almost startles him, and for a moment he almost thinks that she might have actually broken something with how painful the look on her face is.
Eventually, though, she opens her mouth and only says—
"She was in Water Seven for me."
He clicks his tongue, and scowls harder.
"Well she might not have deceived me for years like that stupid Blueno, but she better be prepared to get decked in the face again, and properly this time—"
"Stop."
Her voice is firm, but when his eyes find her face her eyes are closed, and the line of her mouth is soft.
Infinitely soft, and infinitely sad.
"Please." She says, and the firmness in her voice has nothing to do with authority and everything to do with the utter exhaustion of someone who can't take anything anymore. "Stop."
Franky grumbles but complies, looking away to stare out of his own window.
Privately, he thinks that no matter the method the World Government and its lackeys use to get their job done, they always end up destroying people's hearts and lives.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"—and, so, upon hearing of your distress from my great friend and cousin Usopp, I decided to lend you my support in this most noble endeavour that you have engaged in."
"It's the first time I see a superhero! This is so cool, you even have the cape!"
Chopper makes a long, drawn-out squeal of pure awe, blinking wide, starry eyes at Luffy and then looking quickly back towards 'Sogeking from Sniper Island'.
"So real superheroes always have a cape?!"
"Yeah! It's awesome, right?!"
Chopper nods enthusiastically.
"Isn't that the guy who came to the Franky House to get back his money?" One of the men from the Franky Family mumbles as he elbows his colleague to jerk him out from the bewildered trance the show going on in front of them threw him into.
"Yep." Kiwi confirms.
"Definitely him." Mozu adds.
"It's the nii-chan from the train station." Chimney tacks on.
"The hell's he doing?" Zoro grumbles, looking two seconds away from punching not only the sniper but his two most gullible crewmates as well, if only to spare himself the embarrassment of having to be linked to these idiots in anyone's mind.
"I don't know, but don't you dare stop him when he's lifting everyone's mood." Nami hisses under her breath as she forcefully digs her elbow into his side.
"The shitty cook's mood doesn't look lifted to me." He scoffs right back, catching her elbow when she tries to go in for a second blow.
"Franky got his hands on the Merry before the CP9 got him, and they threw the ship into the sea just when the Aqua Laguna was starting." Sanji interrupts them in a low voice from where he's sitting and staring at the floorboards and the small traces of ash that have been falling there from his cigarette. "Guess it's easier to keep up with the disguise to keep himself focused on saving Robin-chan. Plus he initially started this to avoid being recognised, and these two would never be able to keep up the pretense."
Nami looks back at the trio of their crewmates who have now started learning the so-called 'national hymn of Sniper Island' (which naturally praises Sogeking as its leader), something in equal parts fond and sad marring her face.
"Well, now I guess we have to let him do what he wants."
"I'm going to kill these guys." Zoro announces idly.
"You're so cute when you get soft, Zoro-kun." Nami grins slyly.
"Don't even think about asking me for help once we get there."
Immediately the navigator's face falls, and she's about to whip out blackmail material of some sort when Sanji calls out her name softly.
"The would-be singers over there, too."
Usopp falls quiet first, prompting his two admirers to follow and look curiously towards Sanji.
The cook finally looks up from the floor, taking his cigarette out of his mouth before he starts talking, the same grim twist to his mouth he has had since he and Usopp joined them.
"Before we get to Enies Lobby, there's something I have to tell you about Robin-chan."
The explanation Elynna wrote down on that piece of paper is quick and not very detailed. She likely didn't want to add unnecessary elements without Robin's consent, because most of it is focused on the conditions of Robin's surrender, with only a few words about how she saw the Buster Call being used in the past and was traumatised enough to cave in as soon as the CP9 threatened to use it.
Still, his words are slow as he recounts it, frowning as his brain tries to work out an infallible way to make Robin understand how much they still want her.
"I'm not trying to justify the fact that I failed. I just wanted you all to know that even with everything we're doing, Robin-chan might still not want to come back. The CP9 knows exactly how to use her trauma against her."
"Like hell we'll let this happen!" Luffy suddenly screams, prompting Chopper to let out his own version of a war cry.
"Damn Robin!"
"Watch your mouth!" Nami protests with a solid punch to her Captain's shoulder.
"What?! It's true! Why won't she let us help?!"
"Haven't you been listening?! She's scared of what might happen to us once we get more involved!"
"Yeah, well it's stupid! Pirates are always in danger, doesn't matter why! And I took her in my crew, she can't just leave like that! So she's stupid!" He repeats with an air of finality before pausing, brow scrunching in thought. "It's okay though, she's still nakama."
"I so don't want to hear that from you…"
"There's something else." Sanji steps in.
"Hope they offered you tea, with how much you talked to the guys you were supposed to fight." Zoro grumbles sarcastically, seemingly done with all the details that don't actually change what they're about to do.
"I didn't get any of it from them, you idiot. This all comes from Elynna-chan."
Sitting on the floor not far from them, Paulie pauses in the rough replication of Enies Lobby that he's drawing at the unfamiliar name, meeting the eyes of his colleagues and Zambai, but the three men only shrug in return.
"Who's that?" He asks distractedly as he turns to look up towards where Zoro is standing.
"Our First Mate."
"Why isn't she here, then?" Zambia frowns, clearly still affected by the fact that they haven't gotten back the actual Boss of the Franky Family whose role he's been trying his best to fill.
"Infiltrated as a Marine in the CP9 carriage." Sanji answers.
Nami looks like she doesn't know whether to facepalm, laugh or outright panic, and eventually settles for the first option as she falls into the seat next to Sanji's, given that Luffy is already smiling like a loon and Chopper is running around screaming.
Paulie chokes on his cigar, and then spits it back out, coughing loudly all the while.
"You're telling me she's out there fooling the guys who fooled us during five years?!" He exclaims as soon as his breathing is back under control.
Zoro shrugs, but there's definitely a smirk on his face.
"If she knows about that, it's probably half the reason why she went with that plan in the first place."
"Elynna-kun is also quite good at redirecting conversations and confusing people, which makes her an exceptionally good candidate for such a mission." Usopp adds with a sage nod, prompting the swordsman to scoff.
"You mean she's good at embarrassing the fuck out of people so that they stop asking questions."
Tilestone bursts out into his infamously loud laugh, slapping his knee at the same time.
"It's good to know we have an ally over there! Your friend has guts!"
"What else did she tell you, then? Anything that can help?" Zambai asks Sanji in an attempt to get the conversation back on track.
The cook only hums, busy scanning through the wrinkled piece of paper.
"... A list of all the weird powers they use. And the special skills of some of the members, including some who weren't here."
"I want it next!" Nami and Chopper exclaim at the same time, rushing forward when the cook holds out the paper.
"How did she even get information this detailed?" Kiwi mumbles as she leans forward behind them to read over the two pirates' shoulders.
"Doesn't matter. Lynn wouldn't write stuff she isn't sure about when she has so little space and not much time to write." Zoro answers as he pensively takes out one katana to inspect the blade of it.
"Guys. You might want to see this." Nami calls out.
Her crewmates promptly gather around her to stare down at the paper she flipped over.
Beneath the mention 'For everyone regardless of whether you want to read or not', there's the explanation of Robin's deal with the CP9, there's only a few paragraphs written, all of it in English like the rest of her note, probably in case the CP9 managed to get their hands on it in the train.
The first part is enough to darken their faces.
The only option that Robin can think of is death. There's something more than her being scared for us, but I don't know what. I'll do my best to make sure she doesn't goad anyone into killing her until you get to us.
"Shit." Nami grits her teeth, eyes tightening with the way her mouth twists.
Usopp's hand tightens firmly on her shoulder, but she can't help but worry anyway, because they all know that even if none of them could quite manage playing nice with their enemy the way their First Mate is, she's also the worst option out of all of them when it comes to supporting Robin right now.
Being alone with Robin might just harm her as much as Robin already hurts, but Nami doesn't need to see Zoro or Luffy's face to know that she won't find any doubt there, because they believe in Elynna's ability to push through for Robin's sake more than they believe in the weight of her own scars and how it still probably makes her want to die a little bit, sometimes.
They're going to put seastone handcuffs on Robin when we get out of the train. Once you find the CP9, go for the guy who has a zip on his mouth. He apparently has the bad habit of spilling all the beans he can spill, so you can probably get some information from him on where to get the key.
They frown in collective confusion at the zip on his mouth part, but mostly that part of her message relieves the tension in the room rather than winding it up some more, because it's not really a new problem if they're given the solution to it at the same time.
No matter what I might say or do while wearing a Marine uniform, I'm still the Straw Hats' First Mate and you're still the people I love.
Sanji exhales some smoke, and there's almost laughter there if it wasn't softened into an almost-sigh by the sheer amount of fondness that is mingling with the nicotine in his lungs.
(Really, it's silly.
As if they could forget that, with all the ways she shows exactly that day after day.
The knowledge didn't waver when every memory of her was wiped clean from his mind
—because the way she looked at him didn't change, and eyes like hers could never be the eyes of a stranger—
and it certainly didn't waver when he first saw her in that uniform.)
The final line is short.
Do your worst.
Usopp thinks it's a fitting way to say I'll still love you no matter what you do on the day where they are essentially going to war against the World Government.
(He might not be able to love himself in the same way if he does end up killing someone intentionally today, the way he has managed to avoid so far.
He might not be able to talk to Kaya as easily as he used to, once the sun sets and everything is done.
But if Robin smiles and he can call himself a good pirate, then maybe it can still be a good day, and maybe he will be able to find a way to love himself differently.)
Elongated arms thrown over all his crewmates' shoulders from where he wedged himself between Zoro and Sanji, Luffy grins.
"Got it, guys?!"
"Obviously."
"Loud and clear." Sanji confirms.
"Yep!" Nami laughs, a bit breathless with the knowledge of what is coming as she bumps fists with Chopper and Usopp before they all get to their feet, prompting Paulie to call them over to explain his plan.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Wait here." Lucci tells her without looking at her just before he steps through the door of his superior's office.
"Sir, yes sir." She drawls as she watches the chains of Robin and Franky's shackles being handed over to one of the Marines standing close by.
In the periphery of her vision, Blueno follows Lucci past the door.
"... Woof." She mutters under her breath.
The soldier nearest to her chokes, head whipping around to give her a wide-eyed stare strangely reminiscent of a rabbit's, and Kaku sniggers so hard he almost trips as he passes her by, patting her shoulder on his way inside.
Lucci's shoulders tighten just a fraction, prompting Kalifa to slap her upside the head as she steps forward to follow her colleagues.
She winces at the strength of the blow and how it rings through where her face is still numb with pain, but it has the merits of covering the mocking smile that wants to surface.
The doors slam shut, but it's not like she can drop the act while in the company of two Government agents and a dozen of Marines, so instead of Robin, her eyes drift to the Government agent who's standing on the left side of the double door.
He's much younger than the other one but has the same grey hair, with green-brown eyes and tan skin dotted with freckles.
But where Ace's freckles cluster around his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, this guy's freckles cover the whole of his face, as well as what she sees of his hands.
His nose is tiny in the middle of his face, and when he wrinkles it in thought as he stares at her, it reminds her of a mouse.
"Never seen your face before." He says, voice softer than she expects with the scowl his face seems perpetually stuck into.
"Not CP9." She shrugs in answer.
One of his eyebrows rises higher than it already was.
"Garp The Fist." She indulges him.
Everyone except the two prisoners gives some sort of synchronised full-body cringe at the name, and she barely smothers the wickedness of her grin into a barely perceptible twitch of her mouth.
If all the social capital she had left to use with the man isn't already used up, she's so asking for a detailed transcription of everything he's ever said in every meeting where the CP9 was present.
"What's one of his puppies doing here?" The same guy asks her again, the wrinkling of his nose less curious and more disgusted now.
She clenches her teeth to not laugh in anyone's face.
"Job hunting."
The hallway falls quiet enough to hear the flies buzz.
"What."
She clenches her teeth harder, carefully keeps her eyes on the boring slab of stone that makes up the wall right near the door, and shrugs.
"Yeah. Nero-something kicked the bucket, and the pay seems nice. I'm scouting it out."
She sees mouse-guy's features tighten abruptly in the corner of her eyes.
Sore spot?
"You might be forgetting something here." He hisses tightly. "You've got to master the six powers before making it into the high ranks, and you don't look anywhere close to it."
Definitely a sore spot.
She fiddles with the pack of cards in the right pocket of her raincoat, and hammers in on said sore spot.
"Maybe, but I definitely wouldn't have taken five years to get that mission done, so I've got something to offer. 'Sides, they threw that Nero guy off the train for being useless, and I'm still alive."
This time his face goes slack, skin pale as his eyes dart towards the double doors his superiors disappeared behind.
Didn't know that part, huh?
"Maybe," he says snidely with a leering glance at the side of her face that she still doesn't feel enough to prevent her words from slurring just a little bit, "but you sure as hell don't look 'fine'."
"Language." The other, older Government agent snaps with a sharp glance.
She tilts her head as she considers the responding clench of mouse-guy's jaw, the way he swallows and it looks like it hurts.
She doesn't even think any of his colleagues or superiors would care if she kept going until he broke a tooth or started crying, if she kept prodding until that sore spot of his bled, and it doesn't help the fact that she wants to.
(wants to tears him apart at the seams and then unstitch herself to pour all the things in her that should be ugly but that she can't bring herself to hate into his bleeding wounds
See, she wants to say, this is what you've all been doing for twenty years to a child who never had the time to be carefree.
This is what it means to destroy things and people and call it protection.
Because they've spent five years working for Absolute Justice and the only thing they've got to show for it is a man who nearly died, the pain of betrayal for everyone who knows, probably a bunch of injuries and deaths, and two prisoners who have the capability to bring the world to its knees but lack any intention to do so
—yet will see their lives and deaths ruined for it anyway—
all for a bunch of weapons that she hardly thinks they need when they've already caused so much destruction looking for them.)
But Robin is staring at the bruises too, and her fingers are shaking in her lap, faint and quiet.
It's perhaps the only thing that can stop her.
"Nah," she says instead while pointing at the Franky Family's boss, prompting him to sneer as if he's sorely tempted to bite her finger off. "That's all thanks to this guy here. Admiring your handiwork, Franky-san?"
"Wondering how you'll ever get any friends with that shitty personality." He snaps back.
She allows herself the slightest of grins.
"Maybe never, but I'm not the one chained and ready to be shipped off for my execution."
A voice calls for the prisoners to be brought from behind the double doors, cutting off whatever Franky was readying himself to snarl out in her direction.
The older agent gives a harsh tug on his chains while mouse-guy shoves Robin harshly through the door.
(A bit in the same way she thought about shoving him to the floor once he would be a mess of tears so she could more easily grind his nose into bone dust under her heel.)
She steps forward after them, and the doors close with a bang.
Spandam barely even waits for that to start laughing.
Elynna looks at him, and concludes in less time than a heartbeat that the chief of the CP9 is a very ugly man.
Or perhaps he isn't, but the only thing on his face that she can focus on is his eyes, and she has rarely seen eyes as ugly as these.
"If you want my opinion—"
(She doesn't want anything from him except a permanent lack of breathing.)
"—the old fools from the World Government are being way too soft! You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, so of course whoever is stupid enough to oppose us should be executed on the spot! They deserve it for getting in the way of Absolute Justice!"
(He should just call it like it is and say Absolute Power, because this bullshit is getting old.)
"—that disgusting Fish-Man master of yours obviously deserved nothing else!"
Spandam cackles, and promptly turns his back on Franky to walk away.
Even without everything else, she could kill him simply for the sheer amount of stupidity packed in that move.
If she ends up in a disciplinary trial for not moving when Franky lunges to try and literally bite the man's head off, she'll plead idiocy-induced shock, and she thinks it might actually work, since none of the CP9 agents are moving either.
Or maybe they're hoping he'll kick the bucket, too.
"Kumadori!" Spandam eventually yelps when he realises that no one else seems to be moving.
The man in question springs to his feet, words drawn slowly out of his mouth in a way she's pretty sure only kabuki actors are supposed to do, and only when they're on stage, but she's not about to say anything when it means that Spandam is still getting his head bitten off.
And if she moves nearly at the same time as Kumadori does to harshly drag Franky away before the blow can hit him head-on, well who's to say that she didn't act to gain her possible future employer's favour without being able to follow the speed of a Rokushiki user?
Her hand threads in the space between the large chains wrapped around the Water Seven gangster to tug on his shirt rather than the chains themselves, preventing too much friction against his skin as she uses the momentum of Kumadori's attack to haul him back to where Robin is still standing and looking more than a little bit bewildered by Franky's guts.
He's still unbalanced enough that it's relatively easy to swipe his feet from under him and force him to his knees, and she leans most of her weight on the hand that holds his shoulder to better keep him in place.
When Spandam finally gets back up from where Kumadori sent him flying while saving him, she shoves Franky's head down and the stubborn heat of his glare along with it.
Spandam's upper lip peels back at the forced submissiveness of his posture, and he seems to eventually dismiss the idea of crossing the whole room again to try and retaliate further against his prisoner's attack.
Instead, his eyes meet Elynna's.
"Miss… Schwarz, I presume."
She doesn't think that even at the height of her ability for politeness she could have smiled at this man, and right then she doesn't even bother to try.
"Chief." She says instead with a nod.
"I hear you fancy yourself part of the unit I command."
"Yep."
His lips thin, and his eyes narrow unblinkingly on her as he cocks his head.
"I'm curious. Have you perhaps come to realise how misguided that old fool is?"
She shrugs, unwilling to agree with the man unless she really has to, even if the entire conversation is a lie on her side.
"Heard Lucci-san has his fill of blood with this job."
A slow blink.
"You want to join so you can kill? And here I thought Garp would only keep the cowards in his ranks."
"Nah. Tears are more my thing, but the boss insists I play nice. Don't see the problem if it serves to uphold justice, though."
"I only take in the elite, Schwarz. You don't look like the elite."
"Well, maybe not for murder, but I've never taken five years to infiltrate any damn place."
He rounds his desk, prowling between the rows of seats his agents are sitting into with a smirk.
"I have to say, I thought that old dog's men were all as stupidly loyal as him. I could hire you just to see him cry, but… Have my men here told you how I deal with traitors, Schwarz?"
She shrugs again.
"Nope, but depending on your pay and the quota of people I get to mess up on a mission, it won't matter."
He stares at her for another moment.
Then he holds out a hand.
She places the end of Franky's heavy chains in it, and steps back.
(Her face can never hurt enough to make up for the knowledge that she's the one who put that ugly grin on his equally ugly face.
She should have tried harder to get her bones broken and her blood splattered on the fancy seats of the Sea Train's first class carriage.)
Humming in satisfaction, he turns away from her with a harsh tug that entirely fails to get the thug moving, prompting the chief of the CP9 to start yelling again until Kumadori obligingly kicks him to the floor.
That's when Spandam starts talking again as he burrows his heel against Franky's skull, without worry for the blood seeping into his carpet.
That's when she tunes him out.
Because too strong emotions on her part would inevitably make it clear to almost everyone in this room that she isn't human.
(Because right now, she can't do anything but stand here and endure her own weakness in the face of this man whose neck she can snap so easily.)
Odds are it would ruin all the efforts she made —and end with her dead body being dumped down the waterfall this island is hovering on the edge of.
She has no leeway to fool around as a way to keep her mind from thinking too much, so instead she stares at the pieces of sky she can see from the windows, and imagines that she and Robin are anywhere but here, with people so different from the ones in this room they could feel like a dream.
Except Robin is here.
Robin speaks up.
It keeps her grounded in that room like chains of her own.
Still, she uses every trick, every breathing technique she's learned and trained herself to use since she was made aware of how much her aura has changed, even the ones she learned before that because she and Chopper agreed that teaching everyone in the crew some simple exercises in case of panic attacks was important—
She uses it all, until she can pretend to hear nothing.
("From now on, you're going to suffer so much you'll wish you let us catch you and kill you during all those years.
We're going to torture you, Nico Robin.
We're going to torture you, we're going to use you, and then we'll throw your body to the sea to be bloated by the sea and eaten by the fish.
It's the least you deserve, for all your crimes and for daring to exist for so long."
Spandam's fist hitting Robin's cheek hard enough to send her flying before she hits the ground.
Franky's helpless anger.
Spandam's insults, his condescension and his disgust because what makes you think that good-for-nothing scum like you can talk back to me?!
Everyone else's silence.
Spandam's laughter, mocking Franky and Robin and Tom and Iceburg and Ohara—
Her own silence, too.)
Until she can pretend to see nothing.
(The blood, on the floor and Franky's hairline and Robin's cheek and Spandam's fist and Spandam's heel.
Robin's eyes, when she learns that having no leverage means that your little friends must be captured by now, just in time to ship them off with you so you can all die together! and why should we uphold our deal with a worthless criminal like you?
The dilated pupils in Rob Lucci's eyes as he stares and stares and licks his thin, smiling mouth.
The tears, as they trail down Robin's bruised, bleeding skin and onto the floor.
The way Franky grits his teeth so hard, just like how some people cry hard enough to make their eyes burn and scream loud enough to break their own voice.
Spandam, and how he huffs with every blow and every word because his body is so much weaker than the violence it holds.
How it all still sounds like laughter, somehow.
Robin, and how their eyes finally meet and her whole body is nothing but a silent, screaming please, you promised—)
Until she can watch without blinking as Robin's body flinch with every kick as listlessly as a corpse, and decide very calmly that—
Okay, fuck this.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
At first, the movement on the periphery of his vision doesn't register in his mind as he basks in the way the wide space of his office reverberates the sound of his own laughter back to him and the realisation that he now has not only the most powerful and deadly soldiers of the World Government at his disposition, but the two only people that can make someone the master of the most powerful weapons to have ever existed.
At some point, though, he does notice that Garp The Fist's soldier has her hand raised in the air, unblinkingly staring at him through his laughter as if unaffected by the events she has just witnessed and their implications.
Or maybe unable to understand.
Garp The Fist and his soldiers aren't exactly known for their subtlety, and judging from the few times the girl has opened her mouth since entering his office, she seems to fit that rumour to a T.
"What are you doing?" He eventually scoffs out.
This is as good an occasion as ever to try and see if Garp is actually trying to spy on him or not.
His earlier interrogation wasn't quite sufficient.
"Didn't want to bother you or anything." The girl shrugs as her hand falls back in her lap. "Just had a bit of a question. But first… How to say this—"
She glances at the ceiling for a moment and then back down, blank face somehow conveying a very loud fuck it.
"Could you lose the megalomaniac laughter and speech? It kind of clashes with, you know… Our job."
The words roll around in the sudden pocket of silence in Spandam's brain, until he understands.
And his jaw falls slack.
The girl blinks back at him blandly.
Kaku's shoulders shake as he looks down so his cap shadows his faltering expression, and he lets out a loud cough that fools only one person in the room.
Kalifa covers her eyes with a thin hand gloved in black, and sighs just as loudly.
Blueno, whose eyes were gliding over a wall absently, takes to staring at said wall with all the intent he usually puts into zoning out whenever his boss really gets into his speeches.
The second half of CP9 slowly turns to stare at the only Marine soldier in the room.
"Wha—" Spandam sputters, still reeling back from shock-induced mutism, and then abruptly straightens to his full, gangly height, fury rushing hot to override and burn down the blank silence in his mind. "Watch your mouth, you stupid girl! Do you have any idea of who I am—"
"Second." The Schwarz girl goes on in a sigh as she steps forward. "I'm gonna have to ask for some clarifications, here."
"What are you—" He starts—
And stops, mouth gaping open around silence once more, a shell-shocked kind of buzz filling his ears as he watches her walk closer to him and reach down to grip the Devil Child's shoulder to hoist her up in a kneeling position—
Only to splay one hand across her lower jaw and coax Nico Robin's head back, making space for the long, curved knife that is suddenly there and pressing its sharpness across the woman's throat.
His revolver is out of his pocket and pointed at the insolent girl's face before he can think, heavy and golden and shaking with the fury frothing at the back of his mouth.
"What," he shrieks in the suddenly too-full space of his office, "do you think you're doing?!"
But the girl only tilts her head, looking straight past the gun and into his eyes.
"I should be the one asking that question."
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Kaku's crossed arms press against his ribcage as he takes a sharp breath in.
There's no denying it.
This might just be the most interesting work meeting he's ever had since their former boss was replaced by Spandam.
Although, it's not a particularly low bar to pass.
"Oi! Someone get rid of that pest, right now! What are you all waiting for?!" The man in question yells, waving his gun around with his words in a way that makes Kaku eye the weapon warily.
He certainly doesn't trust the man not to fire it by accident. There's a reason why he was given a living, aware blade rather than a regular one.
If he could actually use the latter, maybe he would be able to feel what they all feel, or rather what they don't feel.
Namely, the violence of intent that the youngest woman in the room should exude if she really wanted to slit the throat in her grip.
But instead, her presence has barely wavered since he met her.
In fact, he doesn't think that she cares much about whether Nico Robin lives or dies.
"There's no need, Sir. She does not actually intend to harm the prisoner." Kalifa explains with a sigh as she slides her glasses higher up her nose.
"Hah?!"
(In fact, Kaku thinks, it might just be the other way around.
Because where Heidi is smooth and still, a lake on a windless day, the woman in her grasp isn't struggling.
Not just that, but her whole weight is leaning back against the body of her pseudo-executioner
—her whole weight, except the throat that is arched towards the blade like a plea for its angle to change just enough for its edge to matter—
and tears are gliding down the olive skin of her face, barely visible just like the hint of what might just be a smile, right there on her lips —or perhaps the relaxation of utter relief.
Kaku watches, and wonders how much it takes to bring a paragon of fortitude such as Nico Robin to this point.
Wonders how far she was from this point before he and his colleagues arrived to shove her there.
He likes to do his job cleanly, but some of his colleagues like to make their targets aware that they're about to die, and even he makes mistakes. And so, he's seen it.
—the fear.
the desperation.
the begging, in spite of that—
It's part of the job.
If it ever gave him pause, he doesn't remember it, and considers it to be a result of a lack of experience.
And yet, Nico Robin's smile gives him pause. For a few seconds, perhaps,
—time for him to forget what her life could be like if he and his three teammates were only ever foremen and barman—
but it does all the same.)
"Of course I'm not." The girl in question adds with a slow blink of her eyes that really makes it look more as if they're rolling with a copious amount of dude. Seriously? that definitely shouldn't amuse Kaku so much given the situation. "There are people who get paid to do that stuff. I'm not gonna steal their job unless I get a raise for it. But speaking of that," she goes on while pressing the blade closer to the criminal's olive skin, so gentle that the cold, razor-thin edge of it might almost be forgotten, "shouldn't you be making sure that one of those people is in my place and ready to do their job?"
"What the—" The leader of the Franky Family steps in as he struggles against the reinforced length of rope circling him. "What the hell?! What kind of sick fuck are you?! This idiot loves you, even if you haven't done anything to deserve it, and you're going to encourage that piece of shit to kill her?!"
"Who gave you the right to talk like that about m—"
"She still believes in you!" The cyborg yells, trampling over Spandam's screeching as if he isn't even here.
Garp's soldier pauses in what she was about to say, head turning barely enough to look down at where Franky is still lying on the ground.
"So?" She says, and the world of indifference in that single word swallows up any inflection in her voice or expression on her face, regardless of how colourful her light makeup is. "Trust is always a gamble. She just lost this one."
"So?" Franky repeats, fists clenched tight enough in his back that Kaku can hear the creak of metal under the cover of fake skin. "Untie me and I'll show you what losing feels like, you—"
"Stop talking." Heidi interrupts him, voice still flat and tranquil but suddenly more rock than lake, filling the room full rather than threading through it. "Making threats you can't back up isn't just useless, it's pitiful."
Her eyes slide back towards Kaku's superior, and Kaku can't say if he's more impressed with her or with Garp The Fist for the fact that she's still alive if she's made it a habit to look at higher-ranked Marines and agents like this.
"Anyway. I heard something interesting in the Sea Train, and again from your mouth just now. See, I was sent to retrieve Nico Robin so she could be executed. I was supposed to bring her back to the prison of our base where she would stay while waiting for the date of her execution. The whole 'being bled dry of information' part wasn't part of the deal, —-otherwise I would know, since I'm usually part of interrogations. But now, you're saying that bringing her to the HQ was the World Government's plan all along. So, you know, I'm a bit confused."
She stops there, and for all the time he's spent observing her, Kaku can't tell whether or not she actually means the words that could be hiding under all the fancy wrapping.
One of you is lying.
If she is, it doesn't take being best friends with Garp The Fist to know that the man isn't a liar, probably couldn't be even if he wanted to.
Judging by the furious rush of blood under the leather that covers a good part of Spandam's face, the possible underlying meaning didn't get past him either.
It's probably why his finger presses the trigger, but it's hard to tell with him. For all Kaku knows, it might just be unintentional.
Heidi doesn't even flinch, even as the bullet blows through a few strands of her brown hair near her neck.
That's when Kaku knows that she's much more than just a spy playing around with a knife, because only an actual blade master would be able to not slit the Devil Child's throat in this situation.
Then again, there's no telling the kind of skills a young girl would pick up while living in the streets.
"Watch your mouth, stupid girl! Who do you think you are to question me?! I've been mandated by the Elders precisely for this secret mission! Did you really think they would trust Garp to handle something so important?! I don't see how you deserved to know about the Elders' wishes when you could never have gotten Nico Robin before my men!"
The tirade is enough to reduce him to huffing out loud breaths as Heidi sighs, and straightens up, obviously catching onto what isn't being said.
After all, it's no secret that if Garp wasn't so allergic to responsibilities, he would be the head of the moderate wing within the Marines. He might just have refused to carry out the actual mission even if it was the Elders handing it out.
It's a good thing they found out so early that Aokiji told Garp about the Devil Child's location and contacted the CP9 to make sure the capture would be carried out as they wanted, too, otherwise Heidi might have actually gotten to her before Kaku and his colleagues, even if they were in Water Seven as well.
The Marine in question puts her weapon away and reaches up to tie her hair away from her face, taking away some of the roundness of her features in the process.
The Devil Child doesn't move even with the hand gone from her throat, except to sag further against Heidi's legs, head bowed as if even looking up takes more will than she has left.
Heidi doesn't budge under the weight, simply crossing her arms.
"Don't misunderstand me, sir. Had to make sure I wasn't in trouble for almost bringing her to the wrong place. Plus, this wasn't exactly the option my boss favoured, so I'd rather know if I'm about to write a report that will piss him off. But whatever the Elders say goes, I guess."
"Don't take me for an idiot, girl! You were about to kill that scum before we could get anything out of her!"
Heidi blinks, blankly looking down at the woman kneeling right in front of her and back up.
And then she reaches to gently pat the Devil Child's cheek, all the while smiling wide enough to show off all her teeth and how some of them are still tainted with the blood of where she lost a tooth earlier.
"That? Nah, I just thought I'd cheer her up after everything she just heard! She looked like she needed a reminder that she'll get to die afterwards!"
On anyone else, the smile would be annoyingly fake, like someone who doesn't know how to smile for a family picture and tries to compensate with sheer size.
On her, and as far as Kaku is concerned, it's another sign that the girl might just be clinically insane, and he wonders how long Garp The Fist has been trying to turn her into what he deems to be a decent person.
Clearly, he's failing.
Judging from the dubious glance his superior throws at her, he's reminded of the times when Lucci stops trying to hide his savagery behind a veneer of politeness —and is quite disturbed by the discovery.
"I wouldn't actually kill her. I know my place, sir, honest."
"Well learn your place better." Spandam snarls with a shake of his gun that is probably intended as a threat. "It's beneath the Elders, and beneath me! Now get out!"
"Yes, sir."
His superior immediately takes to ignoring her as he turns to Lucci with a simpering offer for an elite-only celebratory drink as congratulation for the end of their mission.
The Devil Child limply crumples forward until her forehead touches the ground in the wake of her departure, and then falls on her side.
When Spandam offers him a small wooden chest with a Devil Fruit inside of all things, Kaku dismisses both women from his mind.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"You following me?" She asks after wandering up one floor and through the hallways to reach a balcony.
"Don't get any ideas. I was ordered to." Mouse-guy answers from where he steps out behind her to join her outside.
He stops at her side, taking out a pack of cigarettes to pick on before he offers her the pack.
"I don't smoke. Why're you being nice all of a sudden?"
"Just celebrating the fact that I won't have to deal with you in the future. You pretty much blew your chance back there. This might go over well with your current superior, but the chief doesn't like to be treated so casually by his subordinates." He drawls as he passes her by to reach the balcony, where he turns to lean back against it so the wind can blow away the smoke without letting it reach her.
"Don't think I want the job anymore. Came here to get more respect from my colleagues, and I won't get it if my superior doesn't respect me in the first place. Pay's shitty where I'm at right now, but at least the boss is in my corner most of the time."
He blows out some smoke.
"I don't get it."
"Don't get what?"
"How Garp and the other moderates can just pass up the opportunity we have with Nico Robin finally in our hands. Pirates have been plaguing our world harder than ever for the last twenty years and we've just been scrambling to keep up with them. Those weapons would allow us to have the upper hand for the first time since Roger died."
Elynna eyes him as she takes out a lollipop and starts to unwrap it.
"Sure, but that means you're taking the risk of them falling into the wrong hands."
Spandam being a prime example of said wrong hands.
"Besides, it might work at first, but what about when pirates start taking refuge on land and mingling with civilians? Doesn't mean they'll stop committing crimes. What are you gonna do with weapons of mass destruction? Raze entire towns for the handful of people inside of them? You'll have dozens of rebellions on your hands in a matter of weeks. If the hard wing members don't get that, then we really need a psychology course for the high-rank examination. You might escape it because you're a secret agency, but I don't think the Marines will fancy having to explain to citizens why we blew up their family. Not that I really mind personally, but weak-minded civilians are usually less fun to mess with, and I'd rather not die young."
He returns that with a blank stare.
"I'm an orphan."
She's pretty sure that has nothing to do with his apparent inability to show even a hint of empathy.
"Why we blew up their best friend, then."
The stare morphs into a glare instantly.
She sends him an even blanker look in response.
Talk shit get hit, dude.
She wouldn't actually enjoy making people cry after they've just been the victims of a stupidly militaristic policy, but the love she has for Robin has turned jagged with hurt and searing with disregard.
(Disregard for the life of anyone who thinks of her as something to be used and never someone to be loved, and who acts on that thought.
Disregard for the families they might have, for how well they might treat their friends and their children.
Disregard for their hobbies, for what they like and don't like and what makes them cry.
Disregard for anything that makes them human beings who deserve to live.
Because back in Cocoyashi, she knew enough about this world to know where the Fish Men's violence came from, and there was an aftertaste of understanding to the fury that made her willing to hurt them —even if it was no match for that anger, only pungent enough for her to be aware of it.
Right now, the only taste that hides behind her rage is hate.
If getting Robin back wasn't her first priority, getting her crew out of here alive her second, and keeping herself alive for the sake of their happiness her third, she thinks she might just forget herself and find out how many people here she can ruin before she's stopped
—and how much she might enjoy it, really.)
"At least my superior is trying to think of a solution. Garp and the others are just whining and refusing to make the necessary sacrifices."
She scoffs.
"They have plenty of ideas. Believe me, I was in charge of writing down notes for one of their meetings once because the secretary was sick. Like… Give people jobs, for one."
This time he shoots her a wildly confused look.
… Right, educated to kill but not to think.
Besides, it's not like the World Government would actually do that.
Honestly, calling it the World Government in the first place is a fucking travesty.
The World Army would be more fitting.
Not that it surprises her.
There's a reason why she was hesitating to vote for her first election back in her first home.
She sighs, rolls the candy in her mouth to the right and holds out a hand.
"Heidi Schwarz."
Mouse-guy clearly hesitates, but eventually takes her hand.
"... Amadeus."
"... Wow. My condolences."
"Thanks." He says dryly.
"You sound like you should be a music prodigy."
"You sound like you should have blond pigtails and blue eyes."
"Honestly, it's like parents forget that bullying is a thing."
"I don't think mine cared, since they abandoned me."
"Might be for the best. They wouldn't have survived your adolescence crisis-induced resentment."
He snorts.
"Probably not."
"Or maybe they would have, since you obviously have the patience to be treated like shit by your boss."
He shrugs, but seems to have at least enough awareness to not defend Spandam on that point.
"It's the only way to get into the CP9."
"... By guarding the door?"
"No, idiot." He rolls his eyes at her. "The chief's personal guard is made up of the best potential recruits for the elite. Those who are in the process of mastering Rokushiki."
She hums pensively, and suddenly takes a step forward to slip into his personal space and stare up at his face.
"Oi, what are you—"
"Not sure my pay would be worth this." She comments lightly with a finger that points first at the bags under his eyes before drifting over his shoulder. "Also, you might want to take a look at that."
He frowns down at her in confusion before the words register.
He turns around, and finds himself staring down at the top of the Tower of Justice, on the roof of which he can vaguely see a figure in black —probably from the CP9— fighting against—
"Is that Straw Hat Luffy?!"
"Looks like it."
"That's what you've been looking at on and off for the past three minutes?"
"Yep."
He whirls around, seeming only more enraged by her laidback answers.
"Why didn't you tell me?!"
She sucks on her lollipop, and shrugs.
"Ain't the result supposed to be obvious? I just wanted to watch someone get pummelled."
Probably not who he's thinking right now, though.
"Might want to tell the ship to hurry up. If he's here, the rest of his crew probably is, too."
Also, they need a possible escape route on this side of the island as well, and the sooner the better.
He swears loudly, and rushes back into the building, leaving her to stare down at the fight down below.
It's not the best spot, though, so she straddles the balcony, stabs her kukri into the stone, and proceeds to lower herself to where the balcony juts out from the wall of the lower floor so she can drop down on the balcony below more safely.
She lands silently right outside Spandam's empty office, flips her kukri back under her shirt, and creeps closer.
There's a fence on this one, but the reduced height makes up for it, so she nods in satisfaction, and settles in to watch the show.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Alright! I'm back!" Luffy laughs loudly once he's done munching on the snacks of meat he took with him for the ride.
He grins, stretching his arms high towards the sky—
And blinks.
Then he blinks some more, and squints.
There's someone standing at the balcony in the opposing building.
He squints again harder, a smile already hedging its way across his face, until he sees only the details and nothing else around, until he sees only hair that seems a bit too light and skin that doesn't look quite light enough—
And then the person moves.
Not much, barely a shifting of weight from one foot to the other.
But he would recognise a nakama through any kind of distance and any kind of disguise.
The smile is definitely there now, stretching his cheeks almost to the point of making his elastic flesh feel the strain as he bounces on the tip of his toes to work off some of the sudden rush of energy and sheer excitement.
For a moment, the thought crosses his mind to slingshot himself straight over to get to his First Mate (and get a hug), but he remembers just in time what Sanji said about her being disguised as a Marine.
He really doesn't get why (being a pirate and his First Mate suits her much better), but apparently she annoys the pigeon guy and his nakama and does her best to keep Robin safe until they get her back.
So he resolves himself to wait for the others to join him.
(He still sulks.
But the distance isn't enough to prevent him from feeling the vicious kind of approval that is aimed at him and the wreckage around him and the body lying next to him from the smirk that comes so easily to his mind he might just actually be seeing it on her face,
isn't enough to prevent him from forgetting how warm her hand would feel clasped in his and how her voice would sound if she was right here,
—see this, Sea King? This is not only very cool, it's also a big 'fuck you' to anyone who thinks you're an idiot or that you'll never fulfill your dream, which automatically makes it at least ten times better—
and it makes ignoring the distance a lot easier.)
Or, well, he tries.
Except he's still itching to get to Robin and bring back the smile to her face instead of the coldness that was just shy of breaking and taking her heart along, to tell her that this was really stupid and make sure she knows it, to catch up to her so he can put himself between her and the rest of the world if that's what it takes.
(Even if seeing Elynna anchors the fact that their nakama is as okay as she can be all the way through him until that weight falls off his shoulders.
As okay as she can be isn't and will never be something he can settle for.)
Except the smirk radiating from that balcony only eggs him on.
So it only takes a few minutes for him to give in to the urge and take a running jump that gets him on the crenel.
Then he bends backward, throws his shoulders back to leave his chest open to take in as much air as he can before his body starts to expand beyond human capacity, and—
"ROBIN!"
His voice booms in the air, even over the thundering of an entire ocean crashing down into the unknown.
"WE'RE HERE TO GET YOU BACK!"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Elynna squints down at the white stick of her lollipop to make sure that there's no chunk of candy left on it.
There isn't, but there's also no bin for her to throw the stick into, and she's not quite willing to leave the balcony in search of one when the call of her Captain's voice is still resonating in the rattling of her bones.
All the big players will be there soon.
So she pats the various pockets of her pants in search of free space.
She's pretty sure she can find a way to recycle those—
A blur of colour flies past her, sending her hair in a flurry with the ripple of air generated by its mass, and slams into the wire fencing that was probably there to stop anyone working under Spandam from ending their suffering.
The metallic fence bends with a groan under the sheer force of the momentum that crashes into it, and she finds herself blinking down at where the body of the Franky Family's boss is curled protectively around her crewmate, the chains around his torso ready to slip loose after being literally ripped from the wall they were attached to when Franky did... whatever weird idea he came up with.
The fingers that stilled when she heard the sound of something rushing toward her start moving again, opening a side pocket of her pants to slip the candy stick into, and then she closes it again before leaning over the wall towards where the gangster jumped after realising that the fence was definitely not structurally sound anymore.
She grabs the back of Robin's collar, and with a grunt heaves them up the rest of the way to let them fall on the safety of the balcony, feeling the muscles of her back straining with a weight that shouldn't have been there when Franky already did the job of getting them airborne.
She doesn't have the time to think more on it, though, because Robin has barely met her eyes that she's scrambling through the dizziness of her escape attempt and the difficulty of still having her wrists bound by seastone in her back in order to get to her feet.
They're almost touching when Robin lurches back, tugged away by the firm grip Franky now has on her arms.
"Don't be stupid, Nico Robin. How much longer are you gonna trick yourself into thinking she gives a damn?" He says gruffly when she tries to tear herself away from him and closer to Elynna, setting a narrowed, suspicious glare on the girl.
She doesn't even look at him, eyes set on the woman hovering just short of falling against her in her desperation, Franky's hand around her wrist her only point of balance.
"Why are you still here?" She croaks out in English, her voice so alike the bleeding, breaking nails of someone holding onto the last inch of a cliff and not knowing why.
(So alike to why am I still alive—)
"You have to leave, do you hear me? You're... Isn't it your job to keep them safe?"
At that, Elynna tips her chin higher to meet her gaze, almost eye to eye given how Robin's taller height is bent to get as close to her as she can against the hold Franky still has on her.
(Even though slackened,
because now he's curious.
Curious to know why a criminal and one of the soldiers who brought her closer to her twenty-years-in-the-making death sentence than anyone else ever has are choosing to communicate using the language from a community considered lesser by pretty much the whole world when he knows that Nico Robin doesn't come from any of these communities, and frankly doubts that anyone working for the Marines does, be it under Garp The Fist.
Curious to know why Nico Robin still holds on to this woman who would clearly not mind seeing her killed on the spot if she could, and has already done all she can to hurt her in all the ways that don't bleed.
Curious to know why this woman claims to be here to get a promotion and yet seems hellbent on pushing her superiors and colleagues' buttons pretty much every time she opens her mouth.
There's too many things that don't make sense, and no one seems willing to give him some kind of damn explanation.
And here he was so ready to adopt the negotiating approach, too.
Looks like beating things out of people really is the better way to go.)
"You're being stupid again, Robin. It makes no sense for safety to be my job on a pirate crew, and most of the time no one needs my help with that."
"E— Heidi—" Robin starts, the sound of her voice almost aggressive in how wounded it is.
"My job," The other girl cuts her off forcefully, "is to make sure that this crew works like it should, and that's exactly what I'm doing right now."
The stare she pins Robin under from the top of her average height and harrowingly young age is severe, the implied this crew works like it should with at least eight people and we don't play the goddamn musical chairs in this house, which means no replacement and no resignation letter stern in a way the Straw Hats' easygoing First Mate only is when someone is about to cross one of the few lines that will actually get a reaction from her —one as rare as it is violent.
And Robin stills.
Perhaps because from the top of her tall height and painstaking, unstitching lifetime, bowing down feels like the easiest thing after so long spent making all the decisions for herself because no one cared to make them with her interest in mind.
(Making the decision to live, the biggest decision of all entirely on her own,
and yet managing to make it only for people who have been dead for longer than she has known them.)
Perhaps because the one telling her to bow down to her will has that strange mix of blandness and intensity unfurling from her eyes and onto her face again, settling into the riverbed of her features like water in a receptacle.
(It's a strange, strange mix that Elynna somehow manages to make work.
It reminds Robin of a black hole
and really,
Loving this girl feels like dying in a black hole, just the way she dreamed about over the years.
It feels painless
feels easy
feels like letting herself be wrapped in arms so cold they warm her into numbness as they warp her away from the world,
just like when she talks about history and all kinds of things with this girl who has skin like a bled out corpse but as warm as her voice in Robin's ear,
as they talk and talk and talk and Robin feels like she has stepped into a bubble blacker than this girl's blue eyes, because she talks about things and people like the world is neither listening or watching, disregarding taboos not like she isn't aware of them, but like she knows exactly what they stand for and takes all the more pleasure in flipping them the metaphorical bird precisely because of that.)
Perhaps because the one who used to be their Captain and is now only Elynna's is calling her name.
"Great, you're here! And Franky, too! Just wait here, I'm coming!"
Robin watches him jump down from his perch to put as much space as possible between him and the row of crenels as if he can just slingshot himself over to her and smile that stupidly loveable smile at her and call it a job done when he will only die.
She grits her teeth against the absurd, nonsensical smile that is threatening to take over her face and bring tears along, and wonders—
Does she look so sad, all the way from over here?
Does she look so beautiful that he wants her on his crew, still?
The prospect is terrible in a way that feels life-ending, because this boy is stubbornness given sentience.
How is she supposed to make him see how wrong he is?
That she isn't beautiful? That on the contrary, she is all the ugly and repulsive things in the world?
(Because why else would people all over the world agree that she has no right to live and every duty to die?)
That she wants to be here?
That she wants this, this and everything it implies and everything it leads to?
(Because she does.
She wants this.
The promise of the end is the only thing that keeps her standing, that keeps her going
and she wants it
wantsitwantsitwantsit—)
She doesn't know how.
But she has to try, and it simply must work.
It has to.
Because she does not want to be alive when he gets close.
(—sees her for who she is,
for what she is—)
She wishes she could die beautiful in the minds of these people, that she could die from afar.
But she cannot, because if she stays beautiful they will never let her die.
So she has to show them, just a little bit.
(And maybe if she makes them hate her, on her own terms, it will feel just a tiny bit more like she wants this.)
Her Captain's hands catch onto the crenel to launch his body through the air, and fear rips the words out of her chest —and what's left of her heart along with it.
"STOP!"
He does.
Stills.
Even from here, she glimpses the utter confusion on his face, like he cannot grasp even the faintest shape of the fact that she wants this—
"What are you doing here?!" She goes on. "How many times will I have to tell you that I don't want to see you again?! I never asked for your help, so leave me alone, already!"
The next words stay stuck in her throat, stayed by the memories that still run in her blood in place of the warmth of her own life.
But they have to hate her.
Have to leave her alone, completely and unbearably.
How can she bring herself to die, otherwise?
How can she bring herself to tear into someone the way her mother did and the archaeologists did and Saul did, with their insistence that she runs alone, survives alone, flees alone?
But still she opens her mouth wider, air whistling in her throat and the hole beneath her ribcage and bringing the words with it on the way back out.
"Me... I JUST WANT TO DIE!"
She throws the words forward, bending with them like a spine bends to breaking point until her chest is pressed to crushing against the stone of the balcony.
But really, if she could, she would throw them behind her own back.
As it is, her shackled hands struggle, fingers reaching in the empty air behind her for—
"Are you crazy?! What the hell do you think I brought you here for?!"
"Alright children, let's calm down." Elynna's voice cuts through Franky's scolding and stops him in his approach, calm to the point of coldness in the heat of his anger.
She steps closer to Robin, and in the hidden space between them one of her hands grasps at Robin's shaking, pleading fingers, threading hers through them and holding tightly.
Robin squeezes back twice as tightly, crushing really, a silent begging for the cold, steady sharpness of the blade still ghosting over her throat to just—
make things end.
If there's even one chance that things can end painlessly, then Elynna is that chance.
(Because Elynna will understand.
Because even if she didn't watch her whole life go up in flames, didn't hear the screams—
Even if, in the end, she didn't throw herself off that cliff—
She was considering it.
Because when it comes to people she loves, their First Mate can be just as stubborn as their Captain.
But where their Captain is selfishly stubborn, will do anything to save them, always and only—
their First Mate will do anything—
Anything.
Anything to make them happy.
Up to and including, Robin hopes, anything that might mean letting them go.)
Then Franky takes a step towards her in frustration and the cool, sharp threat of a kukri seeps through her clothes, poised to slice in between two ribs.
The tension leaks out of her so abruptly she could cry with relief.
"I believe that I just said to calm down, Franky-san."
"Maybe, but I ain't got any ties with this crazy woman, brat." The man scoffs. "Threatening me with her won't keep me from pounding your face in if I want to."
"Maybe," Heidi parrots, blank idleness hiding any possible mockery in her tone, "but you did stop, didn't you?"
Robin barely sees the scowl that settles heavier on the other prisoner's face from the corner of her eyes as he growls out a few choice words.
"Oi, Nico Robin. How much longer are you gonna sit still and let these assholes do whatever they want when you've got friends crazy enough to follow you all the way here? I told you, you ain't got anything else to lose."
Robin swallows, eyes still stuck on the confused frown of dissatisfaction that she put on the face of the boy who used to be her Captain.
Then she squeezes Elynna's hand just a bit tighter, digging there for the strength to rip her gaze away and keep her voice level and her eyes dry when she turns to answer.
"Their coming here has nothing to do with me. I never asked them to, nor did I ever want them to. Not then, and not now."
"Bullshi—"
A foot slams into his face, sending even his tall, steel-reinforced frame flying into a wall.
"You're in the way." Kaku says, careless except for the slight downward curl of his mouth that is explained by the mocking words Jabura throws at him as he steps outside right after him, snickers stilted and mocking as he keeps yapping on about a new Devil Fruit.
"Please step away from the criminal, Miss Schwarz. I believe the chief already made his feelings quite clear on the matter."
"He sure did," Heidi agrees easily, "but I'm no top-tier fighter, so I had to find another way to deal with these guys."
And so saying she squeezes once, and then tears her hand away from Robin's fingers to take a few steps back.
Robin is left standing alone as all the agents pass her by to go stand on the edge of the balcony.
(Guests to a funeral passing by a dead person for the last time before the lid of the coffin is closed.)
"So in the end, it's only the Straw-Hat boy who managed to get here?"
"Maa, Kalifa, don't be so severe. It's already a feat worthy of recognition for him to have made it this far…"
"Even beat ol' Blueno, huh?"
"Evidently, manning a seedy bar for five years made him soft."
"You think that's all, Lucci?"
And then Spandam laughs, the clapping of his hands growing louder as he steps closer to her.
"You're finally here, CP9! Just in time for the show! These pathetic lowlives came all the way here to save their friend only to get rejected! Really, this is too good!"
(He laughs again, and it grates, grinding what's left of her nerves into fraying threads.
He laughs just like the man who killed Professor Clover and sent her home and future careening into paper- and madness-fuelled flames.
It's his laugh, more than his name, that clues her in.
The dramatic irony of it all doesn't amuse her.
It doesn't even make her angry.
In the stages of grieving her life that she has gone through during twenty years, it's too late for even this knowledge to make her angry.
She has nothing left but resignation.
And yet—
The fact that this man's father took her mother before she could know her beyond the love she built from her longing—
The fact that the closest she'll come to getting to know her mother better will be by being killed by the son of the man who killed her—
She shouldn't have spaces left to hurt.
Even with all the cracks inside of her, she shouldn't have space left to hurt, and yet—
And yet, just for this little fact, she does.
So much more than she should, after twenty years.
But the people dressed in black around her would never let the rush of the swirling sea down below end this.
So the girl standing at her back,
—the girl who came here with the few people who want to save her—
is the only way she has left to end this on her terms.)
"Hey, boss! Can't we just deal with them and be done with this whole mess already?!" Jabura calls out.
"Don't be so impatient, Jabura!" Spandam rebukes him with pleased amusement (and that laugh—). "It's not often that we get to see a pirate crew break from up close! Have you ever seen anything more amusing than this—"
The spotless bone that Luffy was still holding from his snack snaps clean under his teeth.
Spandam squeaks.
"Look, Robin." The boy she used to call Captain starts as he squints to inspect the inside of one piece of bone. "We already came all the way here, and we didn't even have time to buy these funny masks people were wearing in Water Seven—"
The roof bursts open behind him under the pressure of spinning, cutting winds that send Nami and Chopper flying outside, the former somehow managing to land on her feet —just like the cat she jokingly insists she was in a former life, although Robin isn't quite sure where the joke comes from.
"So now that we're here," Luffy goes on without a care for Sanji's loud entrance as his cook literally kicks his way to the roof, "we're going to save you whether you like it or not. If you want to die so badly, you can do that after we're out of here."
Then he completely loses interest in the conversation, apparently much more involved in his attempt to suck the marrow out of the piece of bone in his hand.
"Zoro!" Nami bellows behind him as the swordsman finally climbs out of the hole he made himself. "What the hell was that for?!"
"Yeah, we could have died, you know!"
Chopper's squeaky comment only gets a snort in answer, Zoro's voice so deep it barely carries over to Robin's ears compared to his two crewmates.
"As if. You barely have a scratch on you. You can take it just fine."
"If that scratch becomes a scar, you will pay for my new skincare routine until you either die or grovel at my feet for forgiveness."
A scoff.
"Like hell I will. Consider it payback for earlier, you witch."
"How many times do I have to tell you that it's not my fault!" The navigator protests loudly, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. "I didn't know Usopp increased the output so much! It's his fault, not mine!"
As if summoned by the words (or the scapegoating), Usopp and his disguise come flying into everyone's sights from behind the courthouse, promptly crashing down onto the roof.
"Sogeking!" Chopper cries out in worry as he runs towards him to try and pull him out from the hole he literally buried himself in.
"Oi, shitty love cook. Hurry up and help Chopper, otherwise we'll still be there tomorrow."
"Do it yourself, cactus face."
"Sanji-kun, please help Chopper, would you? I need Sogeking to be my shield next time Zoro tries to do something stupid!"
"Right away, Nami-chan!"
"Are you trying to pick a fight or something?"
"Of course not! I'm not Lynna. If you do use one of your stupidly strong attacks on me again, though, I'll sic both her and Sanji-kun on you."
"Heh. Go ahead, it might just be fun."
"... I'll tell Lynna that you're turned on by threats."
"Don't even think about it, you witch—"
"Oh, so you admit it?"
"I will end y—"
"Oh, Sogeking, you're here! Do you have a rubber band somewhere?" Luffy asks brightly as he turns around.
"What... for, Luffy-kun?" The sniper pants, still upside down and held by Sanji and Chopper's hold on his legs.
With a grin, Luffy proudly holds up the two pieces of bone that are now attached to the second bone by his fingers, the protruding end of it sticking out of the ensemble slightly.
"I want to build a boneman!" He declares sunnily, shaking the somewhat stick figure-like monstrosity in his hands for emphasis.
Nami facepalms.
Zoro grumbles a few choice words that don't reach the Tower of Justice but that Robin knows perfectly well to be insulting.
"But of course, Luffy-kun! Here, let me show you how—"
"No, Sogeking! You can't do that!" Chopper protests as he holds back the sniper from joining Luffy, dragging his feet and the whole weight of his biggest form along with it until the sniper is basically mimicking the action of walking at a standstill.
"What? Why?" Luffy pouts.
"The chicken agreed to be eaten when we were hunting, not to be turned into a toy!"
Sanji breathes out a trail of smoke, looking utterly bewildered even from a distance.
"... It's kinda dead now, though."
"Yeah, Sanji's right!"
"You can't disrespect all the chickens who feed you like this!"
"... Do you mean to say that we should offer it a proper funerary ritual, Chopper-kun?"
Sanji lets out a strange cough, cigarette still hanging from his lips, but Chopper brightens up considerably, finally releasing his temporary prisoner.
"That's a much better idea!"
"What?" Luffy asks again, sounding confused about what a funerary ritual is supposed to be in the first place. "Well I want to do it too, but only if it's fun!"
"Yeah, well how about you guys do that shit once we're out of here?" Zoro interrupts them.
"Oh yeah, you're right! It wouldn't be nice to the chicken to do a funritual here. This place sucks."
"Funerary ritual, Luffy."
"Yeah, that."
"Oi, chief. Did you really call us here to deal with a bunch of children?" Jabura snorts. "I say we keep 'em in a cell for the boring days. They're actually pretty entertaining."
The only response that falls from Spandam's gaping mouth is a few words reduced to barely comprehensible muttering by the shock of seeing the World Government's sacred grounds being violated by the presence of so many good-for-nothing pirates.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"The redhead is for me."
"I'm taking pigeon guy!"
"I wish you would also negotiate things over when it comes to eating dinner." Nami comments lightly with the smile that hits a seemingly non-existent balance between blindingly pretty, brightly sweet and angry yelling made into movement.
No one else seems able to do it, and Usopp thanks every deity he can think of for that fact.
The navigator is about to follow her crewmates towards where their Captain is standing when the light touch of Sanji's fingers at her elbow makes her pause.
"Sanji-kun?" She prompts quietly, backing away and closer to him to ensure them as much privacy as she can.
She starts to turn around, but the tightening of the hold on her arm stills her, and she relents with a sigh.
Honestly, boys.
"I... don't think it's a good idea for me to go up against her." Sanji mumbles, barely comprehensible through the clench of his teeth around an unlit cigarette.
And then, even fainter—
"She looks too much like—"
His mouth snaps shut, and he doesn't speak again, but even without really touching him, Nami can feel how rigidly he's holding himself in the silent space between them.
There's not many 'her' to go up against in the incoming battle, so she frowns, straining to remember what she can about the woman who was part of the group in the mayor's office apart from Robin.
Long, pale blond hair.
Blue eyes.
And soft features, so pure they look cold, cold and distant if not for the slightest of frowns.
... Does she remind him of someone from his family?
The cook's hold on her elbow isn't tight enough to hurt, but still enough for her to feel the faint tremble of his fingers.
She frowns harder, and tucks the information away with all the other facts that might be relevant to the Make Sanji-kun So Used To Affection He Won't Blush Anymore mission she's on with Elynna and Chopper.
Then she smiles, hoping he can hear it in her voice, and swings her staff in a circle once to make sure she's adjusted to the weight of Usopp's brand new version.
"Got it. Come get me if you end up finding her first, alright? If you guys get to choose, then I do too."
The only member of the group that they have information on, that she still holds a grudge against for their first loss and who didn't beat up a member of the Monster Trio easily enough to activate her flight instinct?
Yes please.
"... Alright." He agrees, fingers and voice relaxing as he moves to take one of the missing spots in the line their crewmates have already formed.
She takes the last one, and proceeds to fill her Captain in on the information he missed.
It'll teach him to bail out on them before the race even starts.
(It will not, and she hopes that they're not about to make a habit out of breaking into the World Government's most guarded places
—although, really, they're the ones who started it—
but at this point she's learned to be content with fleeting moments of hope.)
"The train?"
"Yeah." She confirms with a nod at Luffy's curious tone. "Kokoro-san called me to say that she'd join us with the Rocketman somehow."
"And the Franky Family told us they'd take care of getting the drawbridge down." Sanji mumbles absently as he ruffles through his pockets for his pack of cigarettes.
"They better hurry up with it, then." Zoro grumbles gruffly, fingers twitching in their loose hold on the handles of his katana in a way that tells them all he might actually try to jump by himself if only to get his fill of adrenaline.
Raising voices from the other side of the gaping mouth of the sea eventually draw their attention, but no one is yelling hard enough for Nami to hear everything.
She does hear some things, though.
Buster Call —the words from Elynna's note that dredged up faint memories of things she heard during her time as a pirate thief.
(The words that ruined Robin's life and burrowed themselves so deep that even if the wounds have scabbed over, she's still—
She's still scared enough to throw twenty years of survival away
—and just the thought of living under Arlong for a decade longer is enough to make the ink on her skin burn like shark teeth branding their way through flesh and muscles and bones all the way to her heart—
instead of trusting them and holding on to hope—)
Buster Call, and the way Robin sounds like she's already dying.
(As if there's already nothing and no one left for them to save—)
Buster Call, and the way the man gesticulating on the balcony sounds all kinds of things that make her want to hurt someone the way she's only ever wanted to hurt one person.
(It rips through her fear like the snarl rips through her features,
and maybe it makes her a bad person, to wish that she could shred someone apart with despair and then laugh in their face
—because that's what this man is doing, that's what Arlong did—
but as far as she's concerned there's a special kind of wrong in people who don't get angry or hate monsters like this.)
"—and now it's threatening to take everything from me again when I just found people I can call friends! No matter where I go, I can't escape my enemy, because my enemy is the entire world! First Aokiji, now this... You might be indulgent, but one day you'll end up hating me too! So if I have to die, I'd rather die right now!"
Chopper's whimper of Robin's name on the other side of their line is almost entirely drowned out by the man's screeching laughter in Nami's ears.
"That's right! You're nothing but a burden! Took you long enough to understand! Look, and look well, you lowlife pirates!"
He stabs a finger through the air high above his head at a flag, as if its shadow has all the weight of divinity, and Robin's smile is the only thing that Nami wants more than to spit into his patron god's face.
"This is the flag of the organisation that rules this world, and represents more than 170 countries who all want this woman dead! Do you get it? This is the power of what you want to go up against by challenging me! Understood?!"
The wide, open features of Luffy's face fold and lock into a picture of determination and I have decided that things will happen like this so they will happen like this.
"Sogeking?"
The sniper tilts his head towards the right where the Captain of the Straw Hats is standing, although his gaze remains set on the people standing on the other side of the abyss between them.
"Yes, Luffy-kun?"
"Shoot down that flag for me." The Captain of the Straw Hat Pirates says.
The words are said with the tone that most people use to say inconsequential things.
But it's Luffy, and so using this tone means anything but inconsequential things.
If getting this far was a declaration of war, then this would be nothing short of a death sentence.
By all accounts, anyone standing in this spot would hesitate.
Would falter.
Most likely, they would not be standing in this spot at all in the first place.
But none of the Straw Hats are anyone, and so no one breathes a word of protest.
None of the Straw Hats are just anyone—
Except him.
Sure, he has the skills of his father when it comes to marksmanship.
But his heart has nothing of his father, nor of his mother.
It's all him.
And so, Usopp is scared.
His fingers twitch within the straining hold of his bandages, and his heart beats hot sweat from the back of neck.
And yet—
And yet.
Before being a man who shakes in fear, before being a man wrapped in bandages that only serve to prove his weakness, before being a man whose heart is that of a coward first and a pirate last—
He is a man whose friend is suffocating under the weight of a world that is telling her it only wants her if she is dead, or reduced to an open wound leaking blood and tears and the secrets carved into her mind.
(—a friend whose heart sounds like that of a child still,
lost and fragile and trusting what everyone and anyone will say of her worth—)
He is a man who should have no place left to hurt under all these bandages but who will find places to bear the wounds necessary to ensure that a friend will never feel so far away from him again, because these places will never hurt as long or as much as his heart will, if he chooses to do nothing when he can still stand and aim and shoot.
Usopp has been ashamed of many things, when it comes to his weakness, but never of giving up when he can help his friends.
(He remembers Zoro, so much stronger than him, cutting the only branch that stands in Usopp's line of sight because he knows that he won't reach the hypnotiser in time.
He remembers Luffy deciding to help him because he respects him, even when he knows better than anyone the extent of the difference between him and his father.
How genuinely Robin praises his work and his skills.
How Nami put everything she ever fought for at risk just to keep him safe.
How Elynna trusted him with the growth of her own strength, because she saw his weakness and pushed past it to find all the things —all the strengths— worth respecting.
How hard Chopper has been trying to convince him that the weakest thing in him is the way he sees himself, that he sees something —so many things— in him that Usopp can't, no matter how much he wishes to.)
He won't (—can't—) start to bear the shame of that now.
(And if he wants to become a great man, a great warrior,
then shouldn't it start with being a good one?
Shouldn't it start at the heart?)
So Usopp shakes, and fears, and breathes.
"Understood."
And he stands.
And he aims.
And he still fears, but he does not shake anymore.
His aim flies true, fire roaring gold in this illusion of an eternally peaceful sky like all the righteous fury Robin should feel instead of I want to die.
It all burns cleanly through the symbol of ultimate power and the white of peace it is painted over.
The tip of Kabuto's staff slams against the crenel he's standing on.
(Neither a good man nor a great warrior can accept peace if it is made white by washing off all its impurities on a little girl and leaving her to grow up drowning.)
On Luffy's other side, Nami smiles so wide and proud that she seems on the edge of laughter, and it forces his back straighter, shoulders thrown back and pride nudging his chin higher.
Next to him, Sanji lights a cigarette behind the cover of one hand, and sighs out a first cloud of smoke.
"Sogeking..."
"Yes, Sanji-kun?"
"Can you see Elynna-chan from here?"
"Of course." He says without a beat of hesitation. "She's at the back of the group, not far behind Robin-kun."
"Woah! So you have the same eye powers as Usopp?! That's so cool!" Luffy beams with starry eyes, nearly vibrating with excitement.
"Really? You're so great, Sogeking!" Chopper adds on, seemingly having recovered from the shock of hearing that the crew's sniper would rather go on a secret mission than come with them to save Robin.
"Why, thank y—"
Another cloud of smoke.
"The ashes better not have hurt her or Robin-chan."
Usopp draws himself up even higher at that because the indignity of it all, but his Captain jumps to his defense before he can do it himself.
"Don't be stupid, Sanji! If Usopp sent him it means he's super good at this!"
"Yeah, Sanji, stop being mean!" Chopper adds on with a voice that still definitely sounds squeaky no matter how huge and scolding he looks.
The cook sighs louder, which is pretty much his version of a facepalm, and on the other side of the line Zoro scoffs just as loudly.
"Forget about getting hurt. Just the heat will be enough to make her that much more insufferable."
Leaning one end of her new staff in the hollow between neck and shoulder and shuddering a bit at the cold sensation that settles there, Nami snickers next to him.
"You're so dead when we get home, Sogeking."
The swordsman's amused smirk of confirmation only makes Usopp sputter louder.
"But Luffy-kun is the one who made me do it!"
"Oh yeah," Nami only gets louder in her sniggering. "He's dead too."
Usopp gapes.
Luffy laughs, loud enough to cut off the laments about to come out of the sniper's mouth.
"It's fine, guys! It's to help Robin!"
His navigator promptly punches him for ruining her fun as she catches a glimpse of Usopp's shoulders relaxing as he realises that of course.
Elynna would bear anything for a nakama.
Even the heat of Alabasta and rushing flames.
"Are you crazy?!" The man who appears to be the leader of the CP9 yells at them across the sky, having apparently recovered from the shock induced by Usopp's actions (quite honestly, what Usopp can see of his face makes it a lot easier to understand why Elynna likes to fuck with people so much, and the thought is scary). "You just declared war on the entire world! You think you can get out of here alive, let alone save one of the worst criminals in history?! You're dreaming—"
"WATCH ME!" Luffy yells right back, voice incomparably stronger in volume and magnetism, to the point that Usopp can feel the way the five of them shift with an anticipation, like the start of a fire that hungers for how big it knows it can be.
And then—
"Robin! I'm still waiting to hear you say one thing!"
"You should have just started with that, shithead..." Sanji mutters next to Usopp, just low enough that their Captain probably didn't hear.
The sniper still tries to not let his shoulders shake with silent snickers, but—
Really, it was so utterly ridiculous, hearing their Captain talk as if he would let Robin die, whether now or later or any time in the future.
Just the thought would be laughable if it didn't concern their crewmate and echo the still-too-fresh memories of another, simply because it is just so not him.
"TELL ME THAT YOU WANT TO LIVE!"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
She spins the words one more time in her head, eyes hot like her heart where it's stuck in her throat.
Tell him that she wants to live?
Her mouth twists with a kind of muddled, afraid helplessness that she's not used to feeling anymore.
(The kind she used to feel when the other children
—children she didn't know—
would throw stones at her, when adults would never try to believe her and she would wonder why being different had to mean learning that head wounds bleed a lot so there's no need to worry, or why she didn't deserve someone being unconditionally on her side, too.
The kind she used to feel when families would brush past her in the streets just before she came back to a cold house and a note from her aunt about a family trip that left her with stale bread to eat and cold water to clean the floors, and she would wonder why the blood they shared wasn't enough to be family and would the other archeologists whisk her away and give her a hug too, if she asked?
The kind she stopped feeling when all the space in her brain was filled with thoughts about finding food to fill her stomach and a roof to sleep under and enough work to drop from exhaustion and forget the nightmares and get enough money to reach a goal that felt less like a goal and more like the signpost that says—
—it's fine.
You have done enough.
You can rest now, no one from home will resent you.
You can die, now.)
Tell him that she wants to live?
But she doesn't know what that means.
Surviving like her mother asked her to is already hard enough.
She doesn't know if she has enough left in her to figure out how to live, let alone how to want it.
Her days, even before the flames, were planned in terms of need.
Need to find new spots where people wouldn't find her, because her skin and the pages of the books she borrowed would inevitably end up torn when they did.
Need to not show her powers, because adults are a bit less mean when they can pretend that she's just the unlucky kid of a woman who chose her job instead of staying home to raise her —burdening her family in the process.
Need to keep her mouth shut and her eyes low, because it kept her aunt happy and her skin cold instead of hot with the slap of a hand on her cheek and the gnaw in her stomach.
Need to work until she can't because maybe then she'll really belong with everyone else in the Tree of Knowledge.
Need to breach the Professor's orders and learn what those strange, blocky letters mean, because maybe then her mother won't have to choose between her and her jobs.
Need.
Not want.
She doesn't know how.
She doesn't, but she thinks that maybe she wants to want life, just so she can tell the boy-man who could still be her Captain if only she wasn't so foolish, because it seems to be what he wants.
(She doesn't know why.)
Because these people declared war on the entire world for her, and she thinks that they're all smart enough to imagine the consequences.
(Knows that they're all insane enough to ignore them and do it anyway.)
She doesn't know how to hope, either, but is hope really needed here, with these people who stopped a civil War, fought Fish-Men and took down a god?
Give us some credit, Robin.
We're not Ohara.
Maybe it's true.
Maybe this doesn't have to end like Ohara.
And maybe it will, but she has nothing left to lose, and Elynna is the only one left who hasn't publicly declared war on the world, who hasn't publicly declared herself ready to lose everything.
(And it doesn't matter, really, because Elynna will never make the effort to survive this if everyone else fails, will never give anything other than all of herself to the people she loves.)
Robin breathes in, painful as if she's never breathed so much at once before.
She looks, and sees the day when Nami enlisted her help to drag Elynna into a shopping trip in the navigator's nod.
Remembers the time they teamed up to protect Chopper after he pushed himself too hard during a fight with Marines in the determination that scrunches Zoro's skin into a frown.
Recalls the days she said take me with you even though she had nothing to offer and nowhere to go —and how he said yes anyway— when her gaze meets Luffy's unwavering eyes.
Recognises, in the current set of his shoulders regardless of how his legs shake, the confident way Usopp announced he would help her on the art history part of the paper she was writing in exchange for all the information she gave him for one of his personal projects.
Can almost smell the scent of smoke as she watches it trail up from the cigarette held up by Sanji's confident smile, how it was always so faint because he always kept the window open once he noticed her discomfort —the way Crocodile never bothered to.
Can still perfectly picture the worried looks and unobtrusive offers for help and advice Chopper gave her after every night that was filled with more memories than sleep, no matter how huge and brutish he looks, right now.
Can still feel the cold, steady promise of Elynna's kukri, and most of all can still feel the warmth of her hand as it cradled her tears, how that hand tightened with a plea of her own when Robin said please kill me even if not aloud.
Robin breathes in again, and thinks that if this is what life means, then she wants it.
(Wants it in a way that takes up so much space it feels like freedom,
—makes needing death feel like an obligation forced upon her—
and she wantsitwantsitwantsit
wants it until she can't remember being told that she should want to die to the point that she needed it and then wants it some more—
wants it so much she doesn't think there's space left to want anything else after this, because the Poneglyphs and that cursed curiosity of hers occupy every other free inch of her—)
Her vision blurs, like seeing the light after a lifetime spent in the dark, and some of the tears slip into her mouth when her lips part.
"I WANT TO LIVE!"
The son of the man who ruined her life rushes to grab her arm with a shout, but she wrenches herself away to press close to the guardrail of stone that was a support and now just feels like a barrier.
"Take me away!" She screams again, uncaring of how raw the salt of her tears feels as it scrapes in her throat, because the newness of saying I want scrapes twice as much, and if she will die today, then she wants to die knowing what the words want and nakama feel like in her mouth. "I want to go on the sea with you again!"
They all smile from the other side of the void between them, and Robin thinks that if this was what was supposed to make them happy all this time, then maybe she was the one who was wrong, for once.
She never thought it could ever feel good to fail.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Arms crossed behind her back, Elynna digs her nails into the skin of her forearms, pressing her lips together to hide the vicious satisfaction that wants to spread over her face like ink out of a bottle and onto a blank page.
Spandam rushes to push Franky off the balcony that serve as the only railing left between the Tower of Justice and the black hole of water down below, and she locks herself into immobility, the air still hot with the fire the thug breathed into the papers so precious to the CP9.
The second Sea Train is already halfway across the circular waterfall, and Luffy is on it, arms already stretching.
She's not worried about Franky.
Instead her eyes flicker between every one of the people still present on the balcony as she considers—
Can she do it, too?
Grab Robin and jump off, simple as that?
She doesn't even contemplate the thought long enough for her body to tense in preparation for its implementation.
The train is rushing towards the building she and Robin are currently in, and they have no guaranteed means to cross the waterfall again, so they might just have to fight their way to the only other available exit.
Blowing her cover now would make all her work pretty much useless, when the actual fight against the CP9 is just beginning —and far from won.
Besides, there's no guarantee she would manage to actually jump with Robin without being stopped when there's six people worth a small army on their own all around her.
That would be a particularly bad case scenario —and pretty much a death sentence for herself.
So she stays still, and moves only to fall into step next to Rob Lucci when Robin is dragged away by Spandam, snatching a meatloaf off the plate of the CP9's chief when they rush through his office.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Kaku doesn't know why he can't stop looking at her.
It's not attraction.
She's funny, easy going and easy to get along with, toes just the right line between glimpses of a sharp mind and reckless stupidity to keep him guessing.
But he's almost sure that his superior will find a way to get her killed in the mess that's coming for them and blame it on the pirates, if only because she didn't show him the respect he likes to be shown —and to upset Garp.
Above all, she hasn't suddenly turned funnier, more easy going or more mysterious during the abruptly shortened time that Spandam gave them to rest.
And yet, what was vague interest before has now turned into a complete inability to keep his eyes from staring at her unless he actually focuses on it, without rhyme or reason.
(As if there's something in him,
something that wasn't there or wasn't awake or didn't realise before,
and now it's there and awake and aware, and it's telling him—
Don't look away.)
The second Sea Train that shouldn't even exist flies off the half-pulled drawbridge, Cutty Flam yells as he falls, and his eyes find Heidi again.
She's standing with both feet planted on the ground at the width of her shoulders and her arms crossed in her back, but on her it doesn't look as if she's bracing herself against the upcoming war to better withstand it.
She just looks like an observer, relaxed like something outside of this world that can't be touched by anything happening inside of it.
The hint of a teasing (—mocking—) curve suggested around her mouth has vanished, and it's only then that he realises how much it coloured the vagueness of her features, even though he only saw it the few times when she enjoyed getting into people's heads and toying with their sanity a bit too much.
The blandness is the only thing left, now.
There's no hardness to it, either.
No tension of muscles or rush of adrenaline visible in preparation for the way they've been challenged to fight.
(Nothing to protect her from the incoming shock.)
Her focus is so entirely on the flying train leaving their field of vision to crash through the walls below them that it feels like something from the world will have to concede and follow her back inside to sink and disappear once she'll finally blink.
(It reminds him of an older agent from when he was still training.
The one who killed so much, he didn't need to harden himself anymore, because every new kill glided off him like water off feathers.
Or maybe the one who killed too much but only knew how to kill, and so didn't bother to harden himself anymore, letting every new kill stab into him and pieces of himself fall away under the blow with the same indifference.)
He tears his eyes away once again as the balcony shakes under his feet with the aftermath of the sheer force with which the train crashes into the walls below, and Lucci and Jabura are made up only of the tension at the moment it's about to transform into aggression rather than simply the threat of it.
But the sight of Heidi is still printed over his eyelids, and he wonders if the figure she cuts shows the kind of soldier Garp The Fist actually has in his unit —even if with her it's just a façade.
Duty over bloodthirst.
Earned respect over careless obedience.
Spirit of the law and the oath over its word.
And then he shakes his head, because how does it make any sense to compare Lucci and Heidi?
Regardless of the fact that the both of them seem to take an equal amount of pleasure in hurting others, his teammate is on another level entirely when it comes to fighting prowess, has so much more experience it's not even funny.
(—no matter the fact that Heidi's presence is pressing against his, right now,
like a weight in his lungs or a barely closed fist grazing around his heart—)
He watches as his superior throws orders and curses and shrill screams around as he roughly drags the Devil Child behind him despite the panic-fuelled strength of her struggling as she looks back towards the edge of her balcony under which her crewmates disappeared.
Then Lucci passes him by to follow them, Heidi finally moving to fall into step right in front of him, and the Devil Child abruptly stops struggling, as if it's only now that the inevitability of her death strikes her.
It's only then that he notices the way Kalifa is staring at Heidi's back.
(Like she can feel it, too—)
Something uneasy clenches around his gut.
But it's Lucci, and there's always the Buster Call.
So he does his job.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
They're reaching the bottom of another set of stairs, Spandam immediately dragging Robin by the wrist towards some kind of control panel where he starts to push various buttons.
She doesn't get to see which ones, though, because just as she passes him by to get closer, Lucci reaches out to grab her elbow just a bit too tightly, pulling her back into his chest so the murmur of his voice can brush her ear and the skin of her very exposed, very vulnerable neck.
"What," he says, soft like malicious satisfaction made silk, "are you doing?"
Given that he's gripping the arm whose hand is picking apart the meatloaf she hid in her pocket to make sure that at least Chopper and Luffy can follow them, she doesn't bother to try and play dumb.
She didn't expect to get past his senses, anyway.
So she keeps her eyes stuck on Robin and the awkward angle Spandam has tugged her arm into so she can break him in the same places if she ever gets the opportunity.
"I'm helping the pirates to follow us. Like you're doing by not saying anything about the brat who's been spying on us for at least ten minutes."
"I fail to remember asking for your opinion on how I do my job, Miss Schwarz. Especially since you didn't say anything either."
"Obviously, since you didn't." She shrugs. "Kids are a nuisance on the job, and if this one is here to do thoughtless shit and fuck things up, then she either has one hell of a bodyguard or a really shitty caretaker. Either way, I don't give a damn whether or not she dies. Can we go, now?"
She moves to take a step without waiting for his answer, and finds herself pulled back again, almost gently if not for the underlying sharpness of his nails through both her raincoat and her uniform where he grips her clothes near her hip with his other hand.
"Garp The Fist's protection doesn't extend to exempting you from explaining yourself when you claim to be helping pirates, Miss Schwarz. I suggest that you do so now, and remember that I am entitled to kill you at the slightest suspicion of hostility towards the World Government."
Elynna meets Robin's eyes when the latter looks over her shoulder anxiously as if their Captain is about to burst into the room from the winding stairs, and sighs briefly.
Then she looks back at him over her shoulder, smiling the slightest trace of a smirk.
"Didn't I already tell you? I love to see the face of someone who thinks things are going great for them and then realises it was all an illusion. The higher you sit the harder you fall and all that."
So go on.
Show me the kind of face you'll make once you realise that you're not the strongest, after all.
Lucci stares back down at her, and the way the hallway's shadows play over the planes of his face makes it even harder to read his features than before.
After a moment, though, he shoves her lightly forward and toward the thick door of steel that is now opening.
"Satisfied?"
"… It will do."
She shrugs off the tingling feeling left by his almost-claws, lets a piece of meatloaf fall out of her pocket, and steps through the door.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Over there, Mister Pirate! They went that way ne—"
Chimney realises that her steps don't echo with the slap of the pirate boy's flip-flops anymore, and she slows to a stop, turning around curiously.
The boy has stopped, the lightest of frowns making its way on his face as he sniffs the air.
"Oi, what are you doing, Mister Pirate?! There's still a long way to go, you know!"
He ignores her, and she puffs out her cheeks, about to yell louder to get him out of whatever weird thing he's doing.
But then he suddenly smiles, white and wild in a way that heats his brown eyes.
"Hey, can you find my nakama?" He suddenly tells her.
She looks at Gonbe, exchanging a shrug with him before she looks back at him.
"Yeah! Grandma stayed back, so she can help me too!"
His smile widens as he walks by her.
"Tell them how to come here, okay?"
"Huh? But what about you, mister? You can't find the way alone."
He looks at her over his shoulder, and laughs.
"Nah, it's fine. I'm not alone!"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
They've been walking for at least ten minutes when Spandam roughly pushes Robin to the side and whirls around to point his gun at Elynna.
"Stop right there! And push that button while you're at it!"
Elynna throws a confused look at where Lucci is standing just behind her, and then at the CP9's chief.
"... So which one am I supposed to do?"
"Don't make yourself more stupid than you are!" Spandam snaps with a flush. "Stay still! Lucci, hurry up and press that button!"
Elynna wonders idly how much the man gets paid to let someone like Spandam treat him like this when he obviously has very little patience for people like his boss —and more than enough bloodlust to kill him every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner if he could.
Lucci walks closer to the wall, and pushes a large black button encased in the wall after swiping a card against the small, green light above it.
Immediately, a noise draws her attention to her feet, where the steel of a trapdoor slowly slides open, revealing a dimly lit elevator cabin.
She looks back up.
They're only four in this darkened hallway, but Robin's eyes look like that of a child who has just gotten lost in a crowded mall for the first time.
Her eyes slide towards Spandam.
"... Are we getting a side mission?"
"No, you idiot!" Spandam cackles. "This is where you're going to wait until I've handed Nico Robin off to whoever will bring her to the Headquarters! I've dedicated too much time and effort to this moment to watch it be ruined by a little tramp like you because you couldn't stop yourself from running your mouth, especially if you're working for Garp of all people! As if I would let him get even a whiff of credit for this! So you're going to get in that elevator and behave yourself, because my men won't hesitate to make sure you do, got it?!"
Her gaze drops back down to the opening at her feet.
It's written all over the man's face that he would have no problem getting rid of her during the whole debacle of having to deal with pirates breaking into one of the sacred places of the Marines and disguising it as an accident.
She suspected that things might come to that, but not that he would have a way to separate her from Robin in the process.
Although…
This might actually be for the best.
If she's separated from Rob Lucci as well, then she might have a better chance to get out of this than if he set his strongest agent on her like she first thought he would —a possibility she only managed to formulate half-assed plans for.
As long the men he mentioned aren't people on the same level as the CP9 members she already met, that is.
But if they did, she's quite sure they would all have been called into the chief's office when they arrived.
Besides, it's not like she has a choice, really.
"Fine."
"Took you long enough! Any last words?" Spandam simpers mockingly with a smugness to his smile that makes him look even more punchable than normal.
She looks at the ceiling for a moment, and opens her mouth.
"Keep going, Sophia. I'll be back."
"Huh? I don't speak Portan, you stupid little— Ugh, whatever. Just get down, already."
Hand quickly coming out of her pocket to let the rest of the meatloaf fall to the ground from behind her back, she rolls her shoulders and takes a step forward to let herself drop down into the cabin.
The trapdoor seals itself shut above her head.
In the hallway, Rob Lucci steps into the remains of the snack, and follows his superior and the Devil Child further into the hallway.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
I'll be back.
It's a promise she made once, already.
Just the day before, in fact.
Robin simply wasn't there to give Elynna the chance to make good on it.
Rob Lucci steps over the trapdoor once it's closed to join them on the other side of it, and Robin thinks of how she's going to leave the spot where she should be waiting to welcome back her First Mate, again.
(Thinks of that time when Elynna said I'll see you later,
but there was no spot for them to meet again, because Elynna didn't intend for there to be one, and Robin took too long to understand that the strain of her smile was so much smaller than the devouring absence whose shape it stretched around.)
Maybe she should fight.
Right now.
Right here.
For this spot.
(Because none of the Straw Hat Pirates
—none of her nakama—
have ever turned their back on her, have never closed the space they opened for her when she arrived with nothing but her secrets and the smile she used to predict their death and the hands that killed so many of the people precious to one of their friends.
And she doesn't want to just stand in that space anymore.
She wants to own it, wants to be that space, wants to be a constant for these people, the same way they have been for her.
She doesn't need to, has learned everything she could from life, now that she's learned that happiness can be consuming as grief and as loud as fear, and that love can taste like reading a book without worrying because she's safe, a cup of tea in hand made just for her and the promise of something else than silence and empty air when she'll take a break.
But she wants to.)
And yet, each beat of her heart pumps Keep going, Sophia into her veins, and—
Etymology has been one of her areas of interest for as long as she has known that there are other languages to learn in the world.
Elynna is no linguist, but she has a good education, a good memory and enough love for learning to indulge some of Robin's curiosity.
And now Robin remembers when she asked her what her favourite school subject used to be.
Remembers how Elynna thought for a long, silent moment before she eventually settled for philosophy.
Remembers the discussion they had to see the overlaps between the branches of thought they both knew of.
Remembers, most of all, the pensive tilt of Elynna's head and the careful way she inspected her as she told her that philosophy in her home means love of wisdom, love of knowledge.
It's a moment that is weeks old.
(She wonders if Elynna had already made her choice, then.
Wonders how long she's been keeping to herself something that is so clearly made to be shared.
Wonders if she's been keeping it to herself because she was afraid, or because she thought Robin was afraid.
In the end, she supposes it all comes back to the same thing, to another spot where Robin failed to meet her.)
Maybe she should fight, but right now she's weak, and she's spent most of her life fighting.
She thinks that now might be the time to adopt the mindset more fitting to a member of the Smart Quintet.
Adapt.
Endure.
And keep going, like any other member of the Straw Hats.
Because if they all keep going, then they'll be sure to all meet in the same spot.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"Welp." She mutters, staring at the rifle that her smoke break buddy is pointing at her. "This is awkward."
Amadeus frowns at her.
"Don't make this more difficult than it has to be, Schwarz. We both know this all comes down to faction politics between the higher-ups. As long as you stay put while they ship Nico Robin off, we can let you go afterwards. No hard feelings, okay?"
"Ah, well if that's all it is…"
His shoulders slacken in relief, and he relaxes his stance with a nod at the twenty or so colleagues behind him, who hesitantly point their weapons away from her.
" —there'd be no need to make a fuss, of course." She goes on, fingers silently looking for what she needs in the depths of the large pockets of her uniform's raincoat. "But see, I don't exactly trust your boss to get me out of here alive, especially with pirates raiding the place, so I'd rather not be in an underwater bunker when shit hits the fan."
There's the click of a finger half-pulling the trigger, and when she looks up the three soldiers standing against the railings of the balcony that joins the two flights of stairs on both ends of the room are pointing their weapons at her again.
"Hands in the air, Schwarz. I'm not joking." The one in the middle says, voice a poised warning as he watches her obey slowly. "And don't do anything stupid. You're trapped with us, so don't go causing problems."
She tilts her head in consideration, hands coming to a stop above her head.
"I'm not trapped here with you."
Amadeus throws her a disbelieving glance, and the man on the left up in the balcony lets out a bark of surprised laughter, followed by a few others.
"I don't think your little friend understands the situation she's in, Amadeus."
"Let me rephrase." Elynna sighs. "I didn't mean that I'm not trapped here with you. I meant that I'm not trapped here with you."
"... What?"
The movement that overcomes her face should be a smile, but it's really more of a declaration of war than anything else.
"You're trapped here with me."
She lets her arms fall down abruptly, and two small spheres slip out of her sleeves to bounce against the floor.
"Grenades!" Two of the soldiers yell, prompting all of them to throw themselves away from her and against the floor.
At the same time, the three CP9 members on the balcony start firing, just like the ones who are still near the doors of the elevator as they back up against it to ensure that they remain closed, but the amount of smoke that suddenly fills up the space obstructs their field of vision in the time it takes them to shake themselves out of their surprise and realise that—
Those aren't grenades.
They're smoke bombs.
When the smoke clears out several minutes after, the bullet cases that litter the ground are the only signs left of the woman whose dead body should be lying among them.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Elynna, upon understanding what being a First Mate really means once she gets actual subordinates: oh my god are those Responsibilities somebody please kill me now—
Elynna, upon finding herself in a room full of older people after months of being the one in charge: I am the mouthiest brat in this town and I will make sure everyone knows it even if it kills me—
Robin: *drafts up the funeral speech*
Usopp: *starts to sketch the grave with the engraving of 'here lies a girl who stood up for her beliefs' that he will have to build because funeral parlors are top-tier capitalists but wouldn't be caught dead offering their services to the up-and-coming pirate crew given the fine it could land on them*
Hope the constant switch between Elynna's different names during the train ride wasn't too confusing, as I was trying to reflect Robin's confusion at the beginning.
Just to be clear though, I am not to blame.
Elynna was supposed to be way sneakier about this.
But then someone told me that they really like the CP9 members, and I started actually remembering them. Which led me to think that their group dynamic can actually be pretty fun (to mess with).
Except for Spandam. Spandam doesn't count.
So then I thought it would be a shame not to show them interacting a bit more.
And then this happened.
I deny responsibility.
…
Unless you have positive things to say about this. I'll take responsibility for those.
Also hey for once most of the angst doesn't come from Elynna! Only took me thirty chapters haha.
And if you thought that kabedon can't be used as an angstification prop instead of a shoujoification prop, think again.
The song that Robin remembered in the train is Bruno Mars' Count on Me, because 1) friendship songs do be underrated in the love songs category and 2) it really gives me the vibe of the no-work-to-do, chill-on-the-couch-in-the-morning-sun-with-a-book-and-some-friends kind of vibe, and if you don't get that vibe as well too bad for you because I'm the one writing so I'm the one choosing the music
Lastly, shout out to anyone who might have caught the Glass Onion reference!
#FTSFact12: Opening Six 〜 Anthology of the stupid stuff the Straw Hats get up to between arcs, a few gems:
1. That one time Usopp and Nami bribed everyone into participating in a military-style fashion contest because the prize was money AND a medical book Kaya raved about during an entire call, but they got spotted by the local Marines anyway. The public thought this was a new take on the runway concept and really liked it —until the collateral damage. Nami enlisted Elynna to carry the prizes she stole. Elynna is still salty about being forced on a stage even if Usopp smiled almost as brightly as Luffy usually does.
2. That one time Luffy insulted the local Noble's car completely within earshot of said Noble and got challenged to a race in return. Usopp made up a plan to replace the drivers, except him and Chopper were pretty much the only ones invested in the plan, because Zoro and Sanji knocked out the real drivers and then decided that if they lost they would just beat everyone up, so they were as active as the three girls who were sipping on free drinks from the sidelines. The Noble's horses were invested too, but definitely not like Usopp wanted because they were invested to win, and clearly even Luffy didn't get everything, because first he didn't see through Usopp's driver disguise, and second he kept screaming at him to 'fight me like you want to win, stupid!'
The Straw Hats sail on the seas where they have already met so many people, where so many people have yet to meet them, until they stop on a deserted island for some rest: Luffy can fish, Usopp and Chopper can dedicate themselves to building a camping version of the Merry, Zoro and Elynna can take another nap, and Sanji can improve his new cocktail ideas thanks to Robin and Nami's advice.
Or that's how it would go if only the Marines didn't show up, sending everyone packing and running, jerking Zoro awake in the process and making Elynna's head slip from his shoulder where it was resting —up until it hit the ground.
Then there is Enies Lobby, and the Straw Hats stop holding back.
Luffy's skin steams, and his fist flies.
Zoro's katana meet Kaku's attacks blade for blade, the same way Sanji's legs meet Kalifa's blow for blow.
Usopp's new weapon finally meets the size of his dream, and the one he made for Nami finally matches the growth of her own potential.
… Franky's fight is actually a lot smarter than it looks.
Chopper really stops holding back.
A small rectangle of light closes slowly above a lone Marine soldier, her eyes shadowed by her cap as they watch the woman standing on the other side of the closing trapdoor above her without any regard for the rifles aimed at her in the darkness that surrounds her.
(And the woman stares right back down at her, the thread between them still there even after it should be cut by the closing of the door.)
The Tower of Justice hovers high above their heads as they all face off in preparation for a war that no pirate has ever been crazy enough to start.
They smile.