Work Text:
warm
The island rocks and what the fuck and Law's almost sent sprawling across the basement floor with as much force as Doflamingo hurling him across the courtyard of the piazza, shoulder blades bouncing off cobblestone, bullets lodged in his chest.
But he's steady and quick and on alert, and dispensing Kaidou's lower subordinates has hardly raised a sweat. It's sacred, he knows, but the sturdiest place is the ridge of the platform that mounts the Poneglyph. It's secure in the way that tsunamis divert around shrines.
He'll get a copy anyway, for Robin and himself, and he needs to join the others in battle. He waits for the motion to stabilise. What's going on?
A feather floats down. The air grows a little lighter. He looks up, a smile on his lips.
"Surely they need you, Surgeon of Death."
"Marco." The theatrical bastard. Both had their jobs to do when he dumped Nekomamushi at the feet of the Hearts and Scabbards as they breached Kaidou's defences, but whether burning bright in a snowy sky, or in the dark of this sanctuary, Law's glad to see him. He glides down like leaves from an autumn tree, through the hole some monster created. Transport with him is never as gentle.
"You're alone?" It doesn't really surprise Marco. Their last meeting was Law stowing away on Nekomamusihi's ship to meet him on Pop's island. "Your crew?"
Law knows his expression changes. Knows Marco catches it. He clamps down anyway. Juts his chin out.
"They're okay."
"You saw to it." What commander doesn't? "Saw a bulletin. Got captured." Found it tacked to a wall of the keep, a dagger through the bear's eye.
Law glares and nods. "Unfortunate. They can take care of themselves." Shachi's cry as Hawkins sliced his own skin, injuring not himself, but Law's own, still enrages him. The dried blood and bruises that marred Bepo's fur.
Worse was the worry and self-blame the Mink put himself through once Law had exchanged himself for his men.
"Happens to us all." Marco knows all about losing crew members. They're pirates. He's lived longer than a lot.
"Careless."
Marco notes the tattooed fingers tightening around the nodachi. "You?" he asks.
Law readjusts as the room tilts again. Marco decides to remain afloat until the turbulence rights.
"Me what?" Law responds.
"You okay?"
Marco lights up his fire and Law and he have tested and pressed the parameters of their powers before. But not now. Not during conflict.
Law shakes his head more decisively. A short, sharp jab of this battle isn't about me.
Marco isn't buying it and moves in. His flames can be warm. It's how Law knows them unless he needs the opposite.
"You're not okay."
He drifts closer and sits, and just this once, just this moment, Law edges towards the warmth.
Marco transforms for a beat, retracting talons and takes his hand. Law's nails are black. Not polish.
"Couldn't fix it?"
Law looks away. "Can't fix everything. No time. Takes energy." His leg jigs. Unusual.
"You ran into trouble after you left Pop's island?"
Law gazes at the stairs, the bodies he's severed decorating steps like remaindered gargoyles.
Marco spreads his wings, partly transmutes and, not facing him directly, Law turns to the soft underside.
Marco curls it around and pulls Law in to his body, stands, the Heart Captain rising with him, and then curls the other.
Law inhales. Aerodynamic strength, the feathers are pungent and alluring. Marco's sweat and exertion. A touch of thermal (and sulphur) to warm.
"Wasn't the chance to heal you after Dressrosa," Marco says. Law was a scuffed hum of pain when he'd visited Pop's island, but okay.
"Did it myself," Law murmurs into Marco's sea-sprayed chest. The waters were rough out there. The samurai bobbing about on a tiny rowboat. Marco flying through clear skies was probably the safest of them all. The snow must chill though.
Marco knows that means Law let it heal after he'd done the precursory, unless he needed to fight. Had to be ready to fight, so couldn't heal himself so that he was ready to fight. A conundrum.
"Can do it now."
"Please," Law says. He never asks. Marco can't see his face, buried in the same way he pushes into that Mink. Hat rising. Marco removes it. Leans over to put it on the Poneglyph stand.
Law has no fear of hunting down Hawkins and Drake. Drake is on their side after all, but didn't reveal that until he'd tested the tools of torture on Law's chained and suspended body. Bed of fucking nails, then the winch, then keratin-nails. Not removed, but crushed. Enough to draw blood. Nice bit of celestial dragon whipping thrown into the mix.
They let the grunts do all the work but made sure they observed, offering advice, taunts. When the humiliation required a little more finesse, Hawkins stepped in. He was a man of high taste. When they released him, Law's arms and legs had been useless. He fell to the ground. His teeth and jaw rattled, and he almost split his tongue as his chin hit the cold stone. Drake's boot on his head. Hawkins’ straw at his throat.
Marco feels Law's anger. Law never asks, but they do this for one another.
"They took my crew."
The cut Hawkins inflicted on Shachi and the blood streaking Bepo's face. He'd failed to protect them. The anger spikes. Marco understands. Law's muscle clusters under his touch.
He raises Law's face and the lips of both are chapped and drawn from fighting salt-heavy gales, but are welcome. For Law it's home. Everything settles. For Marco, hope. That he'll never have to lose another again. Soft. Brief. Reassurance. Medicine.
Both wings fold again around Law now and the heat of the battle arouses more than bloodlust and the need to protect, but neither is stupid enough to go there. On enemy land. Maybe later over enemy corpses.
Law rests his head against Marco's chest, and Marco exhales a tweak of surprise. He transforms, and his hand at the back of Law's head…marks along his neck too…a collar, easily clenches and re-clenches his hair. Law tips back a little, the curve of skull and neck pushing into Marco's palm.
"How'd your men escape?"
"Exchange. Exchanged myself for them. Hawkins had their lives."
Marco takes it in. Law doesn't look up. He's tense, but now only a little more than the combat around them permits.
"That card hustler?"
Law laughs into his skin like water on the rim of a glass. Card sharks had too much power over his life. "He's the real voodoo deal. Took my men's lives. Threatened us with them."
"How d'ja get him to release them?"
Law's nodachi is part of the package, and its bamboo scabbard patterns Marco's skin.
"Guy's afraid to die. I said I'd cut him up and take my crew down with him."
"A ploy," Marco mutters. As if Law could ever hurt a hair on the heads of his men. He runs his chin in Law's own salt-encrusted mop.
"Yeah. But I couldn't stand to see them tortured and they wanted me." Couldn't stand to see them tortured in his stead.
"Who wouldn't want you?" Law's earrings are Marco's comfort, and he knows his fellow doctor's sensitive in the best kind of way as he twists the cartilage between his fingers. "And you're stronger."
"In theory," Law says. The edges of his wrists flare up at times. He pulls his head away from Marco's touch. Too enticing. "Hawkins was pissed off he couldn't stare down death. That I made him face it."
"Practical kinda guy."
"Yeah, no point in sacrificing yourself if it's not worth it." Law allows himself a quick glance at Marco's face.
"And your crew are."
"Yeah."
Law can stay like this listening to the calm beat of Marco's chest forever. Not really. But long enough to heal.
"Cos I'm the surgeon of death they all think they've gotta tighten the thumbscrews."
Marco feels Law's hand resting easy against his lower back, above the curve of his arse, and he thinks of the black nails. "Kaidou's got plenty of those?"
Law's breathes out a spitful of scorn. "Hawkins. Some Spanish Inquisition kink."
Law loses heat for a second and Marco radiates energy into him.
"How's that?"
"Nice." Law's grip on his nodachi slackens and it doesn't drive into Marco's skin so sharply.
"Better?"
Law, one armed, hugs him tighter. Marco does the same. Not like Law to be so demonstrative without some circling and pacing first. What went down?
"You haven't tortured anyone, have you?" The new cape suits him and Marco's folded arms bunch up the blue. Knows his Jolly Roger's stitched into it somewhere, or another Heart motif.
"Scares the fuck out of them in the Room, but it doesn't hurt them, so I dunno. Dunno what the government did with those hearts after the Rocky Port incident."
"In pirate terms, not really," Marco says. He likes the way Law turns his cheek and doesn't miss the small casting of the Room as he checks Marco's own injuries.
"Never wanted to be like him. Wanted to be harder than Cora, but not as hard as him. Not without a heart."
Marco loosens his hold and Law straightens and they sit back on the edge of the huge Poneglyph. Marco's seen a few in his life. It doesn't surprise him that he's found Law down here. They lurch into one another and adjust. Marco keeps hold of Law's hand.
"Kaidou's transporting the island."
Law's confused.
"Ripped it from the ground. He's in dragon form."
Pica realigned the earth so the Dressrosan castle sat atop Flower Hill. He wonders how much the earth forgives the interference.
"The sub."
Marco sits back, both hands behind him now. Law's close, but not clingy.
"Saw them circling when I picked up some detritus."
Relief. They're still seaworthy then. He calculates the effect of an island being pulled from the seafloor on the ocean below.
"You avoided Kizaru and Aokiji's attacks at Marineford. It'll be all right."
"I know." And Law did. His crew were good at what they did.
"Torture," Law begins. "The auction house back in Sabaody, before Marineford and all." Marco feels the Room pause and prod within his own body in those spaces dark and sad through loss. But it's not the first time Law's done this, and the knots and coils of grief ease a little more each time.
Despite the rocking, Law turns to him, leg over knee, hand still on the nodachi, hat back on head. Could be having an ale in the pub. An amputated foot, no-one they know, slips a few steps into the basement. The straw of the twisted shimenawa above them, invoking and housing spirits, doesn't move. The Poneglyph is solid. "Fuckers selling humans and merfolk and fruit users on stage. The audience gobbled it up. Someone else's pain wasn't just their pleasure, but their right."
"And there you were in the midst of it waiting to be caught."
"Eustass-ya and Mugiwara-ya too," Law protests. "As for you guys...Silvers Rayleigh actually got himself captured."
Marco laughs. He'd caught up over drinks with Shakky and Rayleigh while they all were trying to understand the passing of Pops. They'd set out an extra cup of sake for him and Ace and, sad as it was, howled at Rayleigh's deliberate enslavement so he could rob his captors and pay off gambling debts.
"How was it a good idea, Ray?" Shakky had asked, lighting a cigarette.
"Think I was on a bender at the time."
Law shoots a quick look at the stone behind and the history within it, and the history in the man to his side.
"Jean Bart."
"Your helmsman. Ex-pirate captain Jean Bart."
Law nods. Marco kicks out his feet, transforming them into talons and back. It helps with the cramping.
"They shackled his neck with an exploding collar and tethered him to the ground, had him wait outside, like a horse by a trough. They rode him around like one too, or a giant dog, making him walk on all fours. That's their form of transportation. They used the crop or kicked him if he didn't go fast enough."
Marco lifts a hand and runs a hooked finger over Law's cheek. Law holds it to his face for a second, takes it and absently plants a peck of familiarity. Both hands drop, fingers remaining loosely entwined.
"It's the worst—for others to let you know you're less than human." Law gazes upwards as the sky crackles with war. The Minks are going to be in trouble if Kaidou obscures the moon. Bepo. "I can't do that to another."
"Because you can. You could."
"Yeah, because I could. Carving up Vergo and impaling him was satisfying." That marine woman needed to be more on her toes.
"He used your heart to beat you down."
"You remember."
Marco tips his head. Of course he does.
"Disgraceful. Undone by my own powers."
"Then beat you down more."
Law looks so young when he stares at him next. Clawing a space in this world, because he has to. But Marco would've beaten Vergo too. Would've tried and played a clever game first. Didn't know if he would've lopped the mountain. The worst generation were nothing if not overkill.
"Bashing a kid? A man torn up with bullets? Someone in chains?" Law stands. "Where's the power in that, Marco?" Hoists the nodachi over his shoulder. "Don't want any of it."
He's here to break the gears not keep them oiled, and especially not oiled with his own blood.
"Weak men," Marco says and crosses to Law's side, The island sways occasionally now, the slice and shluck and screams and shouts of battle don't abate. The two are steady.
"I don't know if I have the best luck or the worst."
"What did the spookmeister's cards say?"
"Not afraid to die. Bound to be tortured."
"Word play?"
"Rope."
Pain. Law doesn't want it. But will endure it if it stops them from imprisoning his own. He can't save everyone but he'll never stop trying to save those he loves.
"If my crew had to suffer because of me...if I caused that again..."
"Checkered fucking fate, you D's." Marco's one of the few who knows. Doflamingo hasn't spilled the beans on that yet. Always shows his hand when it'll do the most damage.
Tell me about it, Law's look says, but he really means, tell me about it. He's badgered Marco since they hooked up, but the Phoenix says Rayleigh's always in his cups when he even begins to explain.
Marco smooths away a graze that the surgeon hasn't bothered with, and he lets Law clear up the bruises across his chest from impact with Big Mom. It's not as if he can't do it himself. But no time.
"Hey, save your energy."
"Yeah, you're right" Law drops his hand. Everything's fine when Marco's near.
"You're not afraid of death, he's correct."
"But I'm not in the mood to die." He isn't a fucking samurai in a leaky fishing boat on the most turbulent waters to be found.
They share a look. They'll act, in tandem or separately, some form of together against the enemies above. Working hard not to die.
"You need a lift? I took Roronoa up earlier."
Law does need to save energy but isn't keen on being an aerial target. Marco's method of transportation is more noticeable than his own. He wonders where the Polar Tang will head as the island flies across the sky. If he can find a transponder, he'll contact them. Maybe they can pick him up from the ocean if Kaido decides to tip the land to the side. Half the yonkou's own army and most of the supernovas will be in trouble.
He has unfinished business with Hawkins. Where is the bastard?
"I'll make my own way."
Marco knows he will, and sweeps Law's face with feathers, loving the way he follows the motion, and takes to the sky.