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To say it was a dark and gloomy day would be a horrible understatement. It was colder than a frog's kiss and fouler than a tax collector's heart. Perfect conditions to curl up around one's beau and drank the night away.
But not Law.
He was riding beneath the tangled canopy, cloak drawn tight, every step of his horse clotted with mud, and he hadn't allowed Zoro and Luffy within touching distance of himself, considering what those had led to.
"You're exhausting," Zoro bemoaned, tugging at the reins to make sure Law's horse passed by another protruding roots smoothly. Law hadn't stop bitching since dawn.
Law turned his ire toward the front. "Remind me why I agreed to this again?"
Luffy's smile shone bright, head craning back. "Because you love my brothers."
"Not now I don't," he replied. "And love is a strong word. I'd say I don't hate them."
"Sure," Zoro snorted.
"I certainly prefer them to you right now."
"Whatever you say," Zoro's tone was indulgent, the kind of answer that never failed to set Law's jaw to grinding.
Luffy was no help either, he smiled at them like Law about to jump Zoro and knock him out on his unwashed ass was a dear sight, and then he turned to the road in front of him again, a tune of music whistling past his lips.
After a moment, he stopped. "We can camp here," he proclaimed loudly, sending a flock of birds bursting skyward.
He moved to unroll the tent on his back and made a fire.
They always stopped while dusk still clung to the sky. Some of the branches lay dead across the rocks; the rest of the weeds were all barbed. From his vantage point, the sun barely broke through the trees of the Black Hallows. It only looked down from the east, pale and thin, hollowed out.
Without thinking, Law touched the round curve of his belly. He could feel the pulsing heat through his tunic, the skin unnaturally hot and stretched taut, harder than the soft swell of human pregnancy. He would pop soon, for lack of a better word. Then again, his partners were not human, so some oddities were to be expected. He just hadn't accounted for this constant discomfort.
Zoro reached a hand up. "Easy there," he said. "Don't jump down like yesterday just to spite me."
He huffed. "You're not the boss of me."
"Torao."
"Shut up," he snapped at Luffy, before deigning to let Zoro lift him down. The man at least had the decency to not seem winded from that effort alone.
Instead of releasing him right away, Zoro tucked his nose behind his left ear, chuckling after a peck, arms keeping him still. "So grumpy all the time," he said. "You want me to help you relax?"
A shiver wracked Law. He wrenched free with a hiss. "Last time you did that, I ended up with this!" he pointed at his stomach. "I would like to move normally without taking a break every ten minutes, thank you very much."
Not that Law had much to complain of. When he'd told them the news, he had expected certain reactions.
Luffy would definitely be happy, though ultimately he wouldn't be much help in the preparations. He meant well, and he loved taking care of people, but he was bad at cooking and bathing and generally things that equated to constant care. He had one hell of a right hook though, good at punching others for leering at Law whenever they went through the supermarket with Sanji.
Zoro, on the other hand, wouldn't be affectionate, and he certainly wouldn't be outwardly overjoyed like Luffy, but he would be steady in his care. Meals hunted, camp readied, reins guided, even, if Law allowed it, feet rubbed.
Law never allowed it. Zoro's hands were filth, but the thought amused him.
All of his predictions had come to pass, though Law hadn't accounted for how protective they were. If the space they occupied were accommodating and spacious enough, they would actually turn into dragons to curl around him through the night.
Like sleeping, eating in itself was also a whole ordeal. While Zoro successfully roasted the hunted boar over the flame, Luffy returned with greens dripping water from the river near them.
Law frowned at them. "They are not clean yet," he said.
Luffy squinted. "They are."
"You can still see faint traces of dirt here, and here, and here."
"Washing vegetables is so stupid. If we're gonna boil them anyway then a little dirt won't make a difference."
With a sign, Law braced his back and pushed to rise. "Let me show you how to do it."
He was stopped with Luffy's hand on his shoulder. "No." His tone brooked no argument, which made Law want to fight him on it even more. "I'll try again. Torao, eat some meat."
Law scowled at his retreating back, then at Zoro, suppressing a startle when he realized they were closer than expected, a skewer of slightly charred meat between them. He accepted the offering with a grunt, biting down as Zoro lowered himself beside him with his own jug of choice, which was ale.
"I can handle it, you know that," he pointed out sullenly, jaw tight. "It's not even something physically taxing. It's washing carrots and lettuces and mushrooms."
Zoro rolled his eye.
"The first time we met, you were decimating a band of bandits while on a fever and collared. Believe me, we know you can do anything. We've been over this. You can let us look out for you."
Three years of the same argument weighed in the silence. Law knew he was a broken record, but the words kept slipping out anyway.
"I let you two take care of me plenty," he shot back, tearing another bite off the skewer. "I don't even cook my own food anymore. That's how spoiled I am."
The glare Zoro leveled at him could have driven a howling bear back into its den. Law ignored it, chewing slowly.
"You might omit some of the details, but we know exactly how hard this is for you," Zoro pressed, voice steady, patient in a way that frayed Law's nerves more than anger ever could. "We know what it costs you to carry something like this. A dragonborn hatchling isn't the same as a human child. It's like holding a rock inside your ribcage. You have to eat double to keep pace with its hunger, but your stomach was never built for it. The heat isn't ideal either. During winter it might be easy to handle, but in summer? You're holding fire under your skin, and it burns."
Law tensed. With a gusty sign, Zoro's hand settled behind Law's back to anchor him.
"You don't have to spare us," he said gruffly. "We're here for you. Hells," here the softness evaporated, replaced by a wolfish grin, "it's our fault you're like this in the first place."
Heat flushed Law's face as Zoro leaned in, his sharp tongue flicking against his cheek in that unsettling, oddly endearing gesture of theirs.
He couldn't pinpoint exactly when he conceived. Maybe it was that time in the tent after Luffy almost fell off a cliff during a fight against a rogue fiend. Maybe it was after Zoro returned from his month-long trip to visit his master.
What he remembered during all those times was the feel of skins crowding him, his fingers caressing any parts that still had red and green scales. He remembered the kiss Zoro pulled him into just as Luffy suddenly breached him from behind, and how he had slumped down afterward, let them tugged his hips up to fuck into, one after the other. Their laughter rang deep when he shivered with aftershocks, and their crooning were sweet when he begged for more.
It had been puzzling to determine whose kid it would be afterwards, but Chopper had explained to him, to his utter mortification, that dragon physiology worked differently than human. With how the two of them had shared Law, their child would likely resemble all three.
"How long, you think?" Zoro asked, scarred palm covering Law's where their future was resting. He craved a family the same way Law had, with the same ferocity of an orphan born into a world that looked down on their kind.
"Only days now," Law replied softly, counting down the time in his mind.
Morning came, and they got separated.
There would be blood to pay.
Luffy knew this the moment a flash of light overtook him and Zoro. The last thing they saw before their vision split apart was Law's shellshocked expression by the forest ground, the horse taking off from the noise.
When the light cleared, they found themselves in a clearing caged in by an endless green tinged with mist, the walls of leaves high as towers, spiraling toward an overcast sky.
Luffy snagged on the tunic of the nearest figure. "What's going on?" he demanded.
Upon closer look, the one now struggling free of his grip was a monk who had a penchant for sweating. "The Lord of the Hoard is back," his voice came out hoarse, angry and fearful, "He's trapped us all here."
"That can't be right. We sealed him years ago," Luffy darted his eyes around, a stone rapidly forming at the back of his throat. "We don't have time for this. We need to get back."
"Get back? You plan to just leave? This threat will level our realm," the monk insisted. Zoro looked like he was about to deck the man across the face. "It would be more helpful in the long run for your family if we can neutralize him now, once and for all."
Zoro's hand twitched toward his swords. "Fuck your threat," he snapped. "Our partner's currently in the middle of Black Hallows. Provisions left can only last him for two days, at best."
The monk blinked. "Can't he hunt?"
Zoro's eyebrows raised to his hairline. "I am going to kill you," he informed him calmly. "They say to never hurt a monk, guess they never met you."
Luffy placed a hand on Zoro's shoulders, then pivoted away. Restless. He couldn't stay still for long. "He can hunt just fine," he elaborated, "the problem is he shouldn't do that in his current condition."
"What condition?"
"None of your business," his tone cut sharp as it shot back, patience ran out. A dragonborn child on the way was not a thing for strangers. Too many would greet that with violence.
Once in war, always in wars. Luffy finally understood why Kuma had told him so. Around them gathered the weathered remnants of the last heroes, those who had once sealed the Hoard-lord and looked no less stunned than he felt.
For the next few days, they had stubbornly tried to leave regardless. But the enemy proved to be out for blood, the Lord blocking all possible paths out with the intention of enacting revenge on those who had felled him, magical and otherwise, and the only way to get back to Law was through him.
Half their number were either unarmed, or too old to wield a blade. This would not be a quick fight.
Throughout the realm, beyond the maze in which they were trapped, the beasts had already been loosed.
The sun hovered above the branches, mixed with residue shadow. It was an unpleasant morning made for unpleasant thoughts.
Law made his way through the ups and downs of the forest ground, the daylight a hazy mist through the leaves. His cloak covered him to his ankle and the cowl tugged well forward, able to cover his eyes in a moment's notice if he happened to cross a passerby.
The golden glare of his eyes had been one of the main reason he was shunned as a kid, downright hunted during his teenage years in some areas. People often mistook it for a clear sign of a dragonborn, which was absurd, because Luffy and Zoro's eyes bore no glaring colors. Only an ordinary brown and dull gray.
The other beings in the woods were another matter entirely. Those would be harder to fend off compared to bandit, soldiers, hags and witches. The burning scent of dragonfire and of those harboring them were unmistakable and attractive.
Infants and hatchlings made for prey worth chasing. Those were sought after the most for their inner magic and inability to sustain themselves. Many a beast had gorged itself on such helplessness.
Give them two years and a dragonborn whelp could outrun a teenage human. By the time they learned to fight, there were few predators left bold enough to try.
So, in conclusion, Law's current possession consisted of a cloak, one day worth of provision and a small blanket inside his old satchel, a bow gifted by Nami since he could no longer engage in close range attack, and a target inside him.
Usually, the sudden disappearance would push him into a spiral of anxious fury. He might have torn up the forest demanding an answer by now, but since nine months ago his priority had ceased to be Zoro and Luffy's safety. What he needed to do was follow the path in front of him toward the way out of Black Hallows, toward Ace and Sabo's current encampment. It would only take him one more day to reach, and then he would deliver the baby with the assisstance of a healer; only then, would he give into the swirling panic at his partners' whereabouts.
With an assessing look, he peered into the woods around him. They didn't look familiar, because he had memorized his surroundings as he proceeded with his trek. No two trees looked the same, no matter how much Zoro insisted.
As far back as he could remember he had never been one to shy away from wilderness. He had explored the Stormy Grove and the Alley of Silence alone before, headless of the elders calling those bad luck. Nowhere in all of that could make him anxious—places full of fellow humans took care of that already. He knew the patterns and signs of wild animals. He could map out inside his head where the nearest lion dens were, or from a single shift of leaves, knew to dodge an attack from a coyote. The wolves traveled in packs and were harder to deal with, but there hadn't been many sights of them this season. The laughing hyenas were almost unbearable, but they didn't dwell anywhere near Black Hallows.
His ears prickled to something familiar. He strained for a moment, legs never ceased moving.
There.
Something, a lot of them, were moving through the trees, from a great distance.
And then he placed the sound.
The hyenas that weren't there laughed.
His feet seemed to sink into the moss-ridden ground as he booked it. No trail marked the way, only thickets and briar breaking before him.
"I'll keep you safe," he vowed. Words spoken aloud were more to motivate his legs than his unborn child.
They felt like a lie the moment he slipped past one that lunged from his right flank, and those were no hyenas.
"No," he breathed, eyes widening as he dodged another beasts of the Hoard, their gaping red maws and eyeless skulls coming alive from the pages of ancient texts.
Sneaky as the devil and fearsome as demons upon preys, the only place where they could not follow is a body of water.
He took a sharp left. A hiss tore from his lips when a thorny vine raked across his right ankle. Dirt spat up behind him with every desperate stride. His belly was a burden that shifted his balance with each breakneck step he took. The Hoard followed him across the forest floor, and only by a hair's breadth did he reach the riverbank.
He stayed down there, holding his breath. For all of their blood lust, their attention span waned as quickly as the wind.
He dragged himself out of the water later, when his surrounding was in the clear.
At the same moment he realized he had no idea where he was, a contraction seemed to rip his abdomen apart.
Of all the goddamn time.
His breathing was so loud the sound of the river above his head was that of a whisper. The clearing was empty, thankfully clear of trash or animal bones. It was all he could do, panting heavily while holding his belly together, to roll his cloak onto the water-slicked ground and stuffed Chopper's herbs into his mouth.
Then he lay down, shoulders hunching, trying to relax, contemplating whether he should just work a concussion into his head so he could pass out.
But he couldn't do that. There might not be anything within hearing distance now, but he needed to be alert and ready to bolt as soon as a new threat emerged.
He had hoped to have Luffy holding his hand and Zoro on the lookout and Chopper helping him when this happened. Truly, he'd been spoiled rotten; he hadn't planned for the situation where they would be unable to.
Somehow, the herbs didn't help much. Maybe the added stress from his earlier maneuver through the woods was a factor. Maybe it was his worries over those two resurfacing. Whatever it was, the process seemed to drag on longer than he thought.
He had been chased when the sun was high in the sky. Now it was bleeding out behind him. His face faintly stung from being whipped by the lower branches. His ankle was bleeding sluggishly.
He squeezed his eyes shut and put a hand on himself. There was no vague shape of thorns. The pain was descending so quickly he thought that a fully developed dragon was trying to slash his skin and rose from his stomach, ripping muscles and bones, killing him in the process.
"Fuck," his jaw worked, hissing more profanities through his clenched teeth that could make a nun faint. He knew he was saying something more, an endless stream of nonsensical words that humans mindlessly utter during their hours of pain because they couldn't help himself, as if it was a bargain, that as long as they kept talking then the suffering would stop.
His ears were muffled, as though he was submerging in water, then in the next moment it was ringing, like a thunderbolt had struck right next to his head. The only words he recognized were Zoro and Luffy, the form of them so familiar on his tongue, he would know the shape blind.
"Come on," he urged himself, the local spirits, the beasts, the trees, anything that could help him.
With deep gulps of air, he pushed hard and felt his abused muscles gradually open around something smooth and cold. He bore down with everything he had in him. He was so fucking afraid to let go of the pressure even for a second, fearing it would slip back inside or got stuck on the threshold.
And just when he'd finally had enough, when he was sure he couldn't do it, a dragon egg slipped out of him, whole and smooth and streaked with blood.
Robin had told him he would have a daughter. He believed her.
Birthing was the same as anything else in his life before he had met Luffy and Zoro: difficult and lonely, but ultimately survivable; at least now he had a baby girl to show for his trouble.
"Gwynn," he spoke her name aloud. Like the hero Gawain in the fairytales Luffy adored so much. In Zoro's tongue, it meant wine, something he loved brewing with his late sister.
For Law, it meant white, like the snowy mountaintops from whence he hailed.
He rested slumped against the roots of a nearby tree, too drained to crawl the scant feet to the river's edge to wash the blood from his skin. Bundling up the egg in the only blanket he had inside his scrip, he held her close to his chest. His legs were deadened, his vision swimming, his pulse still a thunderous scream inside his skull, but they had both survived.
Now that she was out of him, the surface of her temporary home was cold, as if his daughter had left all the fire inside him when she left. To ease her passage, he needed to keep her warm always.
He remembered his sleeping arrangement from before, when Luffy would stay in the middle because Zoro had pointed rudely at Law and said, "I don't want to sleep next to a bunch of sticks. His elbow will stab me blind by morning," and he had contemplated doing just that out of spite.
Later, when the swell of his belly made him restless with worry, it was Law who lay in the center, his partners bracketing him in a fortress of stubborn comfort.
"I have traveled alone since my childhood," he'd confessed, once, on the verge of collapse from days of insomnia. "This is different. I don't want to do this alone."
"You won't," Luffy had promised, tugging on his hair playfully. "We'll stay right here by your side."
"It is important," he still insisted, overcame with this irrational, humiliating fear that they were always going to leave him. "No matter how many research I did, a human is not equipped to raise a dragonborn alone. I don't want to accidentally hurt—"
"You'll be fine," Zoro said solemnly. "You won't have to do it alone."
Don't think about it.
Law allowed himself another moment of rest against the tree before dropping to hands and knees and dragging himself into the water. He pushed his head under to wash out the grime. He flushed out the residue blood and snot and sweat. He cleaned his hands. When he was done, his throat was bruised with water, but he felt halfway human again.
All the while he kept his daughter within sight and a countdown in mind, because the quickest way to losing one's sanity was losing track of time in the middle of Black Hallows.
"Enough rest for the day," he told her as he tucked her bundle carefully back into his satchel. "We've work to do."
His childhood left a lot to be desired, but it had made him inventive. The whole realm was at his fingertips. Resources were everywhere for those who knew how to work within nature. He gathered enough woods for a fire, he walked around finding more branches and vines, he stripped thin the fallen barks. During his foraging, some mushrooms found their way into his satchel as well.
When true night finally descended, Law had a fire going, roasted mushroom for supper under the waning moon, and the beginning of a basket woven beneath his deft hands.
The next two days went on like this.
He would move at daybreak and only stop at night. Lingering out in the open was a flat out invitation to getting caught.
There wasn't much to eat around here aside from mushrooms and wild onions. Sometimes he would be lucky enough to find a range of wild berries, but half of those were poisonous and the other half just tasted so badly he would rather starve.
His cloak was as clean as river water could manage, his satchel heavy with water skins, his bow close at hand. The basket rode his back, cradling the egg like treasure.
Black Hallows stretched for a third of the realm, and ever since the Hoard chased him out of his path he'd been trying to find his way back since. Ace and Sabo must notice the delay by now, must be searching. If he didn't find his way back soon it could be next year before they met again.
The Hoard. Law scowled harder. If they were back, that meant their Lord had escaped. Perhaps that was where Zoro and Luffy had been taken.
The thought made his jaw tighten. The seal had never been enough. This time, they'd better kill it.
He crouched, plucking wild weeds, when the basket shifted.
His eyes widened.
The egg was moving.
He bolted to the clearing he'd picked for tonight, dropped to his knees and flipped open the basket. "Are you kidding me," he groaned, though a thrill of excitement knifed through the exhaustion. The circumstance was less than ideal, but he was going to meet his daughter, at last. He would have to face his churning, overwhelming worries later. This was solely for Gwynn.
The coolness of the egg calmed him. It hobbled back and forth, then, with great tremor, a crack formed, then another until they webbed all over. Law helped moving things along. He spun it slowly, then carefully peeled open the cracked shell.
And there she was.
Struggling inside the bottom half of the egg was an infant with limbs curling tight, skin red and painfully soft, eyes squeezed shut. No scales on her body, no clear indication she was even a dragonborn.
Then her lids fluttered open, golden irises blazed within black sclera, a vertical pupil like a blade cutting through the approaching dark.
Her mouth wobbled like she was struggling to breathe, and for a moment it put Law on edge, but then she had managed to find some air after all, because she seemed to take in a lungful of it, and released back into the world a cry so loud it scared the nearby birds.
"Oh," he stared, afraid to move her. But she was asking for him, wasn't she? Did babies know to ask for their parents right away? She was certainly demanding something, and if that cries continued on for much longer the Hoard would find them, or some other species with a prejudice against dragons.
His hands reached inside, steady unlike his own breathing. At the first contact he almost recoiled at how vulnerable she was. What if he hurts her? What if he makes one wrong move and her neck rolls back too far before she was ready? But he drew her forth, and she wailed louder, and louder still when he finally laid her on his chest, his back meeting the ground without him knowing to lay there by the riverbank with his daughter.
Gwynn was shuddering and whimpering still, her face pressing wet rage into his collarbone, and he was so endeared he briefly forgot that they were in the middle of Black Hallows with all its lurking dangers. She was impossibly small and helpless, and her cries tapered off slightly after he smoothed his hand across her back, as if she loved him just as surely as he had been loving her for the past nine months.
Law took it back. His daughter hated him.
A small consolation, perhaps, that she seemed to hate everything in general. She hated the trees. She hated being placed on the ground. She hated bathing in the river. She hated the sun and the moon. She hated being clothed by things he made for her, and she hated being bundled up in only her blanket.
At the depth of night, when he cradled her in his arms to nurse, he wondered if Luffy had been a fussy infant. If Zoro had screamed bloody murder at his adoptive father.
Thinking of them opened up something wounded and worried inside his ribcage, and he shoved it closed again by reaching for another memory. He started thinking of his childhood. All parents must have done the same, drawing tireless comparison between themselves and their children.
Law couldn't know what kind of infant he had been, but he remembered being a troublesome toddler, a fact made abundantly clear by the disdain thrown his way from his matrons at the orphanage. Gwynn might take after him in this regard then. The only difference was simple and absolute: she was not afraid of him, and he would never strike her for crying through the night.
He spoke to her often, when they weren't busy ducking into an undergrowth to bypass a sleeping bear or when he thought he heard another hyena-like laughter. He spoke to her when he felt good. He spoke to her when the ache in his abdomen and the tearing pain between his legs made him dizzy. He spoke to her about her other parents to elevate the terrible pain of missing them both.
"I need you to channel all of your patience into keeping quiet," he whispered, tucking her tighter as another beast lumbered past.
"It's a decent morning today," he told her later, cradling a berry between his fingers and pressing it into her pudgy palms so she could feel its texture, smirking when she squealed in delight. "Good start so far, hm?"
When his body ached horribly, he would roll over to her, face pinched at her wobbling face. "I'm fine," he croaked. She whimpered harder against his chest. "It flares up sometimes," she huffed. "Not you, but the one from… before. Some very bad people made me carry heavy stuff to build statues when I was very young. I took care of them later on. Shush now."
Other times he let himself ramble into humor. "If your hair grows mossy green, I will never let you live it down. Though, if you can transform into a green dragon, I suppose you'd make fine camouflage. Not that Zoro-ya ever hides himself."
Or, with mock solemnity: "If you inherit Luffy-ya's appetite, I'm afraid we might need to rob a castle to afford it."
She was adorable and soft. It was hard to imagine that the world would wish her harm, but then, they had scorned Law based on their own assumptions, didn't they. It didn't matter that Gwynn was a harmless infant. She had true dragon blood running through her veins.
Then again, Law doubted he had looked quite so soft and lovely when he had been a small kid. Maybe he had looked like a fiend, and that was why he was treated the way he was.
Survival with her was constant labor. Law plucked leaves, fished, set trap for small boars. Hunting was out of the question with a squirming baby on his back. Oh, she loved her little basket well enough, but she was particular in her demands. Every waking moment of the day he had to wash her, checked her clothes, washed those clothes. He needed to feed her, then feed himself if he wanted to be able to feed her the day after, but how could he find something to eat if he must keep his eyes on her and his arms around her every single second?
She cried a lot and she rarely gave him so much as a gummy smile. She cried when she woke up and she cried herself to sleep. Sometimes it seemed his rocking and feeding her didn't help, but the moment he put her down, the crying became wailing, howling, choking on tears.
She needed to be close to her kin, he soon realized. Whatever fire ran in her blood, it wasn't satisfied by his touch alone.
"You want them, don't you," he sighed, adjusting her so her cheek pressed to his heart. "I do, too. Do not tell them that."
If she couldn't have Luffy and Zoro, she needed the next big thing. She needed her uncles.
Shit, shit, shit.
Law cut a path through the bramble and branches, the beasts howling in hot pursuit. Gwynn shrieked with fear, from both the howling and the fact that he'd put her in the basket and tied shut the lid, blocking out the light, but that was all he could do to make sure she didn't fall out during their escape.
His shoes were slashed across rocky grounds and he could feel blistering heat across his skin. A bleeding human and a young dragonborn, they might as well have shouted at the top of their lungs to get eaten alive.
A beast intercepted him from the shadow. Law nocked an arrow with a poisonous frog. Aimed and shot it down. Another came; another fell. His quiver rattled near empty, his hands moving by instinct. He wrenched an arrow free from the carcass before turning to shoot behind him. One more monster crumpled into the dark loam.
There were a lot of them.
Law vaulted over a fallen log and let the trees thwacked him as he pushed himself to his absolute limit. In front of him there was the distant vestige of light, but they were too deep into the woods still. He wasn't sure. In his blind panic he no longer knew which way was north or east, like a dumb fucking amateur. One mistake was all it took. His daughter would die—
He saw the scar first. Then the bloom of red and blue.
The Hoard had been terror itself. When they first appeared, they had slaughtered villages, chewing up people and spitting out their bones.
But before the fury of the twin dragons, terror itself learned fear.
Sabo struck first. His scales gleamed like an avalanche, crashing down and sweeping half of them into ruin.
Higher above, Ace took a deep breath then bellowed at the top of his lungs, his eyes inhumane and sharp, the sound splitting the sky, and fire poured down, razing the rest to the ground.
Law collapsed to his knees. Sensing dragons nearby, Gwynn stopped wailing.
Streaks of red and blue spiraled toward the ground, colliding in a thunderous impact that churned up soil and shattered trees. From the crater, Ace and Sabo emerged.
Their eyes met across the decimated clearing. The nearby trees had not survived the impact.
Sabo rushed over toward Law first, while Ace took a moment to compose himself.
"Holy shit," he breathed, puff of dark smoke still sizzling out of the corner of his mouth.
"A little help, maybe?" said Sabo as he knelt down next to Law.
"Holy shit," Ace repeated with feelings, rushing over.
"I didn't lose her," Law rasped, figuring it was best to reassure them about that first when Ace caught him under the arm, steadying him. "She's in the back."
"Buddy, that's not what we are freaking out about," Sabo said. "Let me take her for you."
Sabo loosened the straps and lifted it free. The moment he did, a yowling screech tore the silence, loud enough for them to wince.
"She does that," Law said. "She needs to be near me."
"Cute."
"Less so when you're being chased by the Hoard."
Ace's face twisted. "Again, holy shit."
Sabo was determined to soothe Gwynn. Law didn't have much stamina to protest. He looked to Ace instead.
"How are you here?" he wasn't sure if this was something his mind had conjured up.
"When you guys were a day late, Sabo set out to the Black Hallows to search, but you know how hard it is to navigate. Back at home, word reached me of heroes being trapped into a maze. I figured you were there alone. After that, all hells broke loose. It's all hands on deck to locate you."
It was hard to find one meager person in Black Hallows, let alone someone who had been constantly on the move. The fact that they found each other after days instead of months was a miracle.
Ace looked at his brother, who was flailing around with Gwynn, eyes curving in mirth. His eyes returned to Law.
"You're something else," he said. "Half a day more and you would have found our camp."
Ace and Sabo were Luffy's brothers in all but blood, though they were the same specie. They had established a reputation long before Luffy even entered the picture to take the realm by storm. Some might say it didn't help endearing dragons to other folks, some might applaud them. But the general consensus was that they were fearsome warriors with hearts of steel.
Gwynn wailed the moment Ace gathered her in his arms. "She hates me!" he cried out, panicked. "Take her! Take her!"
Law pinched Gwynn's nose, briefly confusing her enough to stifle her cries. "Crying is just her favorite pastime," he lied. "If she stops crying, that means she doesn't like you."
She went silent for only a bit the moment Sabo held her.
"Oh my god," Sabo despaired. "She hates me!"
Law put his head in his hands.
Their encampment was not as crowded as Law'd suspected. Tents of different sizes were set up, with different fires scattering about. He spotted Yamato sharpening a sizeable blade on one side, and Koala chatting on the other end with another person.
He was led to his own tent, a canvas with a large sleeping area, small reading table on the ground, and a small crib veiled by a drape.
They fussed with Gwynn, unable to calm her down. Law took her back. At once she quieted, drifting into sleep. "Now she's a dear," he drawled mercilessly to dual protests of indignation. "I suppose now that she has met others, she finally develops some preferences."
Without a baby in their hands, their fussing attention shifted to him. Sabo pulled a healer inside to take stock of Law's wounds. Ace returned swiftly with clean clothes and a small platter of pork.
"These are mine," he said with a wink. "We're roughly the same in build. Have some food too, then the bath is that way."
The healer's murmured inventory of injuries had both brothers wincing.
"Right, I need to send word to Nami that you're here," Sabo shuddered, paling. "She's not going to be happy about this."
"Wait until Luf and Zoro catch wind of this," Ace added.
At their names, Law tensed up. "Has there been any news?"
"No, sorry," Sabo admitted, but his eyes were bluer in their ironclad faith. "They'll make it through. They have too much to lose now."
"Don't worry your pretty little head over it," Ace sang, though worry still pinched the corner of his brow.
After another round of checking whether he wanted anyone else told of his survival, and he did not, they left him to it.
When the Lord of the Hoard was defeated and everyone was released, Luffy and Zoro returned to camp with much fanfare. Law missed the grand entrance entirely, having surrendered to sleep long before the noise reached his tent.
He woke to Luffy's nose on his, pressing and pressing against him as he wrestled his mind out of a fading dream. A much bigger hand was gripping his nape gently, and the both of them smelled sharp with blood. Another moment, and finally his heart lurched. He was kissing them before he knew it, holding onto Luffy's armor and kissing Zoro and letting them press him back in all their worries and joys.
"Torao!"
"There you are."
They sounded weary. They looked weary. Law opened his mouth to reassure them, to check if they were wounded, when a familiar cry split the air.
He got to see their eyes widening.
"Torao?" Luffy asked in wonder.
Zoro's gaze darted around the tent, wild and searching, until it locked onto the crib nearby.
They rushed over, flipped open the drape, then froze.
"Is she—"
"So cute!"
Law tried for a victorious smile. What emerged was worn, crooked with fatigue. "Meet your daughter," he gestured helplessly.
Luffy looked ready to pick Gwynn up but stopped at the last minute of his own accord, glancing down at the rusted blood splashing across his body. Zoro's face opened with something so bare, so painfully small that Law had to look away.
His limbs wouldn't corporate. He had wanted to tell them off then tell them how much he'd missed them but the words died on his tongue, sliding back down his guts. He knew what he should feel. Funny, that was. Then Luffy's expression dangled like a pendulum between worry, alarm and sadness, and it wasn't so funny after all. The usual panicked urge to soothe him should flare up at his downturned mouth, but all Law could manage was a slow blink back.
He hadn't realized they'd returned to his side again, nor that their voices had been trying to get his attention for quite some time.
Then green filled his vision. Palms, warm and hardened near the separate fingers, rested on his cheeks gently. "You need to rest right now," Zoro said. His eyes were knowing. "Alone," he continued, this time for Luffy's sake.
Luffy nodded, understanding dawned. He was never a fool for long. "I get it!" he said, then lowered his voice at Zoro's warning grunt. "I get it," he whispered, creeping closer to, of all things, wipe nonexistent dust away from Law's eyebrows. "I'll bathe, then we'll bring her out to play with her. Torao sleeps."
I will, he thought. Then he thought nothing at all when he sank deeper under the mountains of blankets.
His days moved with slightly less strain now. Seeing Gwynn finally soothed in the arms of Luffy and Zoro nearly brought him to tears; the relief that it was now not solely on him to make her feel better had his shoulders less heavy and his brow less furrowed.
He should be happier, but he was so tired all the time. He ate little, slept even less, and spent hours between tending Gwynn in a haze, only stirred when Zoro nudged him awake to feed her, or when Luffy brought him some food in bed.
The dam broke on the fourth day. Luffy was clearing up the barely touched food from Law's side while talking about some troubles he got into with others in the camp. Spilled ale, misfired spells, someone's pants had gotten stolen, the usual.
He only looked alarmed when Law didn't lecture him. Law had to grip his shoulder for a moment. "I'm tired," he explained.
"You're tired a lot these days, Torao."
"Days alone with an infant in Black Hallows will do that," he snapped. "I could have been much worse than just tired."
"Torao."
Just like that, with that damnable nickname, and strong arms around him, it was enough to make Law cling to Luffy's neck, his eyes stinging. "I needed you," he gasped. "And you two weren't there. You promised."
And it was unfair. It was unfair that Law had to go through another hurt alone, and it was unfair that Luffy didn't even have the chance to take care of him at his most vulnerable, and it was unfair that a war had once again prevented Zoro from protecting the people he had vowed to protect, and it was breaking Law's fucking heart by the time Zoro came through the tent, making a beeline for them like he had a sixth sense for this sort of things.
Law had been through worse. This was just another scar in a long line of trials.
He'd been spoiled so rotten he couldn't face this one without breaking under the weight of it.
"I'm sorry," Luffy murmured into his hair, his hold tightening when Law shook his head. Zoro's hand found the nape of his neck, his expression sad and stern. "We tried to get back as fast as we could."
"I know," he said. Of course he knew.
To lighten the mood, Zoro decided to snitch. "Luffy almost fought people on our own side. Multiple times."
Luffy pouted. "Unlike Zoro, who decked a monk."
Law gave him an incredulous look, trying hard not to be charmed. "You decked a monk?"
"In my defense, he deserved it."
Their banter flew back and forth, the whiplash familiar and well-worn from when they'd first met. It didn't resolve anything, and it was hard to do so anyway, when the one to blame had been incinerated by two dragons for seven days, but Law felt less alone, his hurt soothed for but a moment.
That night they slept tangled together on the ground with Gwynn in the middle, and in the morning Zoro would not stop staring until Law dutifully ate all his breakfast, and Luffy would be a touchy nuisance in the bath with him, and it would be perfect.