Work Text:
The passage of time means little to a fruit that cannot rot, when its entire purpose is to be consumed, awareness isn't something it bothers with. It's normal at first, waking ever so slightly power and energy pulsing beneath its skin, as the hands of a being hold it. It prepares to be consumed, to have its flesh slide into a stomach, to gouge out a piece of soul and burn it, use the fuel to burn itself into place and fill the being with everything else that it is. To lodge itself into place and possess the soul completely and transform the flesh into flame.
But the teeth do not come, for it is not a mouth that breaks its skin. Instead its stem is plucked and it's set down on a flat surface. A dagger pierces it down the center, and the Mera Mera no mi is split in two. It's not what it expected but not all that strange either, it would just pool its essence into whichever soul was most flammable, whichever soul made the better kindling, whichever would burn brightest when its flames take over.
Each half of it is lifted in unison, bitten and swallowed impossibly in sync, its flesh sinking into both beings in the exact same moment. It searches for the fuel, to burn itself a hole, and instead it finds cavities.
The two beings consuming its flesh, the two beings drinking down its foul nectar with an unfamiliar fervor, each had identical cavities burned into their soul. It was as if each being, humans it now knew, had done the work for it. Neither was a more suitable host. The cavities were identical and it was all too easy, divided as it was, to fill them. It was as if another had given up on the job halfway through. These souls were perfect cavities and vacant of any occupant. It didn't know if this was supposed to happen, if its hosts had planned this somehow or if the universe had chosen to create them like this, but the Mera Mera no Mi was possessive and these two boys' souls were perfectly shaped to be filled with fire. To burn and burn and burn and it would not choose. Fire was greedy, it was greedy, and as much as something like a devil fruit could it wanted. It would not leave a perfectly good vessel incomplete, cold and empty.
For the first and last time in its existence the Mera Mera no Mi would have two users simultaneously. Power equally divided, slipping into the nook already carved and filling them from the inside out. The two beings catching fire, and so quickly embracing the heat, tangled in each other and flames dancing side by side and burning with an intensity that surprised them both.
Its power was split in two, and yet it burned hotter than ever before.
Many years later, the next time the Mera Mera no Mi sprouted, it would look a little different then it had when the two perfect vessels had found it. If the next person to stumble across it happened to be familiar with what it used to look like, they might be surprised to see it split into twin cherries sharing a stem.