Archive of Our Own ^beta

Trafalgar

“Torao!” Straw Hat called from the deck of his ship. “Come join us!”

Law sighed but did get up from his spot among the trees to walk over to Straw Hat excitedly waving at his archeologist’s side.

“Tra-fal-gar, it’s not that difficult, Straw Hat-ya. Why do you keep messing it up?”

“‘Cause it’s a troublesome sound! And Torao’s better anyway!”

Jumping down into the cold deep of the ocean was starting to sound more appealing.

Predictably, the rest of the Straw Hats thought his suffering was funny.

“Don’t mind the Captain,” said Nico with an indulgent smile. “He means no harm, but some sound combinations are quite difficult for him, regardless of how many languages he speaks.”

Really? That statement seemed dubious to Law. “I would have thought he knows his Eastern and Grand and that’s it.”

It would explain his horribly thick accent anyway.

To his surprise, Nico started laughing. “Oh, no. I believe the Captain actually knows the most languages out of all of us. He’s quite proficient in picking them up.”

Then, likely spotting Law’s suspicion, Nico called out, “Captain, how many languages do you speak?”

And Straw Hat immediately perked up and threw himself over Nico’s lap, nearly toppling them over if not for her additional hands keeping them upright.

“Oh, I don’t know! Let me count! There’s Low Goan and High Goan, Eastern and Grand! Ace made me learn Southern with him and when Gramps noticed, he made us learn some Westran and Northford because marines are supposed to be able to talk to all people.”

At that, Straw Hat pulled a face. “I think he was lying ‘cause all marines we met only ever spoke Grand.”

“We are on the Grand Line, Captain,” Nico reminded him, but Straw Hat pouted still. “Smoker’s Eastern and even he speaks Grand!”

Yes, Law had noticed that when the marine had kept trying to order them around while Straw Hat, stubbornly, replied in Eastern, all but goading the man.

“Anyway, I kind of forgot lots of Westran, but Sanji curses lots in Northford when he doesn’t want anyone to hear him.”

Straw Hat had leaned forward as if attempting to keep it a secret, but he didn’t lower his volume at all, allowing the cook of the crew, who’d stepped on deck right then, to overhear the comment and promptly let out a string of curses, finished by a damning, “stop lying, Luffy!”

The only reply he got was a laugh before Straw Hat continued his enumeration, apparently still not done. “Alabastian is mostly like Grand just with more words and Drum kinda reminds me of Northford. They have the same difficult sounds. Everyone on Water Seven speaks Grand too, but Franky sometimes uses really funny words in-between, just like Brook! I’m trying to learn some of Robin’s language, but it has lots of long words that are really difficult. Rayleigh taught me some New while we were training—”

How was that not a statement that regularly knocked the will out of people to even just attempt challenging the Straw Hats?

“-and Momo’s been teaching me some words from Wano!” Straw Hat finished cheerfully. “I think that’s it!”

“He also knows some regional dialects,” Nico added as if the sheer number of languages Straw Hat was apparently somewhat capable of speaking wasn’t already insanely high.

“Most people don’t bother learning that many languages,” Law felt the need to point out.

Grand and New were given for all pirates leaving their Blue, but most people didn’t bother learning more than three languages.

“Most people are stupid,” Straw Hat replied. “How else are they going to know I’m gonna be Pirate King if they can’t understand me?”

“Maybe they’d be more inclined to listen if you stopped butchering their names.”

People generally speaking tended to pay more attention when you’re making an effort, though Law couldn’t claim that the other Captain was being cruelly careless, merely unapologetically brash, which was worse in some ways.

“But Traf— Tro— your name is hard! Torao is easier! And fits you!”

“Does it now?”

“Yeah!” Luffy cheered. “You’re always bundled up like the tigers back home!”

Law couldn’t quite see the correlation between the two, but he supposed that the situation and name could be a lot worse. Perhaps the fact that Law gave in to their idiocy so quickly was a sign that he was acclimating to their insanity.

What a terrifying thought.

“Trafalgar wouldn’t happen to mean ‘tiger’, would it?” Nico asked with a smile so kind it had to be fake.

“It means ‘end of the column’ or ‘end of the west’,” Law elaborated only for Luffy to splutter in confusion.

“But I thought you’re from North Blue!”

D.

Law had crafted himself into a weapon for Doflamingo’s destruction. Much like the day he had crawled to their pirate crew, the weight of bombs lifting him up instead of dragging him down, no part of him had been left untouched by his vengeance.

How strange that the one thing that should have remained disconnected from Doflamingo was now the knife he could push into his heart. He’d wondered about Corazon’s reaction to his name and why he was so adamant that Law leave.

“I didn’t know you were a Celestial Dragon until today!” Law shouted, evading another attack.

Years of attuning his fighting styles to Doflamingo’s and he was still only barely scraping by, but now he had an ace up his sleeve, one that would hopefully shake Doflamingo badly enough that he’d make a mistake, a mistake, leave room.

“What do you think of D.?” Law’s taunts didn’t fall on deaf ears. Doflamingo might still be grinning, but he was losing his composure quickly, his grin turning just an edge too sharp.

“Are you saying Straw Hat Luffy was led by destiny to come to kill me, who has godly blood in his veins? How idiotic!”

Maybe, it had been destiny or fate, an eight-hundred-year-old secret exposing itself.

Law had loved his hidden name more when it was a gift from his parents and not a burden to carry, another scalpel cutting through skin and muscle, exposing that gods bled red and their bones broke just as easily.

In another life, Law would know the true meaning of his name and perhaps it would have a kinder translation, one befitting of a doctor. He’d have been taught generations of history and secrecy, would be the one to tell his sister the same stories.

But in this one world, just like everything else about him, it’s a declaration of war.

Sworn Enemy of God.

“I’m a D. too!”

Behind his glasses, Doflamingo’s eyes widened as Law grinned with bloody teeth, for now, victorious.

Let the meaning of his name be another sacrifice for his mission.

Law had given it thirteen years he never should have experienced in the first place. There was no use in lingering on possibilities of a life that didn’t stand in contrast, in defiance, of Doflamingo’s.

Water

“On Flevance, you’re given four names,” Law said slowly, giving them something other than the weather to talk about. The night was as cold as his hometown’s warmest winter nights, snow covering the landscape like a blanket, dulling the noise of the harbor. Law was wrapped up in all the blankets they had found and Corazon’s arms, but he couldn’t cease shivering anyway. Sardonically, Law reminisced the many hours sitting at his father’s desk as he wrote down the symptoms of approaching death.

Unable to become warm, constant shivering— the clattering of white pearl teeth his very own dirge.

“Four names,” Law repeated. “First name and secret name at birth, though you’re not supposed to know the latter yet.”

“D. Law,” Corazon muttered, his breath rising high until it disappeared in the dark. Law nodded and tried to bury himself closer in Corazon’s embrace. He didn’t have the man’s confidence in surviving the riches of the White City.

“You get your last name when you reach three months. Amber Lead’s been in our bodies so long, Flevance had a lot of miscarriages in the last decade, and infants died too.”

Law had been relatively alright, not much sicker than their healthiest children, but Lami had been feverish and dying already. They’d all been from the moment they were born, just much slower.

“We paint the faces of the infants white and sing a lot.” Law had been home from school that day, where he’d practiced the songs and well-wishes all day, still thinking that praying was worth the breath it wasted.

“That sounds lovely.”

“It was,” Law continued, tainted as the memory was now. The three-month bar had seemed so significant to him then. Only after had he dared to call Lami his sister. Before that, she’d been his parents’ other child, a person he could learn to let go of if they didn’t make it.

He’d been so naïve, thinking everything would be alright.

“Did you have something similar? Where you’re from?”

Corazon shifted, his fingers tightening around Law’s body like it was a sufficient replacement for his nicotine addiction. By now, Law was fairly sure Corazon hadn’t always smoked, but that it was a nervous habit gone wrong as he tended to smoke most when the topic of Doflamingo came up, or another doctor freaked out on them.

“Yes,” Corazon admitted. “I don’t remember much of it. It’s a grand ceremony and all your family’s allies are there. Some long speeches and so on, nothing very entertaining or interesting to a child.”

Law tried to picture Corazon at an age younger than he was and failed miserably. He didn’t mind too much; he got the feeling that Corazon hadn’t had a very happy childhood either and Law’s grief was heavy enough for his small shoulders.

“When do you get your other name?”

“When we’re ten,” Law said. “That’s when we’re told our secret names, but not yet what they mean. We’re supposed to learn how to keep them secret first before we learn what it is.”

Law hadn’t ever been told. Flevance had burned before he’d reached his sixteenth year. Corazon didn’t know either what precisely it meant, leaving Law to wonder whether any other D. might be aware of the secret his family had kept over centuries.

“After that, we pick our true names. They’re for family only, the people you hold dear.”

Corazon paused, hearing all the confirmations Law couldn’t say aloud. “And you picked Water.”

“I did,” Law affirmed. “Always wanted to leave Flevance—” He interrupted himself with a coughing fit. His ribcage protested with a vengeance as if personally punishing him for being out in the cold, for daring to force it to another breath.

Used to it by now, Corazon drew soothing circles on his back, waiting for the coughing fit to die down before he offered Law something to drink. His throat was sore and Law struggled not to drain the glass all at once, knowing it would only trigger another fit.

“Water for the sea, for life. I— Cora-san?”

Law bit the inside of his cheek.

“Yes?”

I don’t want to die.

A truth he didn’t dare say out loud because it would make the separation only worse on Corazon, so he chose to swallow his desperation, ask for something else instead.

“You have to say my name when I die.”

“Law—”

“Promise me.”

Law pulled at the strings of Corazon’s hat. “When I die, you have to say my name when you lay me to rest. I won’t remember it otherwise and I— I don’t have anything else left.”

That was what it all boiled down to.

The sickness in his veins, the clothes on his back, and his name at the tip of his tongue. “I told you why I picked my true name, so you have to, Cora-san, I don’t—”

To his horror, Law began to sob like a child, tears rolling down his cheek as if this situation was any worse than hiding beneath the mountain of corpses littering the streets of Flevance. White City, tainted red in blood and fire.

He was two names older than his sister and he’d been too busy crying to recall their funeral rites.

“You have me, Law,” Corazon said. “You’ll always have me.”

In between the hiccupping, Law almost dared to believe.

Law

Law knew from the start that finding another person to recruit to their small crew of four wouldn’t be easy. He needed a loyal crew quick enough to escape Doflamingo’s strings. Hoping for one strong enough to stand against the madman was nothing more than a ridiculous fantasy and Law wasn’t foolish enough to turn away somebody who seemed like they’d be a good fit.

And the fact was, they desperately needed a shipwright.

They all knew enough to keep their ship going, but if the Tang sustained any severe damage, they’d be in trouble and would have to invite a strange into their home, a concept that threatened to make Law nauseous.

So best they find somebody who’d want to join their crew and could take care of the Tang simultaneously.

Ikkaku seemed like a smart choice. Skepticism and suspicion that the other three lacked almost entirely wrapped around a sharp tongue and steady fingers; a mechanic with some surgical experience. While Law had no intention of giving his crew a theme of any kind, Flevance had doctors’ offices on every street like other cities had houses of worship. The thought of surrounding himself with medical professionals was comforting.

Now there was only the matter of convincing Ikkaku to join them.

The mechanic leaned back in her chair, studying them with a look of incredulity and curiosity that Law categorized as promising.

“So let me get this straight,” Ikkaku said, voice striking enough to stand out from the buzz of the bar. “You have a guy called Penguin, who is not a penguin, and a guy called Shachi, who is not an orca, but a polar bear called Bepo, who isn’t brave?”

“He’s a polar bear mink,” Shachi corrected. “Besides, doesn’t your name mean narwhal?”

Ikkaku crossed her arms in front of her chest and if she weren’t smiling, Law would assume she was offended. “So what about it?”

“Nothing! I’m just saying you shouldn’t be one to call us out, right, Captain?”

Ikkaku brushed his statement aside with a flick of her wrist. “No, if anything, we have to judge the Captain. Trafalgar Law, was it? What does that mean?”

“My given name is only ‘Law’,” he said slowly. He hadn’t thought about it for a while, hadn’t allowed himself to linger on grief older than the hurt Doflamingo had dealt.

Ikkaku blinked, surprised, then nodded. “I was wondering about that. Double names, you don’t get that too often here. What island are you from?”

Not one whose name she had to know of yet. He’d wondered about shortening his name even more, cutting four down to one, which would arise less suspicion, make him less memorable. “Does it matter?”

Shrugging, Ikkaku took another gulp from the drink they had paid for. “I suppose it doesn’t, rule-maker.”

“Rule-maker?” Penguin picked up. “Where’d you get that from?”

“Law,” Ikkaku said. “That’s what it means, at least where I’m from. What’s it to you?”

An admittance, a price to pay for more security.

Then again, Flevance and all its books had burned. Who was left to look up the meaning of the name he’d been given by his parents? Nobody remembered their first naming ceremony. Law himself only retained vague memories of his parents telling him the story.

“Loyalty,” Law said. “It means loyalty where I’m from. Does that sate your curiosity?”

“Knowing that my new Captain is named for the best quality on the high seas?” Ikkaku grinned. “Of course, it does! Now show me the beauty I’m supposed to be looking after!”

Law let out the breath he’d barely noticed holding and got up. Penguin tossed the barkeeper a couple coins, then the Heart Pirates left the building with one more person carrying their mark.

Heading straight towards the horizon.