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The first and only time she asks for a child is after Wolf’s seventy-third birthday celebration, where there is plenty of embracing and hand-shaking, exclamations upon joyous reunion, alcohol and sentimental tears. The old man is ecstatic, slapping Law’s shoulder in greeting, accepting Shachi’s heartfelt toast with tears in his eyes, pulling a laughing Ikkaku in for a twirl before the bonfire like a man forty years younger. One of the locals from Pleasure Town, a carpenter’s apprentice, brings his fiancee from one of the fishing villages down south. She is all smiles and rosy cheeks, wearing bright flowers in her sash and a sunny handkerchief in her hair. Her engagement band catches the glow of the bonfire, and her floral sundress pulls against the swell of her belly. After the meal, they dance together to Uni’s fiddle as everyone claps along.
Law hangs back, watching from the periphery of the gathering.
He catches her watching the happy couple with undisguised longing, and feels a rare pang of jealousy.
Later in the night, safely tucked beneath the covers in the confines of Wolf’s guest room, she turns to face him. He accepts her embrace, feeling her warm hands envelope his freezing ones, and she presses against him with little reserve, her cheek to his breastbone, listening to the steady thumping of his heart.
“What do you think of starting a family one day?” she whispers.
“No,” he says.
His voice is cold and resolute, and he hates himself for that nearly as much as he does for the answer itself. Already he feels the familiar urge to clam up and retreat, to numb his guilt with avoidance. More than that, he is terrified of the chasm that is sure to sprout between them, now that he’s finally vocalized the reality that he is too broken to give her what she wants.
The idea of parenthood – of creating an innocent life, someone of his own flesh and blood, of bringing them up in this gutted, wretched world – fills him with a deep and abiding dread. He can only think of Lami’s final moments – how terrified she must have felt, alone in the dark, before the smoke smothered her cries. Of Cora-san. Of his own crew, left to Blackbeard’s mercies on Winner Island.
His life has been defined by an unbroken line of failures – failure to protect, to love, to let go.
What kind of suffering will he inflict to his own child?
“I can’t do it,” he says. “I’m not made to be a father.”
She doesn’t press or argue, only sighs. If she feels any hurt or frustration by this rejection, she buries it deep within herself.
She has always been good at this – bottling up her true feelings, stifling back her pain so as not to inconvenience others. She did the same in the years leading up to Dressrosa. In the aftermath of Winner Island. Law cannot begin to fathom this love she harbors for him; it is depthless and terrifying. Inexplicable. Anyone else would have left by now. A nasty voice needles at the back of his mind, taunting that he isn’t enough, won’t ever be enough, that one day she too will see past the charade, realize she was duped by an imposter, and cast him aside. It is only a matter of time.
“It’s okay,” she says, wistful. She presses a kiss to his cheek and rests her head to his chest. “What we have now is enough.”
Law isn’t convinced she means it.
Every year, just around the summer solstice, Law visits the ruins. Every year, he regrets it.
All regimes boast of their own founding mythos, and the fall of the World Government necessitated a new one. The official narratives surrounding Ohara, the Wolf bridges, and Lulusia have been revised and immortalized, but Flevance remains a political powder keg to this very day. The Navy gave its polished non-apology, but the neighboring kingdoms which participated in the joint operation – Vetria, Deul, and Karuha – now all equal partners to this current hegemon, and vital for maintaining stability in the North Blue, are not so keen on being branded as pariahs and war criminals. Here, the appetite for self-flagellation is nonexistent. The vast majority of their citizens still cling to the self defense narrative, that it was not their own country which was responsible for the atrocities, that the blame could be conveniently leveled to the other two. The game is circuitous and interminable, the tides shifting arbitrarily whenever regional rivalries flare. Today it is all Deul Kingdom’s fault; the next, Karuha is under scrutiny, then Vetria, then the Navy, then the Celestial Dragons (the most convenient scapegoat of them all), then back to Deul, and so on.
(Law remembers, even if nobody else will. Vetria invaded from the north, Karuha from the south. Deul was the first to impose the siege, later to be backed by the World Government, which enforced the naval blockade to the west. The faceless men who had murdered his parents wore Vetrian military patches on their uniforms. A demolition unit from Karuha torched the residential blocks to flush out survivors, stoking the fire which ultimately claimed his sister’s life.)
Inherent to these squabbles is the notion that Flevance was always fated to fall, no matter who intervened first – that the Amber Lead itself made the land uninhabitable, that the people were doomed from the moment their ancestors stepped foot on this parcel of cursed soil. Generations of greed, incompetence, and willful ignorance hollowed out the land. The royal family kept the secret hidden, but the conspiracy rooted far deeper than that, a civilizational defect – poisoning the courts and regulatory bodies, the universities, the mining companies and labor unions, the very fabric of society itself. This is as concrete as the official story will ever get, the only point all parties agree upon unanimously, though they will never say it aloud – that Flevance’s downfall was ultimately of her own people's making.
The first time Law visited after his return from the New World was to accompany Nico Robin, who expressed interest in writing a monograph on the White City’s history. He agreed, albeit reluctantly; she was the only one he trusted to be competent enough to cover the subject objectively. He visits every year after that. It’s become something of a ritual. Sometimes he comes alone, sometimes with his crew. Decades post-destruction, the land is still barren, the ruins mostly untouched. A handful of civilians visit from the neighboring kingdoms, the number slowly climbing every year. Some are there to test their wills and hunt ghosts. Some are there as students of science and history, to sample and probe, to sketch and document. Others venture here to mourn their loved ones – many of the same soldiers who’d breached the walls and razed the place to the ground.
A cenotaph has been constructed in the city square. There is talk of building a museum to commemorate the conflict.
Law always finds himself at the gates of the old hospital. The structure itself has been reduced to a field of rubble. Tufts of stray vegetation peek out from between the fallen debris. A buzzard circles high overhead, its jagged silhouette cut out starkly against the firmament. A lone dandelion has sprouted up next to his shoe, a startling splash of yellow amidst the dreary monochrome. He sits on a column fragment and tries to picture his parents’ faces, but can’t. He only retains bits and pieces of his former life – his father’s booming laugh, his mother’s cool, reassuring touch against his forehead when he burned with fever, Lami’s bubbling laughter, the press of her small hand against his.
The weight of Flevance’s tainted history presses all too heavy here. A familiar melancholy suffocates him. If his parents knew of the kingdom’s cursed fate, would they still have brought him and Lami into this world? The question of their complicity, too, haunts him to no avail. His father was one of Flevance’s highly regarded surgeons, often called to the royal palace to consult the court physicians. His mother came from a family of Amber Lead mining executives.
How much did they know?
His questions are only met with empty silence. The dead offer no answers.
Law knows he cannot be a good father. He has seen and experienced too much. He is warped and cynical, his wounds too deep, his heart scarred irrevocably by the past. He looks at his hands – the same hands that cradled half a dozen grenades to his chest as he cursed the world and vowed for vengeance, the same hands that gripped the dagger that pierced Cora-san’s back.
That awful voice is back, hissing that he is too much like Doffy – cruel, controlling, averse to gentleness.
He is unfit. He cannot nurture an innocent life.
The White City is often the focus of the tragedy, yet hardly anybody frequents its countryside, where there too linger countless sites of destruction. The villages and mining camps on the outskirts were burnt first as the invading forces advanced. Many of the survivors fled to the city, only to be shot down at the main gate by their own compatriots, who suspected them to be acting as willing decoys for the enemy.
Even before the final war broke out, there was talk of entire rural communities being annihilated by the disease; most of these villagers had worked in the mines for generations, after all. On the eve of the outbreak in the city, the newspapers were filled with horror stories from the countryside – of parents waking to find their children dead in their beds, of young farmhands collapsing in the fields. By the time the actual invasion was underfoot, many had already turned to mass suicide to spare themselves the end stages of the disease.
There were plenty of mercy killings, too. Law remembers stumbling across the scene of one when hiding from Vetrian patrols in a ransacked apartment. The entire family was shot to death, the children dressed in their pajamas and tucked meticulously in their beds, positioned to look as if they were fast asleep. They each were shot in the head. One of the boys was still clutching a stuffed animal, his eyes screwed shut as if he’d been bracing himself in his final moments. A large patch of dried blood crusted his pillowcase. The parents’ corpses were in the living room – the mother, curled up on the sofa in her nightgown, a thick patch of Amber Lead spotting sprouting up the side of her neck, the pistol strewn centimeters from the father’s outstretched grasp.
These sights plague his dreams still to this day.
Wolf will be turning seventy-eight soon. Law insists on visiting more often, though the old man waves off any concerns about his health, declaring he’ll live at least forty more years. His movements are slower and more purposeful, and he leans heavily on his walking cane. Today he is holding an unofficial exhibition of his latest contraptions. With Bepo’s help, he proudly unveils invention after invention, pontificating on their various selling points, while Shachi and Penguin give highflown critiques from the audience. The schoolchildren from Pleasure Town are in attendance too, enchanted by the talking polar bear and the old man’s ‘genius’ creations. They are firmly on the side of the misunderstood visionary, and soon a lively argument ensues between the critics and the commonfolk. The children stay until evening, when their parents come to pick them up.
A little girl runs up to her father, laughing, and he sweeps her up, letting her perch on his shoulders. Law watches as they head off down the hill together, hand in hand, the child turning back and waving frantically to Bepo and Wolf.
Inexplicably, a wistful feeling simmers. He tamps it down.
Love, Law comes to realize, is a choice, not a condition. It is imperfection and vulnerability, the growing pains of two mismatched lives fitting together as one, the risk of being hurt beyond repair. But it is also warmth and safety and acceptance – the shared hardships and triumphs, the reassurance of shelter in each other’s arms. Something to build. Something worth fighting for.
He chooses to love her the same way she chose to love him – quietly, haltingly, painstakingly – even while struggling at times to convey his feelings or to even comprehend the idea that someone could love him back.
Law slowly settles into his love for her. For the first time in years, he finds relief in sharing his burdens rather than bottling them up. They learn each others’ faults and idiosyncrasies, treasuring the companionable silences, taking comfort in touch and conversation. She loves him with a frank sincerity, conveying her affection through every kiss and caress.
Bit by bit, the accusatory voice in his head begins to fade. The nightmares will never fully leave – neither will the old fears of abandonment and loss – but slowly, surely, a kernel of curiosity, that lingering what if?, takes root and unfurls, taking the shape of tangible desire.
These days, he often dwells on his time with Cora-san, recalling his parting smile and beaming optimism. Cora-san, who saw something beyond Law’s rage and nihilism, who always maintained hope for the future. Cora-san, who also chose to love him unconditionally. Just like her. Just like his crew.
There are still times when Law feels hopelessly disconnected from this fantastical version of himself – the one who isn’t a complete fuck up, the one somehow deserving of all the love and patience bestowed to him. But he wants to get there. He wants to carve out all the mangled, jagged pieces and prove the voice in his head wrong – that he isn’t defined by Doffy or his failures, that he can be more than the sum of his losses.
More than ever now, he yearns to fully embrace the freedom Cora-san granted him.
When he finally dredges up the courage to broach the topic again, it is his turn to be nervous. It’s been five years; he doesn’t know if she’s changed her mind. Maybe she has, and he’s being selfish, too capricious –
“Are you sure?” she asks, anxious, her eyes searching his face.
He swallows back his trepidation.
“Only if you still want to–”
She launches herself into him, hugging him fiercely. Tears shine in her eyes.
“Of course I do,” she says, over and over again.
She is crying openly now. He holds her tightly back, his heart beating furiously, not wanting to let this go.
He draws in a ragged breath, then blinks in wonder. There are tears in his eyes, too.