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“Do you want to stay on Zou?” Law asks, the question bursting forth from the stench of anxiety rotting around him, a pungent foulness that’s lurked all morning.
Bepo blinks at him. Stares. They’re leaving Zou tomorrow, finally, the Tang already packed up and ready to go. After too long, all the Hearts will be sailing together again—well, Hearts and guests, but Bepo will tolerate the guests—and now, what? Not go?
“What do you mean?” Bepo asks, careful not to spook him. Like Law is the wild animal—a too human turn of phrase Bepo has been given funny looks for using on Zou—half-feral and ready to snap. He hadn’t been like this when he’d first arrived, had laughed, a geniune laugh, when Bepo had tackled him into a hug. Had smiled too, small smiles without a hint of an edge. Law had been happy, at ease in a whole new way, and Bepo had let himself hope that now they would be all okay, better than okay.
All the same, he’d known it wouldn’t last. He’s not stupid, especially not when it comes to Law. And as the long, busy Zou days had passed, Law’s ease had retreated back behind scowls and the shadow of his hat. His answers about Dressrosa, sparing to begin with, had dried up entirely. This morning Bepo had woken up to the haze of stress smells permeating throughout the camp, Law huddled against a tree, his eyes sunken in, and Bepo had decided he had to do something. Had made Law go on a walk with him, taken him to the forest clearing with the gnarled stumps he and Zepo had used to play on, once upon a time. Had let Law work through his own gnarled thoughts until he was ready to talk—they’d all learned early not to push, and Bepo had always been the most patient—Law had paced around the clearing until he’d stopped with a near-violent suddenness and asked. That.
“I mean, you don’t have to come with us,” Law says, still not making any sense at all. “It’s Zou! You’ve been away for thirteen years now, way longer than you should have been, and so you just got it back and your parents back and—“
He trails off, sinking down onto the nearest stump with a deflated sigh, tugging the hat further down. Bepo waits.
“I won’t force you to leave your home again,” Law finally bites out, looking up to glare at Bepo like this is a fight.
Oh, Bepo thinks. He’d taken Law to meet his parents the day before, finally. Showed him the house he’d grown up in, the same one with its two preserved bedrooms and their musty smells of the past. His parents had loved Law, because Law had saved Bepo’s life, and because Law had been eerily polite. Eerily quiet, as Bepo broke the news to his parents that they would be leaving again.
“Law,” he says, as gentle as he can. Small, non-threatening, old instinct, and Law’s eyes narrow at the tone. “Zou isn’t home.”
“What?”
“I was born here, and I’m glad I came back, but Zou hasn’t been my home in a long time. I’m a pirate and I barely know anyone and I keep jumping at unfamiliar bird calls. And Zou smells wrong! All wrong—there’s so much dirt and elephants and it’s nothing like the crisp metal of the Tang and the freshness of the sea and the warmth of the Hearts. That’s home. The Tang. The Hearts. Penguin and Shachi. You.”
“Me? I left you,” Law says, because sometimes he can be very stupid.
“You came back,” Bepo reminds him.
“Fuck,” Law says, “You’re too forgiving.”
“Sorry.”
Law groans. Stands up, shuffles closer until Bepo can hug him tight, squeeze in all the other words he cannot think of. Law hugs him back, his face smushed in Bepo’s fur, his scent leveling out from the fear/shame/guilt high to a faint surprise quickly washed out by quiet, pure joy. Reassuring and wonderful, rare but more familiar than Zou could ever be. Home, at its simplest. Law.
“Thank you,” Law finally says, muffled into Bepo’s chest. “I’m glad you want to stay.”
And Bepo’s even gladder to hear it.