Chapter Text
Needle’s body has been recovered from the Center of the World, laid out in the central hall used by Those Who Serve. It’s midnight. No one who should be sleeping is, except the children in their nursery, already brought by to see her with her eyes closed and body covered. Peaceful. Smiling. They will be able to remember that, the first time they have to watch someone die in front of them—no matter how it happens, eventually there is no pain. Eventually, you go beyond where the Masters can touch you.
Soon Needle will go beyond where they can touch her as well, into the crematorium in the deep basements where the other trash is burned. The body isn’t important now—it’s good that they got it back, that the Masters didn’t just throw her away, but it’s just so much stuff.
What’s important is the stub of the last candle Needle touched, lit at her head. Oyster, as the oldest one who knew her well, repeating her name in the corner so she cannot, for this one moment, be forgotten. The words being pressed into her skin by everyone who will miss her, as they hurry between tasks. Love, sorrow, thanks, good wishes, freedom—Blessings for the dead that no one ever knows if they will use.
Those Who Serve in the daylight hours will have to sleep sometime, but first, in between the summoning bells and work, they will mourn. They have to Serve each other, or no one will.
“Imu offered what?”
“To find the stupid guy who hurt you,” Luffy repeats, and honestly, the way Sabo’s jaw has just fully dropped would be hilarious if Ace wasn’t caught up in the meaning of those words. There’s a weird overlap in his head, remembering that surge of fury that tried to send him racing for the door when he was ten, to go avenge his brother, paired with his screaming rage after being let go once the marines left Dawn with Luffy just a few weeks ago, and underneath the memories is that rush of power, like the biggest river current cutting through the jungle, they could find this guy and make him pay-
“Absolutely not!”
-the fuck?”
“What?” “Why?” both Ace and Luffy demand over one another, glaring at Sabo.
“Because it’s another damn trap,” their brother snarls. “Because punishing him is what Imu wants!”
“But I’m the one who’d-”
“No! No, Luffy! That’s what nobles do! They use their position to hurt the people lower than them,” Sabo’s leaning forward now, poking a finger insistently against Luffy’s forehead. “If this were a random encounter, a fair fight, that would be one thing! Not Imu setting it all up to drag you into acting like a prince, punishing someone for messing with your toys!”
...oh.
Alright, yeah, Ace can- he can see how it’s different. And so can Luffy, based on the way their little brother slumps back against the wall with a big pout. Seeing that he’s won with the kid, Sabo brings his glare up, ready to keep fighting about this if he needs to. Ace holds up a hand instead. “Okay, made your point. No punching the bastard, even if he really fucking deserves it.”
Something wavers in Sabo’s face, and he sags too. “Yeah, well. I won’t argue about that part.” But needing to argue about this at all must be hitting him hard, because after a moment he reaches to tug both Luffy and Ace closer, so all three of them are properly squashed together, and they can feel how Sabo is shaking, just a little.
Ace lets the river flow away, and just holds his brothers.
It’s not quite midday when Imu pauses in their walk through the gardens and says, sounding far too pleased, “Would you care to go to the nursery, Beloved?”
Dragon is, of course, immediately suspicious, but there’s no way he can afford to say no. “What brought this on?”
“You don’t want to go?” Imu asks, teasing. Threatening. This offer can always be taken back.
“….I do. Thank you, moon of my life.”
“Of course,” Imu says, satisfied with his compliance.
Dragon can’t bring himself to ask further questions on the walk back. He suspects this has to be related to the offer Imu had extended the night before, to allow Luffy to punish the Noble who had once sunk Sabo’s ship. The potential effectiveness of the idea is nauseating. The stories about Luffy on the way here had made it clear he loved to fight, and Dragon had seen how badly he wished to protect his brothers—if this turns out to be the first step in Imu channeling Luffy’s will in the sort of sadistic, power-hungry direction the Celestial demons delighted in, it will be Dragon’s fault for inspiring the idea. And he might never forgive himself.
The boys are all visible when the door opens, Ace and Sabo seated against a back wall, Luffy standing in front of them with his fists clenched. He looks from Dragon to Imu and back again, brow scrunching.
“Beloved, mu thought you might like to spend time with our son,” Imu says. “As mu’s attention will be occupied…elsewhere.”
Oh, no. That tone bodes absolutely no good.
…Has Imu found Shanks? No, surely not. Dragon wouldn’t be dismissed from handling that particular punishment. Unless—
Imu’s still standing there, hands clasped at the small of the back. Waiting. Gleefully.
“What, exactly, could be more important than spending time with family?” Dragon asks, dripping irony as thick as acid.
“Oh, but mu will be. Your father, Beloved, has arrived at the Red Port, requesting audience with the Elder Stars.”
The words fail to land properly. Dragon’s ears are ringing. “…What?”
“Mu knows our courtship has lacked formal nuptials, Beloved, but surely you know what is yours is also mu’s. It is high time Monkey D. Garp met mu properly.”
“Gramps?” Luffy’s voice is far too loud. Dragon’s ears are still ringing.
As comprehension finally strikes—this is no night terror to fade with the dawn, this is a new and horrifying page of the most nightmarish chapter of his life—Dragon’s knees go weak. He collapses to them, landing hard, before dropping into a full obeisance that pulls on the still-healing marks on his shoulder. “Imu-sama. My queen. My moon. Please. Please.”
“No!” Luffy cries, and Dragon ignores the hands tugging at his shoulders trying to drag him to his feet. “No, you can’t—“
“Get rid of him, I beg you. Please. Send him away.” He’s shaking. “Refuse the audience. It’s in your power, your right. He knows nothing—”
“Stop it!”
“Luffy, let go,” he snaps at his son, in an undertone, and returns to begging for his dad’s life without missing a beat. “He’s sworn to the Marines. This would be a waste. He has been a loyal dog his entire life, even with the Will of D. He can’t be here to refuse orders, he hasn’t cared what happened to me since I left the marines—he didn’t know who Luffy’s mother was, he barely knew Luffy was mine, he didn’t know he was defying you.” He inhales, the air scraping rough down his throat. “My heart. My own heart. I will do anything, anything you ask of me in return, please don’t kill him.“
Imu’s steps approach, haki washing forward, and Luffy’s pounding fists go limp as the teenager collapses against him. A hand lands on his head, his short hair. A benediction. A trap. It occurs to him, on his knees, that he may have just doomed his Revolution—but Imu could have exercised this at any time—but hadn’t yet—
“Tell mu truly, Beloved, that you care nothing for him, and mu will send him away.”
Dragon summons every drop of will he has ever possessed, and raises his head to make eye contact with the architect of his many torments. “I have despised him for thirty years.”
“Liar,” Imu says, rich with affection. “Worry not, Beloved. Mu has no intention of killing him. Not when you have said again and again how important it is for a son to spend time with his father.” Stupid. Dragon is stupid, stupid, stupid—“You will get to see him again very soon. Once mu has made certain things clear to him.”
His head falls forward, limp. “Please,” Dragon whispers, more powerless than he has been since age seventeen. “We haven’t—I’ve seen him twice in three decades. He doesn’t care about me. Don’t do this.”
“You are mistaken, Beloved. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be here.”
That may be the cruelest thing Imu has ever said to him, made even worse by the knowledge that Imu is saying it fondly.
“Enjoy your time with the children. You like the nursery, do you not? You will be safe here while mu holds audience.”
The door closes.
The door closes, and all Dragon can hear is the terrified beating of his own heart.
Dad
Not a stuffed trophy, to be tucked away in the dark and forgotten about, no, Garp will be brought here. It matters not what Imu intends to do with him, how much or how little he’ll be allowed to see the boys, to see Dragon, the man who once could do no wrong in Dragon’s eyes is going to be trapped and beaten down, a mountain worn away by rising tides—
Dad
All the ways with which he has tried to carefully outmaneuver Imu, to hold onto some shred of agency, of sanity, and now they’ve been turned around against him, the few cards he thought he held—important for a son to spend time with his father—suddenly now have appeared in his opponent’s hand, a shield morphing into a spear aimed straight at his heart, and he can’t— he can’t—
“DAD!”
—what?
Hands.
Small hands, wrapped around his.
“Dad, you gotta breathe, like this,” he knows that voice, knows that word but not from that voice, there’s a thin little chest pressed against his palm, rising and falling with exaggerated breaths, and slowly, too slowly, Dragon takes back control of his own panicked gasps. He opens his eyes. Blinks, several times, to clear away the tears that have gathered in them. Looks.
Luffy looks back. Solemn. Worried. Angry.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, his son had wailed, back on the ship, their escape attempt that ended in disaster. You can’t beg like that! You can’t say sorry! It didn’t work, it was stupid, it just made you hurt!
He isn’t yelling now. But Dragon can see the same stubborn insistence in Luffy’s gaze. He was right then, and he’d be right to say it again now.
Instead of acknowledging as much, however— “Who taught you to do that,” Dragon asks, voice barely above a rasp, gently tugging his hand free of Luffy’s grasp to instead cup his son’s face. “The breathing?”
“Sabo. Yesterday.” Luffy glances past him, and Dragon follows it, spots the older boys still by the wall, clutching at one another. Sabo is doing his best to keep a calm mask fixed in place, but Dragon has taught and trained him for six years; recognizes the stark terror in those wide eyes. And Ace...
Well. Ace looks as panicked as Dragon still feels, eyes skittering towards the door and back.
The boys need him. The boys might not have him for long, depending on—on how quickly his dad is willing to submit to Imu. Which, at one point, Dragon would have scoffed at the mere notion, but considering the fact that Garp has put in an appearance at all—
If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be here
They might not have long at all.
“Come here,” Dragon says, shifting to sit more comfortably, opening up his arms. Luffy promptly slots into place, of course. Sabo crashes against his side with all the inelegance of a ten year old fleeing from a nightmare. Ace moves slower, his wounds half-healed, his trust the newest earned, but in short order Dragon has his arms wrapped around all three boys, and hugs them close, listening to the subtle chorus of their heartbeats rather than his own.
It’s the only thing that’s going to keep him from spiralling again, as they wait.
It’s the only thing he pays attention to, for a while, which is why the knock comes as such a surprise.
Tap tap ta-tap tap, tap tap!
Haki whispers against his senses.
Familiar haki, and Dragon’s heart leaps into his throat even before the knob turns. All three boys flinch at the first glimpse of bright red hair, Ace in particular, but then Sabo makes a surprised noise, and Luffy gasps with delight, and in the doorway—
“Haven’t we done this dance once already, Dragon?”
—Shanks grins.
Sabo and Ace’s collars come off first, breaking under Dragon’s hands before he even lets them out from the shelter of his arms. Sabo, able to follow where this is going, breaks a table so he can have the leg as a substitute for his trusty-but-unavailable pipe. Luffy’s been distracted from scrambling up by Shanks plopping the familiar straw hat dangling on a cord down over his eyes. Ace is rebinding his own bandages. They’re both fine.
“Shanks,” Dragon says, as his own collar shatters away with the best noise Sabo has heard for a while. “My dad is here.”
“I know.” Shanks reaches down to Luffy’s seastone restraints, snapping them off in his hands and immediately taking a rubbery tackle in the stomach. “Oof—you’re welcome, Anchor. Actually, I didn’t know, did you know? Not till Luffy tipped me off.” He reaches down and rubs the top of Luffy’s hat, still unchanged after all these years. “I can’t believe you never told me Garp was your father. You wouldn’t believe how Rayleigh laughed at me when—”
"We need to get him out with us, Shanks. Before he gets himself killed, or worse.”
Shanks pauses once Luffy’s deposited on the floor again (where he immediately starts ripping off his shoes and tearing them to shreds). “Look, your old man and I came here together, this is part of the plan we came up with.”
“How is he getting out?” That’s Dragon’s Commander voice, evaluating a mission, and Sabo ought to be relieved to hear it, but—
“…Dragon. He knew what choice he was making. And if it comes down to him, or you and the boys, we decided we’re on the same page.”
Sabo never knew Garp as well as Ace and Luffy did. For years he was just another figure from Ace’s stories, one more adult to evade. And then for a couple brief visits he was a wild force of nature, sweeping Sabo into the unfamiliar and adrenaline-inducing category of ‘grandson’ as implacably as a storm might sweep away a chunk of Grey Terminal. He remembers tearing through the jungle, a bonfire surrounded by meat—falling asleep by the fire and getting scooped up by the scruff and carried back to Dadan’s like he weighed no more than a couple of grapes. Like there had never been a question he belonged.
And he knows they can’t stay in this place, knows that too much longer here will break them all into pieces—break the ways they know each other, rely on one another, and then each of them on their own—he knows from the Revs the importance of a sacrifice, when every other option’s been exhausted.
Sabo is Dragon’s shadow and assistant and helping hand, and he’s clearly less emotionally compromised here, enough to know that Gramps—Garp—sacrificing himself is a good choice. A smart choice. But he still can’t make himself say anything as he watches Dragon and Shanks stare each other down, and Shanks lasts longer against Sabo’s boss than anyone Sabo’s ever seen but Sabo for once doesn’t want him to lose—
“Wait,” Ace says, voice rough. He’s finally got one arm tied up in a sling and a crutch under the other and he’s looking around the room, eyes narrowed. “Where’s Luffy?"
...oh. Oh no.