Quiet Days

One Piece

Law Pov:

Humans are complicated. Surgically, sense can be made, with enough practice and teaching. Humans have a system which must bodily be followed in order to survive. However strange the human body may be-especially so with the anomalies that devil fruits provide-, there is nothing I've yet encountered in my life, that was as strange as the human mind.

Medically, there is little known, physically, it cannot be observed, and it varies so drastically from person to person that to even try to compare two people could leave your head spinning with more questions than you had at the start. Humans are complicated, and non-professional relationships may just be the most complicated part of human normalcy. I hate complicated things, particularly when there is no viable way for me to understand them. That's why I'm a surgeon, not a psychologist, and why I prefer libraries to bars on most days.

No people, no problem.

That is, until I met one Monkey D. Luffy, and my whole world view got turned on its head and backwards.

For the first few years of our alliance, I thought he was simple. I thought I had him figured out. Just a man who liked to follow his instincts first, and think about the consequences later. I thought that his thought process was linear, and uncomplicated. I thought that I understood how to manipulate him. I thought that I knew the idiot that I had allied myself with. Funny thing about that, I didn't. Or rather, it seemed that no one did.

Every time I thought I had him mapped out, he managed to do or say something that flipped things around. Occasionally, he just seemed...wiser than he normally let on. I'm actually a little ashamed to admit that it took me a full five years to come to the conclusion that Monkey D. Luffy is not the man I thought I knew at all.

Or, more accurately, five years, the two of us separated from our crews on an abandoned island, and what was probably enough alcohol to make Luffy's first mate raise an eyebrow. Which we consumed, because apparently when we are stressed all to hell and have no worry-wart crew members around to lecture us, we both give in to our more self destructive tendencies.

Or the simple version: we both got blackout drunk, and Luffy managed to actually drink enough to stop filtering his much-higher-functioning-than-I-thought brain and hold an intelligent conversation with me. Which, frankly, is somehow fitting, given that we were both shit faced drunk, and he was talking about some scientific theory or another-which I still want to know where the blue hell he heard that from because it was damn interesting-and I was all but a giggling, drooling mess.

By the time my hangover had finally worn off enough that I could walk to the bathroom of the abandoned inn without vomiting on the walls, I had plenty of time to think about the blanks in my memory. Including the how and why I ended up in Luffy-ya's bed with no clothes on, and a sore ass.

I had fully intended from that moment on, to ignore his presence and hide in my room-claimed just down the hall from his-until our crew's arrived. I fully intended to pretend the entire charade had never happened. And I did. All day I ignored him, and he didn't even try to bother me. Then I woke up in his bed again the next morning, and couldn't for the life of me find an explanation, because this time we were both sober, and remembered everything in clarity. After three nights of sobriety and bizarre morning encounters, I decided to pull a page out of his book-say "fuck it", and see what happens. As much dread and anxiety that filled me with, to let go of my control over a situation and just let it play out, I will never once regret it.

That was the morning that Monkey D. Luffy allowed me to be the first person to be trusted enough to let down his walls around. Not even his brothers had earned such a privilege. Not even his crew. (Of course, I suspected that at least Roronoa knew some of his captain's true tendencies, perhaps Nico Robin as well. Just based off of their interactions over the years.) Not because I was his sort-or-lover,-sort-of-accidental-co-captain, but because I had (albeit somewhat unknowingly) shown him the same trust.

Instead of waking up, getting dressed and running to my own room with little more than a nod as acknowledgement, I stayed. I listened, and waited until I was certain that his heartbeat had leveled out to wakefulness, then waited some more, heart halfway into my throat when he turned to look at me from "his" side of the mattress.

No kilowatt grin, no childlike eyes or bubbling laughter. His face was carefully blank, not quite serious, not quite interested, not quite anything. Just observing. Brown eyes roaming my face, searching and not at the same time. His bed head was terrible, and last night's smell marked him ready for a shower. We didn't do anything except look at each other in the filtering light of late morning-sun already up, and sunrise several hours behind us. I had nothing to say-there was no explanation ready, and somehow I felt that if I tried to give one, I would be failing a test somehow. I knew this kind of quiet that hung in the air like a heavy, persistent static. This kind of uneasy quiet could only be broken by actions, not words.

Some indeterminable amount of time later, Luffy-ya got up, calmly, quietly, and without hurry, gathered up his discarded clothes from around the room-his shorts and bright yellow sash quite near the bed, his shirt nearly in the dresser, but not quite, and his captain's coat from just inside of the door, halfway in the hallway, halfway not. He padded into the adjacent bathroom, and I heard the shower turn on a moment before the door closed. Not long after I followed his example. Soon my own clothes were gathered into a half-assed pile on the chair, and I had pulled the sheets from the bed and tossed them into the hamper for us to wash later.

I chewed my lip and wondered whether or not to take his actions as a silent "get out". My entire being was screaming at me to leave, go to my own room and continue as before. However, I am a D., even if I don't often admit it. So ignoring common sense out of sheer stubbornness is quite natural to me. When the shower shut off just a few minutes later, I forced myself to breathe, and busy myself with finding a towel and new, only slightly dusty sheets in the linen cabinet.

The door hinge squeaked quietly as the other man emerged from the room, half dressed, and still dripping water from his hair. Brown eyes met mine for a brief moment, unreadable and so unbearably calm. I mentally shoved the anxiety into a tiny corner of my brain and hissed at it to shut up, meanwhile grabbing my own pants and underwear in one hand, scavenged towel in the other, and entering the recently vacated bathroom. Something in the back of my mind eased, and the tense quiet seemed to fade as I passed the man with disturbingly knowledgeable eyes.

The water was heaven on my sore muscles, and I didn't want to leave before it got cold. However, the more rational part of my brain decided that that was not the proper way to handle stress, and I should face the issue head on by confronting Luffy-ya about the awkward encounters the last few days. I pulled on my pants and told the rational side of my brain to fuck off.

I'm not completely sure what I was expecting when I exited the bathroom. Perhaps the same serious and searching face sitting somewhere, prepared for a heavy conversation that I wasn't sure I was ready for, perhaps his ordinary grinning mask, as if none of it had happened after all.

What I did not expect, was him to be sitting at the old, wooden desk, writing in a small, leatherbound journal. His back was to me, and he did not turn to acknowledge me-though I was well aware that he knew I was watching him. It was...and odd sight, to someone who knew him almost solely as "Strawhat Luffy", the goofball captain of the Strawhat pirates. Black and gold captain's coat slung over the back of the heavy wooden chair, posture almost straight, just slumping slightly in the relaxation of his shoulders, he scribbled something in the journal-only a few lines really-before carefully drying the ink with his breath, and shutting the somewhat worn book. Moments later, he was rummaging through the heavy, well-made desk , and pulling out several more seemingly out-of-place items.

An inkwell, a block of dry pigment, a much heavier notebook that looked nearly as thick as some of my own medical texts, a carved wooden calligraphy pen, and and a book that was all but falling apart.

Out of any of those items, the book intrigued me the most. It was just a hair smaller than the notebook, with crumbling leather bindings in an old fashion, parchment yellowed and frail with age, and a language that I did not recognize emblazoned on the cover.

Deftly, Luffy-ya flipped open the notebook, prepared the ink, and filled the pen's reservoir, before using a much more delicate touch to open the text to a page quite nearly in the middle of the book. Though I was increasingly curious about the book, I also didn't quite dare to hang over his shoulder to inquire about it, so I instead focused on changing the sheets on the bed, and watching him from across the room.

It didn't take too long to figure out that he was copying the text word for word from the book to the notebook-though it was unusual to watch. His eyes never strayed from the text, yet his hand seemed to never stray from the predetermined lines of the parchment to his right, moving as concisely as any typewriter from one side to the other, pausing only briefly when his pen needed to be refilled.

Some time later I wandered down to the kitchen to fix us both something, and when I returned with two plates in tow-one much larger than the other- he was still writing dutifully. I set the larger of the two plates on the dresser just a few feet away from him, and made to eat my own on the smaller table in the center of the room.

It took nearly an hour before he was willing to sit back, clean his pen, and carefully shut the book-which was now quite nearly three-quarters done. He took his plate, and sat at the table that I had since vacated, and tucked in.

The moment the food was done, and the plates had been returned to the kitchen and cleaned, he was seated back at the desk, pen in hand, and both books open.

Dinner was a repeat affair of earlier, and both of us had yet to speak a word. Much later, several hours after we had to light the lamps at sundown, the final page of the worn book was copied, diagrams and all, and Luffy-ya shut the book with a sigh.

He blew carefully on the ink in his notebook, and shut it once ensuring that it was dry. The inkwell was capped and sealed, and the pen was meticulously cleaned.

"What is the book about?" I asked quietly, dying to break the verbal silence.

He glanced back at me, "Poneglyphs."

My eyebrow arched, "Poneglyphs? Can you read that?"

He shook his head, the slight smile on the corner of his mouth giving me more relief than it had any right to. "Not really. I recognized the language from Robin's notes. You know how she tends to leave them all over when she gets sleep-deprived."

Indeed I did. While the archaeologist was normally a very meticulous woman, my years with his crew had shown me that all of the strawhats had their quirks and exceptions. Nico Robin was meticulous, until she went three days without sleep or coffee, and still insisted on doing her research until one of us nagged her to go the fuck to sleep. Something that happened more often than I think anyone cared to admit.

"The book didn't look like it would survive the ocean too long, even with Robin caring for it. I figured than this," he tapped the sturdy journal, "would have better luck. Plus it doesn't look like any of the books in her study do, so maybe it will be useful, or at least interesting to her."

The other captain explained.

I hummed in understanding. "Where did you learn to use a calligraphy pen?"

He looked at me in surprise-as if he was expecting me to ask a different question, but replied honestly, "It's the only kind of pen I know how to write with. Back home, Dadan and the guys only had so much stuff lying around. When Makino insisted that I practice writing on my own time, I kinda had to work with what I had. Dadan's "associates" always sent her this really fancy penmanship stuff for some reason-tons of inks and quill pens and parchment-but she didn't write much, and never used it. I always practiced with those, and I guess I got so used to the movement and weight of the thing that it's really hard for me to write with anything else. For some reason it comes out as chicken scratch if I use a pencil or regular pen."

I blinked, "That seems a bit backwards."

He shrugged, "Maybe. After a while it sort of became a hobby. Sometimes I copied things for people in town-marriage vows, kids' first words, prayers, all sorts of stuff, and made it look really nice so they could frame it. That's how I got enough money together to buy a boat so that I could set off when I was seventeen. Don't get much time for it nowadays, plus calligraphy supplies are expensive."

"Interesting hobby. Though, with all the calligraphy practice, shouldn't you be a better artist? I've seen your attempt at making your own flags, and they do not at all match that." I asked humorously.

He chuckled, "You'd think, but no. truth is I have a really crappy imagination. Can't come up with stories, songs, or artworks of my own. Like I said, everything I sold was copied down-sure I took some liberties, but not much. I can't for the life of me come up with my own ideas artistically. If I'm staring at one copy of the flag, I probably could replicate it eventually, but it's a lot easier to just let Usopp handle it. I can only draw what I already see."

Somehow, calligraphy turned into history, then how we met our crews, then our childhoods, and our adventures prior to our alliance. We talked all night, and well into the morning, long after the lamps died out.

Before we managed to get a wink of sleep, our crews arrived, and we both returned to our own ships, departing from the island in separate directions with a promise of a rendezvous on Kilojang island in three months time.

Now, nine years later, things are so much different. Luffy-ya let his mask slip a bit more around his crew-which has since expanded into a vast armada, one of the largest on the seas-and I learned to trust them. All of them.

About a year after the incident that propelled us into a better understanding of each other, I quietly disbanded my crew formally. Though, it made very little difference, since all that did was end with the sub suspended in the hold of the vastly expanded and renovated Thousand Sunny, and all of us on board the larger ship. The only real oddity was the change in jolly roger on their shirts.

The heart pirates became Strawhats, and the Strawhats became a yonko crew.

I quietly trace the spiraling tattoo on my husband's left arm, his hat and mine hanging on pegs just above our bed. I can't help but grin, if humans are complicated, My husband must be a living enigma.