Epilogue

"So, he wasn't one of us?" Sanji asked, trailing off in a confused tilt as he followed after the irritated doctor.

"I'd already told you what you needed to know – quit following me around! Get an education in nursing and then come back to me with your presence!" Law snapped at him as he looked over the paperwork to an elderly man. Surrounded by family, he was breathing his last and Law was impatiently waiting for an opportunity.

"I obviously went to college to cook, not to medicate!" Sanji snapped back at him. He sat at the side of a woman sniffling into her tissue, petting her gently. "There, there. He's in good hands…I'll personally see him off."

"Quit talking to people like they can hear you!"

"Tony was a full grown man lying in a bed his spirit left years ago," Sanji said, watching with a frown as Law wrangled the old man from his body. The old man sputtered, drawing in a sharp inhale once he realized he was looking at his family from a different point of view. Law didn't give him much of a chance to say anything before he tossed him through a doorway he opened to his left. Slamming the door shut on his emerging protest, the doctor left the room as alarms rang out.

Sanji hastily followed behind him through the wall. "But he knew more than any of us did, including you. So I still stick to the thought that he was more of an angel than you are."

"I'm NOT an angel!" Law huffed, touching the head of a crying young boy, whose mother pressed cold cloths to. There was a nurse talking gently nearby, two other children watching on with concern. Sanji patted their heads, one of them looking up with a startled look. "Don't touch them!"

"He's in good hands," Sanji assured the boy, whipping out his cigarette supply that never seemed to end. The boy smiled at him, his brother looking at him cautiously.

"If you can't abide to our rules," Law stated, turning away from the bed as the crying boy began to calm down, "then leave. You are annoying me…"

"If I leave, you'll forget again. Besides, Brook said those guys won't be back for some time," Sanji complained. "I figure a few more rounds and I'll travel back there. I'm hoping they have more luck locating that moss's body than they do finding him after he wanders off…"

Law paused at the bedside of a man howling over his broken leg. He turned instead to the girlfriend that fiddled with her phone, snapping her gum. Seeing the spurts of a shadowy being wafting around her, he sighed with irritation. But he reached out to touch her head instead, jerking her out of her body with no warning or comfort. Her soul gave a startled shriek as he stuffed her into the bottom door, black smoke wafting around the edges. The man's howls turned to screams of terror as his girlfriend's body slumped back into her seat, dropping her phone. Sanji was mystified to the reasoning, but he hurried after the doctor as he emerged into the main hall, hands in his pockets.

"Something that leaves me curious," Law said slowly, "to all those that wander, like you and I, we're not traditional deaths. Expired before our appointed times. The clocks on the walls that we see continuously turning – do they continue to do so as we see them? Or are they timers themselves?"

Sanji shrugged, looking at his broken watch. "Your time should've been up eons ago, so I don't think so…"

"Tony actively traveled between times because he had the presence of mind to do so. That's how he found Ace – that's how he found you. Doflamingo knew of all of us because he was a demon that fed off too many lives, which suggests he'd eaten some of your relatives to know who you were," Law said. "We can only travel to where one has the memory. So how did he know where we'd be to talk to us?"

"He was a living soul," Sanji said.

"That doesn't make any sense, idiot."

They walked through a wall, taking the old stairway to a floor that gleamed with blue walls and painted murals. It was quieter here, with visitors wearing worn expressions and nurses that weren't as active as the others. In every room, machinery sounded out with almost timed precision. They came to the doorway of one, looking in on three beds with three different bodies. One of them was against the far wall – clearly lost in time, with an old, hunched man sitting at his side. He had an open book on his lap, and he was reading to the man sleeping before him.

Law ventured in with a glance at the others, Sanji following to stop at Tony's bedside. He could see the child that had intercepted them in this man's features. The idea that he was looking at a living body without a soul made him feel uncomfortable. He expected the man to move, to speak, to look at him – but he'd seen Tony walk through an open doorway with Law's assistance.

Law listened to the older man read a chapter out of a current novel to him. He could see that the old man's time was nearing – he could reach in and take his soul, but he held back. Something inside of him held back – something he couldn't understand. He looked to the laptop nearby, opened but with a black screen. Reaching out, he pressed the space bar to see that the old man had his Facebook up and running. He didn't understand it, so he couldn't exactly decipher what was visible to him.

Sanji awkwardly reached out to touch Tony's face, but he couldn't remember what it was like to touch another man. He couldn't remember ever doing so, so he couldn't remember the feeling of another's warmth. He dropped his hand with a sigh.

"He was what he was," Law said slowly. "Explaining it to you would take too much time."

"Obviously I have time, shitty quack."

"Doflamingo knew what he was," Law said. "But he realized it too late."

"That he was…God?"

"When people speak of meeting god, or relatives on the other side when they're about to die, they must see us," Law said. "And the concept of recycling to live again, does that earn you any confidence that there is one?"

Sanji was uncertain about how to answer that. So he ended up shrugging. "Guess I have some time to think about that."

Law had to agree with him.