Taxi 3

The ride took him to the airport, out along the faceless roads hiding faceless neighbourhoods, though the tumble down world he inhabited now seemed to have a lower death count than the mansion grounds. It was easy to hide the punched-in fibro panels behind freeway concrete and plaster. Easy to tamp down any asbestos particles eroding their way to freedom and keep those suffering from having mined it contained before their claims hit the courts.

The mansion grounds were good for dead bodies, even if Doffy didn't usually dirty his own backyard. The hidden freeway neighbourhoods were resting grounds for the dying.

There were some nice gardens behind those barriers. People trying to make a living. Some fibro cladding was in one piece. Though you wouldn't know any of that zooming down the freeway. You'd just think people lived nowhere, and that habitation wasn't part of the habitat.

He'd driven the assassin to the airport. She'd asked for him specifically. She knew about the Don Quixote connection and ignored it, or didn't hold him to it. Law felt good around her. Relaxed. She didn't try to work the connection. Didn't disparage him. Complimented his tattoos rather than viewing him through the piss-riddled cells of juvie where he'd first penned the black and greys on his fingers. She didn't compliment those scratchings, just didn't mention them.

"How's your yeast exploration going?" she closed the cover to her tablet.

Law swallowed. Was she playing with him? Coming onto him? She was a beautiful, cool, woman, way above his league. If he liked women that way. Maybe he could make an exception? He'd have to ask Ace. Seek out Marco's approval, Bepo's unstinting support (he'd complimented his finger tatts).

"Strictly medicinal."

"Not in any way alcoholic?"

"And recreational."

"How about bread?"

Law pulled a face. "As much fun as statistics." Depending on the flour.

"Oh?" She was counting out a wad of money. Slats of sun crossed her face as they passed under a railroad bridge "Something makes me think you're all about beating the odds."

He smiled easily, but with relief. She liked seeing it. The mirrors could work for her too.

"You'll join me for a drink some day, driver san."

The confusion of departures, arrivals, terminals, of short and long term parking, loomed upon them before Law could answer.

He pulled into the taxi drop-off after waiting for a large woman and her ducklings, each wheeling a suitcase and sporting a backpack, to cross the road. He exited the car and removed the assassin's case from the boot. Pretty light. What was her weapon of choice?

"Threat or a promise? The drink?"

She took the case from him with thanks, and slipped him an extra tip.

"An invitation."

oOOo

He didn't have to wait long for a fare. The woman's scarf folded softly over her head and around her shoulders. Her duffel bag was black, suede, tasselled. Nice. Travel weariness settled around her like motes caught in the sun as she slid into the car.

Her jeans cost more than his weekly pay, hell — monthly— and her sneakers were scuffed and used in a way that hid or emphasised their one-of-a-kind design. Pretty cool. A red tonbo — dragonfly — from what he could see, stretched from the toe, its thorax and segmented body running along one side of the shoe, a blue chrysanthemum and pond reeds rising from the heel and undulating in the air below the insect.

"Got any luggage for the boot?"

She looked at him, confused. Slipped the duffel from her lap.

"Trunk, any bags for the trunk?" Codeswitching, all part of the job.

"No, it's fine. Just this one." She patted the suede. Fluent. Her vocabulary was just defined by region.

Law wore the short-sleeved taxi driver uniform. Didn't know why he kept pulling it on. He didn't really like it, and knew it would meet the approval of Garp, of that cane-stealing bastard, Aokiji, but uniforms saved time. Then again, ex-marines aside, there was a code, and he wasn't the best with an iron. Bepo was worse. Maybe Law liked the way Ace took his time unbuttoning it, the way his eye sought out the top curve of his chest ink.

The passenger looked around the cab, a little nervous. Her gaze landed on the tattoos. Law observing her from the mirror, looked down also. What was good for Ace wasn't good for everyone. He rearranged his driver's ID on the visor so she could see it clearly. There was another hanging in the back. "Where to?"

"Blind Corner Dojo." She handed Law a card. He viewed it. Turned it over. Handed it back. No way.

"Zoro's dojo?"

She nodded. This man knew him? Then again, Zoro wasn't exactly all smooth edges.

Law was curious. He pulled out of the bay, drove along the impersonal roads, wanted to use the taxi driver's custom of being a nosy arsehole.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"Hmm?" He looked up, a little surprised. Pre-empted. Hardly got that question nowadays.

"You're not from here."

"I grew up here."

"Weren't born here."

"No." He fiddled with the buttons of the radio as always when white noise was less threatening than conversation. What had given him away?

"You had to leave a place?"

He looked over his shoulder for a second. The burning of his hometown was seared into his memory, but didn't scorch his every waking moment. Not now.

"Who are you, sister?"

She opened her bag. Rooted around for a bottle of water. Uncapped it and took a drink. She eased a foot out of one of the sneakers. Flexible, lithe. Some strength in the casual, well-kept body. Her feet didn't smell either. That was some achievement.

"Me too," she said. She wondered if the tattoos hid scars. "Had to leave a place."

"I see."

The road was hemming them in like a wall to keep them out, to separate them from everything that anyone ever wanted. The discards, broken toys, the displaced, were shovelled along the asphalt like coal into a furnace chute.

"Or we were kept from a place. Like this." She waved at the concrete zipping by. "My father and I were not allowed to participate in society. Wrong class. My mother was shot."

Law nodded. People told taxi drivers everything. They'd never see them again, right? Except he knew where she was going.

"Zoro helped me out. In the past."

Just like Doflamingo and Cora had helped him. He had an idea that Zoro's assistance might have had a few less long-lasting entanglements.

"Who shot her?" he asked, running his fingers back and forth on the wheel. He didn't need to ask if the wounds were fatal.

"New government." Her eyes were on the verge zipping past, dimming into evening.

"My father," she paused, "It almost destroyed him. He loved her." She wanted to see more than concrete, but the fastest way was the most sterile. She took in the stiff back in front of her, but didn't feel any crackle of anger. "You look like someone who understands the songs."

Law remembered. His father, the meetings, going with Lammy and his mother to buy the hot, flat bread, piles of it like pancakes. It was so easy to make, but she didn't have time. She was going to teach him one day. A different kind of flour. Didn't hurt his stomach.

The sickness that had almost taken Lammy, if the soldiers hadn't beaten the condition to it, was never far from the surface in those days. He remembered the words his dad had taught him before the Don Quixote brothers took him. His father had arranged for them to do so. The soldiers came soon after.

He saw the body, the death. His glasses shattered on the floor as he fell forward. Thinking at the time, how would his father see? He was blind without his glasses. Someone's hand over Law's mouth — Was it Cora? — holding him back. This woman was the same as him? Same as Law?

"I have my own view, And an extra blade of grass." Smooth, the lines were loud enough to be heard from the back of the cab, but no dramatics, not shouting.

"Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words, And the bounty of birds," she answered. The moon was now actually in the sky. An orange ball rising ahead of them. Both rested a beat before Law continued.

"And the immortal olive tree. I walked this land before the swords…"

He had long shifts. Reciting the hope, the history, his father had taught him kept him near, and sure helped pass the time. Less fear in them than warnings and prayers. Kept his family close. Maybe his tatts were like the beads of a rosary, the stanzas of an ode.

"Turned its living body into a laden table." The woman pushed her fringe up and settled the scarf over her head and shoulders. "I come from there."

"You come from there?" Law asked. He thought he was the only one left.

She shook her head. "Sorry." She'd heard the click of want. "But his words, those works." She looked out the window again. She knew Law knew how they crossed nations. The poet came from there, and his words went everywhere.

"Your father is?"

"Still alive. Things are good now."

Was Zoro a mercenary? How had he helped this woman out? Some kind of missionary?

"In body, mind and soul?"

She wished she could see the driver's face better. Only the dregs or the very wealthy marked themselves up in her society. Both had helped her. It was darker now. Maybe his voice told her more about him than anything.

"The best days have yet to be lived." Different wordsmith, same desire to see the sun shine freely. She wasn't sure though if the best was before her. It had always been warm in her mother's arms.

"Preach." Law loosened the back of his shirt from the seat, from Ace's massager. He wasn't sure though. The few scraps of photos Doflamingo and Cora somehow scavenged were all he had of his family. Festivals had been fun. Studying medicine with his parents had made him proud.

"My father was tortured. We all were. It was like a date to be locked up for the weekend, a week, a month. A real bitch if you'd already made other plans." She eyed the catches in the taxi. Lots of them were more like police cars. Nothing she could play with. "We sympathised with the previous government, rightly or wrongly. We were painted as scum, unstable, extremists."

Law jigsawed her story with his own. The infrastructure of Flevance had whittled away. The royals syphoned the riches made from the amber lead that was killing the population, then deserted the people, fleeing to hell knows the fuck where. Guess he wasn't the only survivor.

Reports trickled down in the society pages and he wondered which Flevance princess was keeping company with which World Government banker. Their fingers stained but never contaminated in the same way his people had been.

The white city was a place isolated even before the world allowed the army to invade. Before it sent the marines. His parents had planned for Lammy to go with him, even though she didn't have much time left.

"You're okay now?" That was a relative term and Law knew it.

The woman sipped on the water. "I had to fight. They made me. My mother was a pacifist and she never wanted me to raise a weapon against anyone. My father knew they'd hound him, be after him. He was one of the former leader's strongest men. They shot him so badly in one leg it had to be amputated."

"Fuckers." Law's hands were not tight on the steering wheel. Few things surprised him. Mudwomen, perhaps.

"Yeah, fuckers is right." She sat back and they rode in silence for a while. "But he taught me to fight, because he couldn't always be there, and when he was recovering he couldn't defend me."

"Taking care of yourself's an excellent skill to have." Law veered the car to the far lane as they approached the exit.

"You've had to do that?"

"Now and then."

She hesitated. She didn't often do this, but she'd been in enough kill or be killed situations to trust her judgement.

"I'm hungry."

"And?" She heard the smile.

"Let's eat. Show me where the good food is?"

"I've been here a while," Law said. "Since I was ten. Not too sure I know where the good food is."

"You didn't come with family?"

"No family."

Ah, she smoothed her jeans, hoped he'd had someone. "Let me show you then."

"You've been here before?"

"I know Zoro, remember?"

"He know where the good food is?" Law couldn't see it. He was all about keeping in top shape, so he knew where the healthy food was. Maybe it was synonymous.

"He doesn't care."

"It's on the clock?"

She'd noted that the white shirt was lightly stained under the arms, the collar fraying. Laziness, poverty, wear — it was hard to tell. "Yah, driver. I just want to talk, but I'll pay you for your time."

Law's neck burnt. "I wouldn't ask, but …"

"I've got it, and you've got to make a living."

"Right." If he didn't want to be dependent on Doflamingo, he had to keep at it.

She took him to a joint on the outskirts of town that served congee — rice porridge — with crullers, touches of ginger, little bowls of dried shallots, dried garlic, cut chili and a fish base.

"Thought you were going to fill me with food from the auld country?" Law looked around at the noisy families enjoying themselves, sharing dishes, taking extra care with servings for the babies. The lights above illuminated everything in their fluorescent practicality. He sat back against the plastic seat of the chair, long legs hitting the underside of the table as he tried to cross his knees.

"Nah, fuck that shit, too heavy."

Law laughed. She was one of those dames who knew how to spear delicate expectations with a word or two. And delicate? His arse. She'd seen more than most.

"And this isn't?"

"Different kind of comfort."

He'd take her to his favourite soup and noodle place if he ever saw her again. Though being coeliac, he was limited to healthy hippy noodle aficionados. It might not be authentic enough for her. Should invite Zoro.

She dipped her spoon into the soft, savoury, rice and slurped, her scarf tipped back over her head. Progressive where she was from, or perhaps a new habit for a new country, or perhaps he was as safe as a brother. And he was. If your brother wasn't Doflamingo. He sprinkled white pepper over top of the dish. Or maybe she just liked wearing scarves. It was a beautiful material. Sky blue. Matched that pink dye job in its own way.

Law had tea, she had a beer. Law was working. It was so easy to lose your license when you were a Don Quixote.

"They made me fight. The soldiers rounded up a group of us. We'd put out a small newsletter highlighting all that was perfect about the country if you remained within manicured lawns and shopping mall bubbles. We unearthed the foundations, built on the slums and silence of bullets lodged in protesters' skulls. Built on whisking the poor, the dissenters, the different, away in the dead of the night."

She spoke calmly but Law knew the fear. He watched her fingers curled around the beer for a tremble, a shake. She was steady as she sipped.

"They imprisoned pregnant rebels and took their babies after they gave birth. Then they drugged the women up and tipped them into the river. A bullet was too costly?"

Her rice was growing cold, but she dipped an occasional spoonful into it as she spoke, drawing it to her mouth, then returning it to the side of the bowl as story overpowered sustenance.

"The babies were orphaned out. Hardly anyone knew. Only the affected. Some parents knew their daughters had been pregnant before they were abducted. The government was so greedy for silence and compliance that enough of a percentage knew that something wasn't quite right. Not all of the rebels were from the despised classes. Not all of their families were despised."

Law poured her some tea, and tipped his head toward her bottle. Did she want another? She shook her head.

"I don't know why they didn't shoot me on the spot. The government propaganda said my class should be eradicated — we'd been well-off, related to the royal family, but it was a constitutional monarchy. The people ruled, as much as anyone can in this world."

oOOo

Megalomaniacs and governments are proverbial moths and flames. Rebecca's small island nation was no different. A law was changed here, a statute adjusted here, a few were demonised to control the many, until power rested in the hands of one man, the cronies he employed, and the scared people who breathed freedom while restricting others. To even fold the newspaper incorrectly and crease his face was an offence that brought jail time. Walking on grass, not being humble enough, being too humble, it didn't take much to attract the hysterical finger pointing of neighbours out to save their own necks.

Punishments were cruel. People killed themselves rather than kill others, but not all — the survival instinct is strong. If they failed, the correction was sufficiently barbaric for them to make sure they never failed or tried again. Suit something up enough and it becomes the new beige.

The regime disappeared swathes of population, but also made examples of dissenters. They put them in a fighting ring like Rome of old. They were warriors, after all, brave rebels who brought great shame to the wealthy and prosperous nation, or the old class who'd kept it oppressed. The final judgement was not the new government's, but that of the public, the plebeians, the plebs.

The people didn't know that the traitorous now fought with blunt swords against sharp-toothed animals and wild-edged malefactors goaded into savagery. Rebecca saw her friends, her allies in horror, throw themselves over the edge of the carts they were wheeled out on, and impale themselves on the spiked wheels, rather than be ripped apart, sliced up, or to have to do the same.

Not all of the clamour from the audience was uneasy. Bloodlust bred bloodthirstiness, and still Rebecca managed to outmanoeuvre her opponents so they were pierced by their own swords, so they fell into the moat surrounding the fighting arena, packed to the gills as it was with hungry, flesh-eating fish. She wished she were joking. The crowd's discontent with her grew as she failed to bleed and drew little gore from others. The water colouring pink was not the same as witnessing an actual disembowelment.

She was too good an attraction to sacrifice her to the beasts, so she fought and survived. The public needed someone to hate and the government offered her up. Better to spit on one who'd fallen low — on one thwarted in a plan to disrupt the peaceful island nation — than to turn their eyes to the government, lest it was their grandson, their daughter, who never returned home, who vanished in the middle of the night.

oOOo

The tea had been refilled three times. Law had forgotten about the clock, and ignored the messages coming in from the depot wanting him to go to this address and that. Yeah, he'd be put on the graveyard shift again, but what was new?

The families had wandered home and the couples wandered in, hands linked like pinky promises. Happy for the company of the other and the worlds they'd shape in the twisted sheets of a one-night stand, or maybe this one was something more, someone worth investing in. He knew the restaurant was cheap but it was good. That was a tick in his book of someone worth knowing. He mentally wished them well.

He walked back from the toilet, accessed via a corridor running parallel to the kitchen. This had been an old house at some stage — the toilet doors bought from a remainder shop, the paint thick and bumpy over past layers, bulbous door handles, the pine-green concrete floor. Clean, though. Functional.

"Zoro?" Law asked as he sat down.

"Should I call him?"

"Was he expecting you?"

"I didn't give him an exact time."

"It can wait." Law surveyed the table, empty of their bowls and implements. He'd ordered a fruit drink. Couldn't ride on the free tea forever. "I wasn't trying to urge you to your destination. Was just wondering how he came into the picture."

oOOo

It could take years, and deaths accumulated, and the ones who lost were lost for good, but the memories of the ones gone, the not knowing whether they were still breathing or not, encouraged brave mothers and grandmothers to hold silent vigil. The friends of the workers blackbirded into working long hours in farms and mines for everyone's gain but their own planned how they'd rescue their brethren.

Then word filtered through that the despot was sick, and mercenaries with the interests of their employers hovered on the edges, but some, very few, were closer to the mercy part of that word if the situation suited them. Rebecca knew it meant reward of course, but her mercenary had been merciful.

Zoro had apparently only wanted to go up against the crack skills of the team the regime engaged to crack skulls, and someone was paying him to do it. And, oh, he had a friend incarcerated along with Rebecca. He'd helped Zoro out when the wanderer had been stranded in the kingdom with an expired passport in more peaceful days.

The coup of the coup was a scurry of confusion and determination, and the regime had foolishly released her father, thinking he was too old to be a threat. Disparate groups piggybacked on scattered associations and somehow not one betrayed the other.

The blast that rocked the fighting amphitheatre, which was their bed, their prison, their life, took out a few of their own, but the guards had been called away to other flareups around the town that night, and the ones remaining were caught by surprise and dealt with. The cells were unlocked, and the prisoners, fit and savage due to having been savaged for so long, poured out. They knew where the weapons were kept, and knew which guards held the keys.

They fought their way out, the rest of the city also in chaos, the soft glow of fire lighting the sky in the distance. Of course there was a power vacuum, and those primed to step in were not as keen on keeping privilege in power by fear and coercion.

oOOo

"Make no mistake," Rebecca stood at the cash register with Law settling the bill, "A class system still exists."

"Is there any place where it doesn't?" Law opened a sweet from the bowl on the counter, popped it on his tongue, shoved the plastic cover in his pants' pocket.

"I know my family's better off than most, but I, we, my father and I, maintained our contacts with those who helped us and those we helped. There are councils now with representation for most groups, and we remember. The places of torture, the lives lost, museums now. They can't bring people back, but groups work towards them not being forgotten."

Towards aberrations not being forgotten, Law thought, pushing through the door. He wanted to remember his father, not how he died.

"Thank you for the meal."

"The conversation." She lifted her bag more comfortably on her shoulder as Law beeped the car open.

"You must be exhausted."

She nodded. She was. "But happy with a bellyful of rice."

It sounded like something Bepo might say. Once behind the wheel he asked her, "Did you lift your sword? On the final night?"

She dropped her head. Had shared too much.

"Sorry," he said.

"You ever hurt someone, Law?" After that conversation they were almost on middle name levels of familiarity.

"Yeah." You weren't part of the Don Quixote clan if you hadn't. She didn't follow the questioning further.

Manhandled. Anyone incarcerated, male or female, didn't escape, either from the guards or fellow inmates. There were a few she'd cut down, Zoro by her side. It was all the more surprising for them, all the more unexpected, because she was a defensive, clever fighter.

"But my father wanted me to honour my mother's vision and, truly, I did too. It was just that time." And they deserved it. But it didn't stop the violence except as an immediate rupturing, severing.

"Got a taste for combat, though. Or the engagement. I liked using my opponents' power against them. I don't feel that went against my mother's wishes, and it didn't sink me to the levels of the regime." It didn't mean she played up to the baying hyenas in the stands.

Law knew these streets like the back of his hand. For whatever reason, that mad crew of brothers and hangers on thought he was the best at directing Zoro to where he thought he might like to go, and from where he would invariably be miles away from. He lived at the dojo. Law didn't know how he could lose his way to it. How did he manage day to day?

"You know how it is with the traditions of the old countries though," Rebecca said. She picked at a sesame seed caught between her teeth.

Law wasn't sure that he knew, but he'd tried to research what he could of his land and the rules were conservative and restrictive for some under those pretty, glittering layers of white.

"Women, the mothers, sisters, daughters, wives — we're all needed and important when it comes to smuggling weapons under our skirts, or sneaking secret messages to crucial sources, developing and nurturing our own assassins, but once peacetime rolls around it's get back to the kitchen, and waiting on men hand and foot, as if we had no wants or needs. As if we didn't just fight side by side."

What kind of fighter might Lammy have been? She'd probably keep everyone's spirits up. She was always cheerful, so trusting. She'd be able to handle a weapon.

"My father wanted me to learn 'womanly skills' to respect my mother. To give up all kinds of contact sports that could lead to battle. But I'm good. I'm good at using my opponent's power against them. I wanted to study aikido, to develop my skill in it. Zoro gave me a few rudimentary lessons, but my father forbade even that. He thinks it's protection, but it's just another prison."

"So here you are."

Law pulled up outside the dojo. A street light shone down on the white wall, and a branch of a tree left over from when the yard was a garden to play in peered over the top. Zoro had some help from his father to set this up, or maybe it was from helping out island nations. Law probably wouldn't ask.

"Here I am."

"Your father know you're here?"

She gathered up her bag and a fistful of notes. "Yeah. But he just thinks I'm visiting Zoro. It took all my powers to convince him to let me fly without an entourage."

Law could imagine it. His step-sister was hounded by Doflamingo's over-protective spies every time she went out. "Well, good luck with it," and he picked out the notes that would have covered the cost of the original fare if they hadn't had dinner and spoken into the night. Rebecca pushed more at him, and he refused.

He knew she was probably better equipped for any surprise attack than he ever would be, but he kept the engine running, and watched as she rang the bell, hoping to wake Zoro from whatever slumber he'd slipped into. Maybe he was expecting her. She just hadn't specified a time.

Law had directed her to the hidden side door that led to the sleeping and eating quarters. Zoro ran a meditation session there sometimes, and Law and Bepo dropped in from time to time. They'd brought Penguin and Shachi once, but one had let out a sneaky fart and the other kept dropping off to sleep. Never again.

The door slid open, and Zoro stuck his head out as Rebecca gestured to the car. He'd only started getting to know Law. He guessed he had some explaining to do as some stage. Zoro raised a hand, and Rebecca turned and waved. Law returned it, then pulled out and headed toward the next fare or getting chewed out from his boss. Whichever came first.

A/N: The excerpt of the poem in the middle is from a Mahmoud Darwish poem, I Come From There, and the one line excerpt Rebecca goes on to quote is from 24th September 1945, by Nazim (Nasim) Hikmet.

This chapter veers away from a straight AU, cos who knows what they were using to fight in that island nation, but swords came into it!

I guess I should retitle this work Law's Reflective Taxi. I don't really know if we get to see much of canon Law in it, but y'know, the guy's got a lot to ponder in his life.

I'm sure there are some continuity issues with previous chapters. Forgive me. It's ff. Thank you for reading. All feedback is welcome.