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The feeling starts while they are heading towards Egghead Island. A tremble in his soul that Luffy cannot understand, drums beating inside him, like they had on Wano, but wilder, louder, angrier. An understanding that he does not have and if he were to look in the mirror he’d see his eyes flashing red-pink, his hair flaring white under the moonlight. His smile wider, stretched almost too far over his features, sharp and inhuman.
BA-BA-DUM
The Sunny shudders with the rhythm of the drums, lurching on the waters too calm for her to be going off course and between a beat and the next, Luffy feels himself pushed back, consciousness fading into darkness as something else takes over.
‘Apologies, vessel mine,’ a voice murmurs in the darkness, warmth and light enveloping Luffy as he tries to make sense of where he is. ‘We are needed. Our little heart is breaking.’ He cannot see Nika, not in a physical way. It’s more a feeling that Luffy sinks into as something almost like a hug wraps around him, the beat of drums echoing everywhere around him, worry-fear-anger gnawing in his soul as he wonders what happened to Torao, hope-faster-please thrumming as he feels himself hoping Nika is fast enough, that he can take them to Law faster than the Sunny would be able to.
Luffy does not need to see, to understand they are in the clouds. To know they are moving faster than humanly possible, slipping across sun rays over the expanse of the world until the echo of drums picks up louder, louder, louder, faster than ever before, as Nika laughs in their shared consciousness, there-there-there, found him, ours-ours-ours.
It takes just moments more to land on the island they have reached; to search and search and search, haki expanding until Nika croons in joy, laughs and laughs and laughs, as he jumps, reaches, bounces. Their beloved is there. It is simply a matter of finding his exact hiding spot now.
He finds Law in a place long forgotten by time, by history. Life had claimed it instead, moss and trees, branches arching over what had once been marble pillars and vines wrapped over the broken stone of his statues. There is nothing left of it how it had once been; nothing but the slab of stone upon which Law lays. If Nika closes his eyes he can see it anew; the altar upon which he received his offerings. He doesn’t need to; not when he has another offering in front of him, although Law might not know it. Precious, so infinitely precious and if his little healer cannot care for himself then Nika will have to do it in his stead.
He approaches with bouncing steps, half joy, half prowl, Luffy screaming at the back of his mind, his little host terrified for their wounded heart. No matter, even if Law looked terrible now, he would be healed later.
Law is too far gone to notice him at first; his breathing shallow, blood pooled under him and pale, so very pale. Their healer should never look like this. He only startles when Nika’s hand presses to his face, tilting his vision up to meet eyes burning pink-red. Nika wonders if his host shines through them. If Law can see Luffy’s own desperation mingled with the god’s ancient grief.
"Luffy-ya…" Law’s voice was a thin thing, hoarse and broken.
Nika frowned, the wide smile on his face slipping into something else. Truer. Mournful. How easy it would have been to lose their healer. They would have if Nika hadn’t taken control.
“Not just Luffy,” Nika corrected softly. “But he is here as well.”
His other hand pressed flat against Law’s chest where the healer’s heartbeat still struggled on, stubborn and defiant, although the god could feel it weakening. No longer Law’s heart alone, not if he did not know how to care for it. It would be his now, theirs.
Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
“Too fragile,” Nika murmured and allowed his light to shine stronger.
A shuddering gasp echoed from Law as Nika pressed deeper, as the god opened his ribcage up, slowly, as if unwrapping a present, bone and muscle and sinew revealing the beating appendage inside. Quivering, faltering, not steady as it usually was and Nika wished to take the heart out of its place, cradle it and devour it whole.
It was his now after all. His vessel’s little surgeon, their little soul that left and ran and suffered. That broke his heart so many times that Nika can now see the cracks on it, fractures of silver where red and blood should have been pumped. And Law doesn’t even know it. Silly little healer that keeps failing to understand who he belongs to.
“Teach tried to tear you apart,” Nika continued, voice lowering, thick with violence and frightening possession as he gently removed the heart from its place, cradling it in his hands, red-pink eyes furious as he stared into Law’s golden ones. “Tried to take what is ours. He will pay for it.”
Light pooled beneath Law’s skin in veins of gold.
“You don’t belong to him, little healer. Not to him and not to the world. They don’t get to take you from me.”
The god’s fingers flexed over the fragile organ in his hands, before he brought it to his lips and kissed it gently. Almost reverently, if only a god could ever revere a mortal.
“What are you doing…?” Law gasped, and Nika thinks he should have perhaps been more frightened. But no, their healer was strong. He must have understood what was meant to be all along. Nika should have claimed him like this in Wano, made sure he could not leave. But his silly host had been adamant. Freedom. Law would be free, of course. But that did not mean he would not be Nika’s.
“I am keeping what is mine,” Nika replied, pressing his forehead down to Law’s, their breaths tangling together. “You offered yourself the moment you chose to stand beside my little host. In Dressrosa. In Wano. Every time you patched us together when we should have shattered.”
His voice softened, terribly intimate.
“You are not allowed to walk away anymore, not when you are so terribly careless. I will not lose you Trafalgar D. Water Law.”
A pulse of light tore through Law’s body, not burning, but binding, light flaring in the empty space where his heart had once stood just as Nika raised the organ back to his lips and bit in the red flesh. Gold and red spilled from it with each bite, each tear of the still beating muscle, blood dripping down Nika’s chin as he looked at Law, as he made sure his healer saw every moment of him devouring his heart. His now. His. Until the last drop of blood disappeared and the last ounce of flesh was devoured by the god.
Only then did he lift his little healer up, cradling him like something so very precious. Watched as the light inside his chest swirled and came together, formed a glowing orb that beat in cadence with the god’s own heart. Ba-dum ba-ba-dum. The sound of drums filling the little clearing they were in, perfectly in sync.
“You will walk the world again,” Nika whispered, pressing a kiss to Law’s brow, a mark searing in invisible gold. “But wherever you go, I will be in your blood. In your hands. In your pulse.” A pause. “And you will always be called back to me.”
Law lay on the moss-covered stone, breath coming slow but steady now. The worst of the agony had dulled to an echo and most of his wounds looked half-healed as if they were now weeks old, not recently stitched together. Something warm and permanent coiled around his sternum, a presence that would never leave and the pirate did not know if he loathed it or not. Chains, albeit gentler ones than Doflamingo’s own, now had him irrevocably tied. To Luffy. To Nika. He pushed himself up on trembling arms.
Luffy stood a few steps away, looking almost normal, almost only himself again, except for the pink-red flickering faintly at the edge of his eyes.
“You okay, Torao?” he asked quietly.
“…Yeah,” he answered, voice rough, gaze turning briefly to the ruined altar that was now glowing faintly with renewed symbols that were probably older than the poneglyps. “I think I just became your problem forever.”
Luffy smiled, wide, soft and utterly sad.
“Good,” he said. “That’s what I wanted.”