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He doesn’t put it on.
He doesn’t dare. The fur is soft under his hands. A warm gray-brown, speckled like volcanic sand and coffee grinds, the same cool colors of his mother’s eyes and the dark of his father’s hair. It’s warm even without him in it. If he lays his palms flat and digs the calloused pads of his fingers deep into the bed of the fur, he could feel something like a pulse running through it. A watery ebbing, like half-moon tides. A thrumming warmth of life that matched his own stuttering heart in his scarred chest.
Law combs his numb fingers through the hair of his pelt and he doesn’t put it on.
Lami had been a lighter color. Lighter, softer–– still in her pup-fluff. A squishy, fleecy little thing that wiggled fiercely when squeezed. Soft and warm, her whiskered cheeks crested with dense white fur like clumps of drying salt.
The marks hadn’t transferred to their second skins. Whatever hold the ocean had on them seemed to wash the sickness out, refusing to allow the amber lead a space among the salt. The marks would be cleaned (covered, not removed, Law knew better) from their skin. Their scents washed out by the sea. When Law’s parents had donned their coats, in those quiet nights before the end, they had moved almost as if the pain didn’t touch them. For a while, that had been enough.
He hadn’t managed to save a single piece of them. Not them, not their dreams, not their hopes, not their vengeance, not their coats.
Sealskin did not burn easily. Law still knew better than to ever return–– to hope something remained.
All he had left was… him. Just him.
Him, and his coat. His coat he could not use.
Cora-san, for all that Law had trusted him, did not know what he had inevitably forced Law to give up. Law wondered if nothing would have shattered him, really… just one more thing taken from him. One more piece of his heritage, his family, his body taken from him. The fruit had saved him. Cora-san had saved him. He had taken his candle-wick life into his two clumsy hands and cradled it, like a fool, shivering in the snow and stumbling through the streets, and in breathing life into Law he carved something else from him.
Law’s hand spasmed. He lifted it before he could do something like dig his nails in and tear .
Really, there was little reason to even keep it. If anything, it was a risk. A weakness. Something he struggled to hide, even in the depths of the Polar Tang’s twisting machinery–– something he barely trusted Bepo with, something he hadn’t been able to hide from Penguin and Shachi in time–– there was simply little to be done with it. What was he supposed to do, toss it over his bed? Everything in him rebelled at the thought, something vile and revolted at the mere imagery–– his coat, dusty and unused, speckled like soot and ash and dried blood and old salt, cool as his mother’s eyes and dark as his father’s hair, just haplessly thrown out into the open––
His gut churned. Law’s knee jumped, bouncing restlessly; he lurched to keep the coat from being jostled off his lap and onto the floor of his cabin.
No. He could not just do that .
But what else was there to do?
Knock-knock.
“Captain?”
Law jerked, head whipping up from his lap. His voice was raspy when he spoke, as if he hadn’t drunk, hadn’t even swallowed for hours, “Yes?”
The knob shook. Bepo’s voice came muffled through the door, “Can I come in, please? Sorry.”
“I––” His pelt. Out. In the open. Law twisted, practically flinging his fur off his lap–– only for something in his stomach to clench violently in protest. Law flung himself back after his coat before it even began the arc down. He neatly managed to not bash his head open on the wall. His knuckles dug in, painfully white. His throat closed. Bepo’s name was crushed into a thin little gasp of air that whistled between his grit teeth.
“Captain?” A pause. “Law…?”
This was–– ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. It wasn’t as if Bepo didn’t already know. It wasn’t as if Law didn’t (the thought made him want to cough like the word was stuck to the side of his esophagus) trust him. Bepo knew and had known for decades. Bepo had been the first–– the only one Law had ever willingly, openly, purposefully told. The one who knew, not because he found Law’s pelt, or wrestled it out of him, or threatened him, or caught him in the act. Law had told him because Bepo had been crying, and Law had shown him that See? Look, you’re not alone. We’re both animals.
It was stupid. Childishly so.
But he had been sick, cold, and panicking… and Bepo hadn’t done anything about it.
His throat unstuck. Law coughed, a dry, painful sound. “Come in.”
The door peeked open. Bepo poked his head through, eyes dark and nervous. “You haven’t come up for breakfast,” he started, “are you–– oh!”
Swinging the door fully open, Bepo bustled inside. His eyes only left Law’s pelt, crumpled awkwardly in his shaking hands, to make sure the door was fully closed and latched behind him. Law was glad for it. It gave him a moment–– if barely–– to try and breathe. To catch his racing heart, thudding dangerously below his skin. He wheezed out a thin breath. Another. Bepo turned.
“You have your coat out,” he started, voice hushed. Law’s shoulders twitched. “Do you–– are you––?”
His stomach twisted.
“No,” Law bit out.
Bepo shrank back, chuffing.
Law’s face crunched into a scowl. “I didn’t mean, I’m not––” mad at you. It’s not you. It’s never been you, you’re fine, it’s always… His teeth clamped shut around nothing, nearly chomping into his tongue. Law’s fingers curled and uncurled. He breathed in deep, slow, and laboriously pried them loose one by one. His–– the coat dropped into his lap. The fur was a mess. Ruffled and out of place. Law’s chest clenched. He smoothed a jerky palm over it, light as a feather. His palm prickled and itched. “I’m not going to put it on.”
He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. Before, it was simply a question of time. Convenience. Why be a seal? You can’t kill people as a seal. You can’t be a pirate as a seal. You can only be a seal.
(Law hadn’t been able to look at it. Not at all. Not without seeing Lami’s spots in the fur. Couldn’t touch it without feeling the warmth, the softness of his mother’s flank. The color of his father’s hair.)
A question of convenience: when was it the right time to be a seal? It was a trick question.
And then, in the wake of everything after –– when was it safe to be a seal? Another trick question.
Law was sick of tricks. Sick of grief and sick of fear. He had gutted himself open, cleaned out his insides like filleting a fish, carved out all that was unnecessary, and stitched himself back up like a macabre amalgam of bitter anger and gelatinous blood.
He wasn’t going to put it on. What was the point?
“Why not?” Bepo asked, sounding genuinely confused. “You never did, even when we were little. Isn’t that uncomfortable? I can’t imagine having no fur…”
Law averted his eyes. “I can’t swim, Bepo.” The heart of the matter. “Even if I put it on, what’s the point? If I wanted fur I would put on a jacket.” Or a blanket. Or just not go outside at all. There were several ways to work around not having fur. Most humans’ default was to not have fur. Not to mention how vulnerable his sealskin made him. What, was he just supposed to slip into his coat and lounge in a bathtub? Wander off the ship? It took precious seconds, taking the skin on and off–– precious seconds an enemy was more than able to get an unsuspecting hit in, not to mention the new escaping knowledge that he had a second skin at all, and what would so many people give, what would Doflamingo have given, to know that he was this , to take this from him –– “It’s more useful to have opposable thumbs. I can’t use Kikoku with flippers.”
Fighting was out of the question. Moving was barely in the question. Law hadn’t donned his skin since he was… since before everything. When his baby coat had blended in among the white sands of Flevance. He hadn’t worn it since his mother became too busy to swim with him, under her flipper. He hadn’t worn it since Lami had fallen too weak to wear hers.
Those memories were some of the few that survived. The cold shallows of Flevance’s coast. The warmth of his mother’s side. Her shadow cast over his back, his teeth clamped on her flipper as she guided them through the canals. Lami’s tiny weight on his back, too small yet to do more than wet her silky-soft baby fur. His father’s gentle hands, fingers long and huge, scooped in a warm little bowl under his body when they lifted him from the bank. Permanent water stains on the floorboards and salt crusted on his whiskers. Lami wet and whining in his arms, too little to even change without help.
The water had been welcoming, once. It parted around him with ease. It was warm to him even as ice floated on the waves. It cradled him sweetly, pushing him forward with the ease of a single flick of his tail.
Cora-san had saved his life, feeding him the Ope-Ope no mi. But the ocean had never accepted him again.
“I can’t swim,” Law whispered. It rang in the silent room. “I can’t, Bepo.”
What was the point of wearing his coat? None of the things that it represented mattered anymore.
“But–– but have you ever?” Bepo asked tentatively. He wrung his paws, pulling at his fur. Law reflexively took one. Bepo had a habit of accidentally ripping his own fur out, sometimes, in his nervousness. It snagged on his claws and just sort of tugged too hard. He finally managed to extract his white-knuckled hands from his coat. Bepo’s paw was huge in his human hands. The pads spanned his fist alone. Law pressed the meat of his thumbs against it like a button. Pressing, releasing. Squish-squish-squish. Bepo didn’t waver. He simply looked at Law, his face locked in an expression of familiar concern. “I’ve never seen you wear it. Not when we were little and not now.”
Law stared at him. He blinked, jerky and dry. “...What’s your point.”
A little shuffle. A note of tension, in his paw. Law squeezed it. Gently. Gently . This was not him, not even his coat. It was Bepo. His crew and his friend. He had to be more careful with him. “How do you know you can’t?” Bepo finally said all at once. It rushed out of him like floodwaters, bowling into Law. “Selkies aren’t–– aren’t humans, not really. They’re, they’re more–– adjacent? I don’t know, you’re the one who explained it, and I kinda still don’t–– you haven’t even tried. How do you know?”
Law… Law stared at him.
“What.”
Bepo flushed under his fur. With the way he was bristling, Law could see the heat all the way down his neck. “Are you saying,” Law said, slow, “that somehow, despite the very well-documented effects of devil fruits on everything from humans to fishmen , that I, a selkie, somehow dodged those same symptoms.” Bepo’s paw flexed in his hands. Law pinched at one of his claws. Long. Maybe too long. They hadn’t had anything or anyone to fight with recently. He might need to dremel them down a bit. “I am not mad at you. I just want to clarify. What you’re saying.”
“I just think you should check,” Bepo mumbled. “There’s no harm in trying.”
No harm? No harm?
Law’s vision went hazy for a moment. He shut his eyes tightly. He squeezed them until there were black spots and static buzzing on the back of his lids. He gritted his teeth until his jaw cramped. He held tense until it hurt .
Lami. His mom. His dad. His country. His history. His memories themselves. All of it gone. All of them tainted. He held onto them tightly, so tight that they dug into his flesh and flayed him from within, and he lost all of it anyway. Of all that remained–– his coat, his hat, the scars–– only the hat gave anything back. It kept him warm, those cold nights away from Flevance. It provided him with something to hold onto. Something to remind him of what he had, once. Something he could still lose. Something that prevailed, despite losing everything else. His marks were all that was left of his people, the sister, the children, the citizens slaughtered in droves–– his coat all that was left of his kindling heritage.
There were other selkies out there. There had to be if there was his family. They couldn’t have all been in Flevance–– they hadn’t even been killed for being selkies! As far as Law was certain, the Marines hadn’t even known that there was a selkie family in Flevance. They hadn’t been targeted for that at all. If they had–– if they had––
“I can’t,” Law gasped, the sound wrenched painfully from him. “I can’t!”
How much he still had to lose. How much more than he thought. Than he dared to think.
He could feel it, still. The cool shallows rushing past him. His mother’s flank pressed over him. Lami’s soft fur and scrabbling flippers, trying to hold on to him. The silky sands of Flevance’s shores and its pure snow-white canals. The way the moonlight filtered through the surface, rolling with the waves over his back. Salt in his eyelashes. Silt in his fur.
“When you grow up,” his mother had cooed, decades ago, her voice barely strained under the warmth, “you’re going to be such a fast little seal. You’ll outpace me, just as I did my parents. I won’t even be able to catch you! All the little reef fish won’t be able to outswim you, soon. You’ll know the joy of playing in the waves, and gliding along a current. You and… you and Lami both. My swift little swimmers…”
All he had left was his coat.
“...even when we’re gone, the ocean will never leave you. She loves you, Law. She loves you almost as much as I do.”
His coat he could not wear.
Those memories only hurt now. They prickled in the back of his mind like stinging nettle, growing in stabbing, dense clusters that inched closer and closer. It loomed over him. Sprawled, poisonous, clinging. At any moment, it would swallow the last flickering positive remnants from his childhood… and then what would be left? What little left was there to be had? Law was already bitterness incarnate–– he was barely afloat even after all that Cora-san had sacrificed for him with the buoy of his crew and his own billowing hatred.
The thought of donning his sealskin… It felt almost like an insult to those memories. A childish attempt to return to the nostalgia of a past that had crumbled to ash in his hands.
Law released Bepo’s paw as if it had burned him.
“I can’t,” he whispered, something like a plea crumbling out of him. “Don’t ask me again, Bepo.”
There was never true silence in the Polar Tang. There was always something, the whirring of the pipes, the rush of the sea. Ikkaku clattering in the gears and Shachi yelling, Jean Bart’s baritone rumble vibrating down the walkways. Crew up and down and all around pacing along the metal walkways and playing cards and sharpening swords. Yet Law’s ears rang like an explosion had gone off inches from his head. He stared, deaf and blind, at the nothingness between Bepo and him, his coat in his lap, his hands on his wrists.
He only just registered the weight on his shoulders. The warmth that bled, slowly, from Bepo’s paws. Law shivered. He couldn’t relax. Couldn’t uncurl. Couldn’t even cry.
He couldn’t do anything, staring dead ahead and barely breathing, as Bepo gently, gently, hugged him to his chest.
His lap was cold.