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Uni blinks awake before he even realizes he was asleep. Blinks away through mounds of fuzz, layers of dream-memory stacked up like protective padding and torn through like wrapping paper. Flashes rip by: the island, smothered in trees. The tiny, musty junk shop. Haggling? Hauling back the wire. Attack. Attack. Attack.
Running. Running and—
And here. He’s sunken into the infirmary bed and above him are hazy figures, their heads whispering over him. He can’t tell who. He blinks again and still can’t tell who and everything is so heavy and blurry and he’s so warm. Safe. Does he still have limbs? He can’t feel limbs. But he doesn’t seem to mind and it’s fine. He’s on the Polar Tang again and how did he get here and.
Uni wakes up again, familiar but unusually worried faces hovering around him. His legs ache and hum and his fingers twitch and he hurts. He can feel it all. See it all. Hear it all. An unshaved Shachi is telling someone—multiple someones—to relax, Uni’ll wake up when he’s ready, but he looks and sounds just as concerned. How long has Uni been asleep?
“What the hell happened?” he croaks out around his dry mouth.
“Uni!!” “UNI!!” “You’re awake!” “He lives!” “Of course he was going to live, dumbass.” “Uni!” “Do you need anything?” “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” he manages, once the clamor of voices eases up. “Can someone sit me up?”
There’s a scuffle over the bed remote, because of course there is, but soon enough the bed has been raised and Uni is upright enough to look around. The infirmary is packed. Nearly all the Heart Pirate are crammed in the room, only a skeleton crew’s worth of them missing. Presumably to skeleton crew. Most of them are clustered around his bed, although there’s an abandoned card game on the corner table and—huh. The Captain, passed out in a sprawl on the couch.
“What happened?” Uni asks, again. The crew all look at Shachi, the most senior of them there. He sighs and pulls up a chair.
“How much do you remember?”
“Uh…ambush?” Uni offers. “It goes hazy after that.”
“Well, you didn’t miss much,” Shachi says, trying too hard for causal. “Group of thugs tried to get the drop on us. We think they were trying to steal the Tang, but we handily defeated them. Left them on the island in chains—apparently they were also harassing the locals.”
“Bastards,” Uni says. “So, one of them got a lucky hit on me?”
Glances are exchanged, each look adding a new stone to the sinking feeling in Uni’s gut. A weight, a gnawing pain, and why is he lying here?
“None of us were there when it happened,” Shachi finally says. “But we heard you scream. And we saw him afterwards.”
Careful, each word methodically chosen, Uni is told about it. The scream. Running to find Uni collapsed in blood-soaked sand, a figure standing over him. A Devil Fruit user. A man with mouths instead of hands, mouths filled with great gleaming teeth. Shachi shows him one of these teeth. It is the size of his forearm, a freshly-scrubbed shade of pure white. It is jagged and nasty and Uni does not remember it all at.
Not remembering is a hideous relief, but now Uni has to ask.
“What did he do to me?”
“Uni,” Shachi starts, gentle. “Your wounds are still healing. Are you sure you don’t want to wait?”
“For what?” Ikkaku interjects. “Shachi, no offense, but that’s stupid.”
“We could get Penguin. He’s better at this than I am.”
“Shachi, just tell me.”
A sigh. Shachi’s stalling, dragging it out. Injecting unneeded fear. Uni’s here. He’s fine. Whatever happened, it cannot be that bad.
“He ate both your kidneys and was halfway through your liver when we got there.”
Oh. It can be that bad. Worse, even. Uni gulps down the platitudes he’d been preparing to whip out, and instead shoves off his blankets. Pulls aside his gown. The bandages underneath are huge, hiding what can only be a nasty scar. A nasty scar and two point five missing organs. His insides don’t feel empty, just ow, but they are now and—
“How the hell am I still alive?”
Ikkaku gestures to the Captain, still asleep on the couch. He’s fully dressed, boots up and clothing rumpled, a pillow tucked under his neck, like he’d just sat there for a minute and collapsed on the spot. He looks haggard, worn and vulnerable the way he never looks awake. Shachi sighs, frayed.
“He operated on you for hours—“ “—16 hours, over three separate surgeries— “—thank you, Ikkaku. Anyways. Since then, he’s been using his fruit to run dialysis and help out your remaining liver while it regenerates.”
“I don’t think he’s left the room since you were brought in,” adds Clione. “He gave me his stomach. I’ve been injecting it with food as needed.”
“Do I want to know how he goes to the bathroom?”
They all groan. Uni laughs, a mistake. Hurt splits through him like an electric shock, leaving him gasping, hands clawing at the mattress. More concerned glances are exchanged, and then the room erupts into activity. He’s tucked back in, settled back comfortably, asked if he needs anything. Given another dose of painkillers, the pale blue balm streaming through the IV. The gaggle of Hearts are herded out, leaving only Hakugan as a quiet watchdog, the Captain still napping.
Later, Uni will find out the rest. The attack itself, not so handily overcame as Shachi had claimed. The injury list long enough to fit them all, a grim welcome to the Grand Line. Without the Captain, they might have been lost to it, the thought sobering.
The aftermath: the man who’d attacked him sent to the bottom of the sea by a vote. It had been unanimous. Two replacement kidneys, their donors waiting in makeshift cells for when Uni is healed enough for transplant. Reparations from their attackers, the Captain will tell him, grimly satisfied. They’ll live, but they’ll have to live with the reminder of their mistakes. So will Uni. He’ll have his new scar, jaggedly badass, and he’ll train twice as hard so it’ll stay the only new one. He’ll have nightmares, memories resurfaced or conjured by imagination. There’ll be the Captain, overcautious for months and ever.
But now Uni snuggles into the bed, the painkiller creeping in, and relaxes. He’s safe. He’s home. He’s with his crew, and his Captain has not left his side. When he asks, Hakugan fetches him another blanket, and drapes one over the resting Captain and Uni closes his eyes to drift off again.