"... What?" You reach out to the golden heart in Law's hand, mesmerized as it beats a little faster. "That's... my heart?"

Law nods. "Yeah." The discomfort in that single syllable catches your attention.

Pursing your lips you place your fingers on it and feel your own pulse slow. "You've never seen one this color." Your words are a statement, but he still shakes his head slightly in response.

"Never."

"I... I had no idea. I mean..." You motion toward your heart as you take a step back. "I thought I could toss that golden heart into the ocean and be rid of the burden of it, and you're telling me - I mean, it's not, it wasn't - it was supposed to be an expression!" Your voice raises as you take another step backward. "It wasn't suppose to be so literal!"

Law hands your heart to Bepo and nods toward the door. Bepo heads into the submarine proper with a nod as Law steps toward you carefully.

"Deep breath, (Y/N)." He says evenly. "Just breathe."

"I am breathing!" You assert, vision hazy from the tears threatening to overwhelm you. "Gold is joy, Trafalgar Law. Gold is comfort! It's relief! Do you understand? Do you understand that the tears I shed to encapsulate my own emotions were positive ones!"

Law takes a step closer and you take another back, keeping yourself just out of reach. Understanding the situation he stops, putting his hands up and keeping his eyes on you. The crew take a step back as well, giving you more room.

"The plan... the plan was desperate, but it was hopeful! It was a relief to have a plan, and so I sobbed... until there was enough gold to fashion a hollow heart." Your hands go over your chest, acutely aware of the hole that's there right now. "We were paying homage to an old story - a... a fairy tale, I thought."

You look up at him. He's blurry in the pool of tears threatening to fall, but your habit is to hold onto them. "Just a fairy tale."

The words and memories claw at your face and the tears drop. Silver clinks onto the deck, the soft crackle of glass from their impact, and you sink to your knees. No one else knows the weight of their own tears, but you do. You've heard every tear that's fallen, counted every soft thump, every fragile crack of glass.

Sorrow cuts deep, hard as diamond, and cradled thickly in glass that never cracks since sorrow is often kept within your own arms. Joy and relief are much like hugs - warm and heavy, and they leave you vulnerable, so the glass is thin, that the emotion might be shared.

Fear is caught between the two. Something you wish to hold onto so as not to burden or worry those around you, but also it makes you reach out. To find comfort and safety in the arms of another. Family, friend, lover - the detail of who isn't as important as the need to be soothed. The dichotomy creates tears of silver, cold, and heavy, protected by glass that's a little too brittle, sharp and scarred and undecided.

"I cannot be rid of it." Your words fall from you with as much weight as the tears. You sense someone kneeling down nearby, and you know who it is even before his voice reaches your ears.

"It'll be okay." He says calmly. You can feel him reach out before he stops. "I promise."

"I am a threat to you and your crew." You say the words softly, fear twisting the tone of words you don't even want to say. "I should-."

"You are a part of my crew." Law interjects. His words were rushed at first, but he gets you to look at him. "Neither they, nor I, will abandon you."

"Your alliance-."

"There's still many months before that's going to come into play." He interrupts you again. "We have time."

You start to talk again, but stop. Start, and stop. Your thoughts are a mess, but you feel like you're not trying your hardest to make your case. More than that, you already know you don't want to. Where could you even go right now? It's not like you could just walk off the ship and function on an island.

Not with the way you were reacting to stepping on shore.

On shore.

"I... should go ashore." You say after a moment. You look at Law and his brows are creased, but he's not arguing against it. His eyes look down at the deck and you follow his gaze to see the round, cracked-but-not-broken, orbs surrounding you.

"Ah." You clear your throat. "Silver. Just... silver."

He nods, offering a hand and helping you to your feet. "Shachi, Penguin, Ikkaku." He tilts his head toward the tears, as the two of you step away and the three crew members move into action collecting them.

"Same as before." He states evenly. "I'm going to go ashore first, and then you follow."

You nod, letting him help you over the railing. He stops for a moment before letting go of your hand, giving it a small, reassuring squeeze. Stepping down the side of the sub he walks across the gangplank and steps onto the island, turning toward you.

It's easier to step onto the gangplank this time. Maybe it's because things already failed once before, or maybe it's because you're too distracted by the revelation that your heart is literally golden. No matter what the actual reason for it is, you still step forward carefully, drawing your attention and focus toward your own self.

Step.

If there's pain, you'll have to turn back.

Step.

If there's an increase in your heart rate you'll need to be mindful.

Step.

If there's anything out of the ordinary, you need to notice it before it becomes an issue.

Step.

Standing at the end of the gangplank, you're almost at eye-level with Law. The pathway ends atop a small, flat rock at the beach's edge. You'd already made it further than you had when you tried earlier. You weren't sure what it meant yet, but apparently your heart was the key to your issues with being on land.

After a moment he holds out his hand, and you take it, stepping down from the gangplank and stone and putting your foot down on the soft, but solid, ground of the damp beach sand.

A small sigh escapes your lips as you look around and Law nods.

"Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me either." He admits, the two of you stepping further onto the island.

"My heart is... where, right now? On your desk?" You question, he snorts half a laugh before nodding. "That alone hardly makes sense on its own." You muse idly, breathing in deep and letting it out slowly. "They were so new, and so rare back in my day."

"Devil fruits?"

"Yeah, and believe me when I say, anyone without noble blood found to have one would have been dealt with severely."

"... You said that one friend of yours wasn't nobility, but she had the gold manipulation power?"

You nod. "Most fruits were considered to have a will of their own, others were often left to fate. When the previous golden idol passed away, the fruit appeared elsewhere. Banchina found it, and brought it to the palace. When she set the fruit down and backed away, the damnable thing rolled off the platform and circled around her once before stopping. Thus was the next idol chosen."

A mix of pride, sorrow, and bitterness dance in your tone as you recount the event. "Several fruits were treated thusly."

"Was mine?"

You look up at him, seeing his face is as stoic as he can keep it, and you smile sadly. Shaking your head you step from the beach onto the island proper, unsure why it's suddenly so easy to traverse the islands. "No, but Lami earned it, I can promise you that much."

"Being gifted the right to that fruit was quite the fierce competition, one held every five years." You explain. "Every competition is a new winner, and thus that winner remains until the fruit is either transferred to them, or another competition occurs. In this way there is always someone in reserve, for your fruit was one of the most lauded prizes of the noble world."

"Lami won the competition then."

"Two times in a row." You clarify, puffing out your chest a little at your friend's accomplishments. "She was the youngest winner at age eleven, and again at age sixteen. Three months later the transfer happened. I'd say she made her family proud, but she really did it for herself."

Law smiles softly. "I'm assuming there's more to the accomplishment than getting the fruit?"

You nod. "She effectively became, well, a man, for lack of a more efficient way of phrasing it. She was still a member of her family, but she was, by proxy of the fruit, head of her own household. Not something easily accomplished by women back in those days.

"Aside from the accolades, it also allowed her to choose her own husband. Her and Banchina both had that distinction." You explain.

"But, not you."

You shake your head. "In my own country, with my family behind me, I would've had some say, certainly. As the last daughter of a lost kingdom, cursed as I was, I had no say. Lami and Banchina were the only reasons I didn't end up married before we'd fled the kingdom."

"Oh?"

You stop your slow walk and look back, making sure you could still see the Tang. "Mm. Paper work mostly, conversations with Lami's father, weighing pros and cons." You roll your eyes and chuckle a little nervously. "Lami always apologized for breaking down my worth into objective values, but I appreciated all her efforts."

Leaning against a tree, Law crosses his arms over his chest and looks back to the ship. "You mentioned a fairy tale earlier."

"Oh, yes. I did." You can feel your face heat up and you look away from him for a moment. "I really thought it was a silly old story, but it was one of the few stories that didn't paint me as some kind of terrible cursed being."

"There was more than one fairy tale?"

"Oh there were a dozen different stories about people cursed to unleash the worst parts of their souls unto an unsuspecting and innocent world." You wave your arms in a grand gesture. "People whose anger could bring down mountains, whose sorrows could drown kingdoms. Stories about tears of vengeance ending entire noble families. It's where the beliefs that I cannot be harmed, or, well," you clear your throat and look away.

"Your benefactors must not have believed that part, if they were trying to marry you off." He points out and you laugh. The initial snort turns into a giggle, and you put your hand up to give yourself a moment to regain your composure.

"Contractual marriages have not survived the centuries, it seems." You manage, an amused smile on your lips.

"... Not as far as I know, no." Law admits, his brows creasing again.

"You're... upset by that." You state, and see Law's face tinge pink before he really frowns and looks away. "Clauses concerning celibacy or, well, production, weren't uncommon. Political marriages were rarely about love, and sometimes not even about progeny."

He pinches the bridge of his nose and nearly growls before sighing. "I wonder if it's just a different time, or a difference more... vast than that."

You tilt your head a little and smile. "Being unnerved by practices of nobility doesn't mean you're unnerved by me." You assert as he looks over at you. "Or if you're angry on my behalf, then thank you." You curtsy loosely before leaning against your own tree.

"Still feeling okay?" He questions and you nod.

"I feel so perfectly normal that I'm almost unnerved by it." You scoff.

"After everything leading up to this, I can understand that."

"This barely diminishes our research." You grouse, stepping away from the tree. "There's still a question of why, and how far away can I be from my own heart and be okay?"

"As far as I know, the connection doesn't break." Law admits. "Vergo was leagues away from us. His heart only stopped because the Marines executed him."

"So... even on an island as large as the one, what did you call it?"

"The Grandline Metro." Law answers. "Most people just call it The Metro, but yes, even on the largest island in the world, it could stay on the Tang, and you'd be fine anywhere on the island, easily."

With a sigh you step back and lean against the tree again. After a moment's silence you poke your shirt and watch the material go into the hole in your chest. "Anyway to have this not so inconspicuous hole in my chest?"

He looks at your eyes, down at the fabric pushing into the void in your chest and then back up to your eyes. "Aside from putting someone else's heart in there... no."

You look back at him, down at his chest - mostly exposed right now, as it often is regardless of what he's wearing - and then back up at his eyes. "Yeah, that wouldn't work. I feel like an incomplete tea set, but it's not uncomfortable at least.

Law starts to say something, stops, and then goes completely quiet. His eyes are focused on a point, but he's not really looking at it. He's thinking. He's fallen into the same pose before while you'd been working together researching the past few weeks that you know it for what it is.

"Thoughts, captain?" You prompt.

"Something we can experiment with tomorrow." He says quietly.

"Do I get a hint?"

His eyes flick up to yours, and you can tell from the look on his face he's still thinking through whatever he's thinking about. "People are sets."

"Sets... like, sets of organs?"

He nods. "As far as my power is concerned, people are exactly that. Pieces, and sets. A single piece isn't the same as the set it belongs to. One chess piece versus a set, a single tea cup versus an entire set."

"I don't mind thinking of my heart as a piece in a set, but I don't see -."

"Say you had a chess set and a tea set. You switch a pawn for a... hm... sugar lid. You don't stop the tea set from working - the sugar lid's not going to stop you from brewing tea or filling a cup, but the pawn looks out of place. Opposite that-."

"You could use a sugar lid for a pawn piece, I guess, but it would be awkward." You interject. "I see what you're saying. The loss of my heart has left me feeling a little less energetic than usual, but not so much that I was functionally impacted."

"Exactly. I've switched pieces and parts between people as a function of an unfriendly encounter, but in this situation, if we consider that your inability to go ashore is a 'set' problem, and not a 'piece' problem, then there might be a way to keep you and your heart in the same vicinity, and avoid any obvious signs of it." He explains.

"Obvious signs?" You tilt your head a little. You were keeping up with him for a good while, but now you feel a little left behind. "Law, what are you suggesting?"

"Switching hearts."