Work Text:
Everyone has their morning routine. Some drink coffee. Some exercise. Some lie abed until the morning capitulates and afternoon begins.
Hawkins’ routine begins with his cards.
He knows people whisper about it, wonder about it, laugh about it. He ignores them. After all, his routine is not so different from anyone else’s, in its way.
Some of those others drag the remnants of their dreams or their blind sense of optimism into their waking time. Today will be a great day! Or I just can’t get started today. It isn’t real, just chemicals and hope and desire. And even if his cards are no more accurate than those willful fantasies (and for all his faith in them, that possibility looms over him) at least their prediction is an objective one, to an extent.
So he starts his day with his cards.
First draw. The nine of wands. Inverted. Not ideal.
To be fair, the card can describe everything since getting here. The struggle to move forward. The sense of paranoia and mounting defensiveness. He’s stopped looking ahead, ground down to focusing on surviving the day and seeing the next.
But if he allows himself to follow that line of thought, poison will follow, dripping in his ear, spreading through his mind and tempting his resolve. And Hawkins cannot embrace, as many fools have, throwing his life to the wind just to follow some feeling.
He turns the next card, and the next, and gets on with things.
“Kaido’s looking for you.”
It’s rare to see Page One without his sister attached. The two of them usually orbit one another, binary stars whose light and existence hang on the other. But when they are separate, their differences become starker -- Ulti grows even more aggressive and demanding of those around her, while Page One settles back into a level-headed and sometimes even meek demeanor that Hawkins admits he finds refreshing in the menagerie Kaido has built himself in Wano.
“About what?” he asks, a stall as much as a real question.
The kid shrugs, then says, “He has orders, I think.” He doesn’t explain further.
Fair enough. Kaido remains a man of few words. Unfortunately, his actions say plenty. “Understood,” he replies as he changes his trajectory, aiming for the area he knows Kaido can be found during the early part of the day.
Hawkins, on some level, loathes working for Kaido. There are reasons and reasons, starting with how he came to join the Beast Pirates at all. But foremost in his mind is the sheer capriciousness of the emperor. The cards find him a mystery. The only draw that comes up regularly in conjunction with him is the inverted two of swords, which would normally indicate a person of indecision, but which Hawkins now interprets as the cards themselves being unsure of Kaido. So at some point, Hawkins stopped even asking them. And that makes every encounter with the man something mostly foreign to Hawkin’s existence.
Unpredictable.
Kaido can be driven and focused, relentlessly pursuing a goal. Or he can be drunk and lethargic, everything except his most basic instincts simmered in sake until the massive, hulking beast of a man all but hibernates. And sometimes -- rarely -- he has a grin on his face that hints at the true potential he has to carve his path through the world and leave everyone scrambling to keep up or get out of the way.
Hasn’t Hawkins already done just that?
So Hawkins hates working for Kaido, despises him for dropping out of the sky like a force of nature and leaving them with no choices but joining him or surrendering to torture and death. However, there’s actually someone there, in halts and glimpses, that he might not have minded working for in a different world.
This morning, however, it’s one of the drunk days.
Kaido slouches in his chair, one cheek leaning on his fist as he stares down not at Hawkins, but past him. The other hand grasps an ever-present drink -- certainly not his first of the day, Hawkins feels.
“You wanted to see me?”
Slowly, his eyes focus on Hawkins. There’s a pause as the alcohol parts long enough for Kaido to figure out whether he did, and what about. Clearly, it’s not something important to him. Which means Hawkins is hearing Orochi’s name in his head before Kaido actually speaks.
“Orochi wants your help with something,” he growls out at last, disinterested in his own words. His eyes slide from his subordinate back to the booze warming in his grip. “Take care of it so he’ll shut up.”
“Of course.” And Hawkins, as calmly as possible, hurries out of there.
As he makes his way toward Orochi’s haunts, Hawkins figures he can already tell something of what this request entails. Some people, watching at a distance, assume Kaido and Orochi to be similar as they exert their rules -- in the caprice of it, and the absolute terror it instills. To an extent they’re right, but there are differences up close. And he thinks it comes down to one basic difference.
Kaido has rules he follows. He believes that those who wronged him deserve punishment, and he’s not above treachery or backstabbing, but there is within it some thread of an inner code. Hawkins is not sure he’s seen or heard of Kaido doing something simply to “make an example” -- when someone is in the way they must be removed and when rules are broken, the rule breaker must face the consequences, and when he desires something, he will take the needed steps. That’s all. It can be harsh, but unlike so much about the man, it’s predictable.
Also, it’s just more honest. Kaido wants things, and he’s strong enough to take them, whether they’re items or land or even people for his crew -- again, something Hawkins knows personally. And if someone eventually stops him, if they can punish Kaido for his actions, then so be it. He’ll take his defeat with a smile on his face.
On the other hand, Orochi is a dog off the leash.
The second card this morning was Temperance. A card of balance and patience. It can often be a good thing, but today it came up in an unusual slot -- as a warning of the obstacles that may stand in his way. The card puzzled him in the dim light of early morning, but he thinks he’s starting to see where it comes in.
If there was ever a hard proof of the cards offering true knowledge, it would be that every time he does a reading involving Orochi, the inverted Emperor card worms its way into the spread. Its myriad meanings read like a laundry list of the man’s shortcomings and failures. Domination. Inflexibility. A grasping need for control that taints everything he touches. The card has begun to feel oily in Hawkins’ hands when he draws it these days.
The same can be said for being in the man’s presence. Orochi commands a powerful devil fruit and a powerful position and he assumes that makes him powerful. It would be pitiful if working with Kaido didn’t necessitate working with him. Hawkins walks in after being announced, to find to his dismay that Apoo already waits within. Orochi’s grin widens as he sees Hawkins step in, and he gestures him closer like an overexcited child.
“About time,” he says, petty venom in his voice. “I called last night. I need you two to do a mission.”
He’s not exactly a stranger to Orochi’s place of power. Kaido never seemed interested in the future, but Orochi had been, at first (and Hawkins suspects he knows how, on this sequestered and self-contained island, he heard about Hawkins’ ability). But with a straight face, every time Orochi called for a reading, Hawkins slightly reworded the question, picked the darkest possible meaning of each card. After enough warnings of terror stalking him through his safest halls, of monsters approaching Wano across time and space to converge on him and remove his head as many times as it took, he stopped asking about the future. Stopped asking anything.
Until today.
“Why us?” Hawkins asks, flat and businesslike.
The smile wilts briefly. “Because I’m telling you to.” He’s at least not screeching, which is a small blessing, but he’s doing the low, quiet voice he imagines is intimidating. Unwilling to argue the point, Hawkins nods his head, drops his eyes momentarily. Let the man believe him intimidated then. Anything to get out of here faster.
It works. Of course it works. Orochi sees what he wants, and right now he wants two powerful pirates meekly doing his bidding so he can turn his attention back to food and women.
“There’s an enclave of reported samurai hiding in Hakumai plotting betrayal. This man has seen them himself-” He gestures toward Apoo, whose ever-present grin somehow widens. “Now, if you don’t believe yourselves up to the task-”
“We will handle it,” Apoo interjects, fawning eagerness so blatant and thick that Hawkins struggles to believe Orochi can’t see it for the lie it is.
“Good. And I want them alive if you can manage it.”
Ah. So that’s why he’s here. It makes sense -- more than he expected for a plan from Orochi, which is why he imagines this suggestion has come from Apoo. Some people talk about the cunning moves and alliances Orochi made in the past, but whoever he might have once been, his current alliance with Kaido has made him lax and hedonistic.
With Temperance in mind, he considers saying no. Orochi’s retribution will mean nothing in the face of ignoring the cards. And the cards say taking the safe middle path will be an obstacle to him today. But in the end, he inclines his head just slightly, the barest of nods. After all, the third card today, the card of purpose, had been the two of cups -- cooperation with a partner toward a common goal. So it seems working with Apoo on this mission might well be the right thing to do. Not to mention, the card looking to the future was the inverted ten of pentacles. Perhaps it will do him some good to be out and about, keeping busy and making sure his skills remain sharp.
Orochi says, “Then go. I want them back here by nightfall to face justice. I could use them as new litter-bearers.” He stops, pondering his own idea, then adds, “Perhaps if they agree to come along without a fight, they can even keep their eyes! Even though a litter bearer has no need of such things.”
His laugh rends the room.
If there is some drop of honor in how Kaido reacts when wronged, Orochi has no such thing, and while Hawkins doesn’t pity these samurai -- they chose their actions after all, knowing the likely consequences -- he knows he wouldn’t want to be helpless on the other end of this lord’s justice.
There is no punishment for the crime, with Orochi. There is the crime, or what he sees as a crime, and then there is whatever retribution he decides to level against those who committed it. And the punishment is decided not by the action, but by what would make Orochi feel better. So a murder might be met with the barest payback if he didn’t care about the victim, while the theft of a single grape from his plate could leave the thief spending the rest of their short days in torture and humiliation.
The shogun’s “justice,” much like the marines’, much like Kaido’s, much like everyone’s, is just a weasel word, a way to cover for people doing what they want and pretending it has a higher, nobler purpose. It’s a word that rings hollow in his ears no matter whose lips form it.
But that said, he’s agreed to do this cruel little man’s bidding today, so he takes his leave, Apoo following him out through the shogun’s palace and into the street.
“So what do you think?” Apoo asks, sauntering along the road behind him. “Pretty cushy assignment, huh? And gets us both in good with the shogun.”
He doesn’t answer. He needs to go get a few more folks from among the horde to use his power on, just in case the samurai are stronger than expected. He hopes Apoo has preparations to make as well.
No such luck.
“You are such a buzzkill,” Apoo complains as they walk through the streets, Wano citizens rushing to get out of their way.
Scratchman Apoo seems to move through life as though a spotlight follows him. He can’t talk, he must sing or shout or rap. Never so much walks as dances or jams or bounces. Hawkins finds it all baffling and irritating.
“Are you under some curse? Come on, you can tell me. Is it like you die if you say enough words in a row that people start thinking you’re a regular guy? I bet that’s it.”
He doesn’t want the needling to get to him, but somehow Apoo‘s ability to zero in on the right pressure points is impeccable. “A normal person, or you?” Hawkins asks.
“Ha! See? I knew you could do it if you really tried,” Apoo says. “So, hey, there’s been something I’ve been wondering.”
Hawkins curses the decision to say a word to this man.
“So, do the people that you … you know. With your power. Do they know, or…”
For as ostentatious as he seems in every other regard, he can be maddeningly vague in his speech. When it comes to words, Apoo can sometimes be like a card sharp, picking and choosing what he reveals in an effort to gain exponentially more than he puts out.
“Why does it matter?” Hawkins asks.
“Because if you get mad enough to try it on me, I want to know if I’ll have a chance to plead my case.” He grins like he’s joking, but Hawkins believes every word of that reason.
For a time he didn’t get why Apoo had helped him out in Sabaody, why he’d led Kaido to their alliance to blow it all up, but at this point, he’s pretty sure he’s figured it out. If Hawkins follows the odds, Apoo worships them. He tries to clear as many paths as he can, and chooses the smoothest one. He doesn’t just want survival, he wants ease, comfort, and doesn’t want to work more than needed for it.
And that’s probably why, ever since Hawkins accepted the threat to join the Beast Pirates, Apoo occasionally comes sniffing around trying to play at being buddies.
Part of it is that Apoo believes them to be cut from the same cloth -- a sentiment that would’ve made him laugh if he’d first heard it now. But at the time the fool had originally babbled about this, Hawkins had been in limbo, surrounded by enemies that had nominally become allies. That forty percent survival chance loomed like a sword in the back of his mind and his crew’s eyes watched him.
But mainly, Apoo thinks if they’re friends, then maybe the cards will help him as well -- one more tool to stay ahead of the changing winds. He used to ask about them a lot, until he sensed it beginning to fan the flames of Hawkins’ slow, cold anger. Now he just jokes around, makes excuses for them to work together once in a while. Tries to show how useful he can be, as if he hopes Hawkins will offer his own abilities in return.
But Hawkins vowed to himself to never read the future for Apoo. No matter what. And “never” is a word he has long since learned to avoid. The cards make fools of “never” time and time again.
For this man, he risks “never.”
When Hawkins doesn’t answer the question about his ability, Apoo returns to needling, then down to random chatter, and it becomes easier to shut him out.
When asking how far it will be from the port, Apoo’s only real answer is “far enough that we don’t want to walk.” So they don’t walk. One thing about being subordinate to the Beast Pirates is that no matter what, if you need something, the people of Wano will give it to you. It’s simple and quietly nightmarish -- simpering people doing all they can to please the two men.
They get a pair of lizards and ride out into the crisp afternoon. The last of the fall colors would be beautiful in other circumstances. Today Hawkins’ eyes slide over them. The entire unsettling day has roiled his mind and troubled his thoughts. Perhaps the samurai will prove to be a challenge. That will at least focus him.
But as they approach the spot a bit over an hour later, he realizes something feels wrong. He doesn’t need cards to sense it. Apoo rides down the center of the road, bold as brass. Hawkins rides near but not too near -- slightly to the right, slightly behind, so he retains plausible excuse for “not hearing” any of Apoo’s questions. But the man continues yammering. It’s full daylight.
“Should we not approach more cautiously?” he asks at last, as their trail takes them over a weathered bridge crossing a murky river.
“Why?” Apoo sounds genuinely perplexed.
“If the Shogun wants them brought in alive, won’t approaching like this give them a chance to prepare an ambush, or to flee?”
Apoo laughs, a little derisively. “Trust me, not something we need to worry about. Why, you scared?”
The eighth card from this morning comes unbidden to the surface -- the inverted two of wands, blatantly warning that those around him see him as afraid. Afraid of things he cannot control or know. It’s not unheard of for the cards to predict a moment of his day this starkly, but it is rare enough to feel momentarily unsettling every time.
“I simply don’t see the need to walk into a situation blind when you have all the information needed about this mission,” Hawkins says, patience fraying.
But insufferable as it is, Apoo seems disinclined to acquiesce to his request. “You don’t like answering my questions, I don’t answer yours,” he says with a shrug. “Hey, did you know Queen’s planning a party for next week? Some sort of festival on the island -- spirits or ancestors or something. If there’s good music and decent food, I’m game. How about you?”
Hawkins doesn’t answer once more, and Apoo fills the silence. It’s true both of them have devil fruits, both are quite powerful in their own right. Few if any regular samurai of this nation would stand a chance against either, alone. In a group, though? Groups divide attention, divide focus, and enough enemies, if sufficiently smart and skilled themselves, can wear down most opponents. And there’s always the possibility of some devil fruit power, either real or manufactured, secreted away in the forest.
But Apoo isn’t worried. So he must assume them to be too powerful for whatever they face at this samurai hideaway. As for fleeing, he cannot begin to understand why that possibility doesn’t worry the man.
As the sun passes its apex, Apoo begins to slow, squinting at the tree line. It’s another few minutes before he stops and hops down from his lizard. Hawkins follows suit, his eyes taking in the tree line once, twice, and finally finding the ghost of a trail cutting away between the trees. It could have been a deer path, or whatever passes for deer in Wano.
But as they approach, as they begin walking through the trees, evidence of human passage becomes more obvious. A few scraps of thread where brambles crowd the trail. A snapped bit of fiber, natural but clearly woven, discarded at the foot of a tree. One half-obscured footprint in earth that had been mud last night.
And as the trees finally thin again, Hawkins sees the settlement and understands Apoo’s attitude.
The realization tastes like steel in his mouth.
Children. Women and children and a smattering of elderly people, stooped and frail. Some of the old men carry swords at their hips. Perhaps they’d been skilled samurai in their prime, but hunger and thirst and time have taken all the edges off them. This will not be a fight. If they had not been instructed to bring them back alive, it would be a massacre. Apoo doesn’t even hesitate, he just strolls out of the tree line, letting loose with his power and terrifying everyone.
Hawkins only has to take one hostage. Once the villagers realize that every cut and thrown stone hurts the old man instead of the Headliner before them, they back off, cowed and terrified. Some try to run, but are in no condition to get far. Others just fall to the ground, crying or screaming. Children, confused about what is happening, take their cues from the ratcheting anxiety of the adults around them and wail and cling and shake.
Hawkins forces himself to watch as Apoo rounds up the runners.
This is what he has become. This is what he preserved his life for. Carrying out other people’s plans. Their “justice.”
As they bind the lot in lines, Hawkins feels irritation like an itch under his skin. He tries to shrug it off, but it squirms and stings, and at last he says, “You take them back.”
“We have to-” Apoo starts to complain, but Hawkins knows that if he stays here he will make a foolish decision.
“The mission was to take them alive. They’ve been taken alive. Surely you do not see a danger for yourself at the hands of elderly, bound men and squalling children.”
“But there are like thirty of them!” This is not the type of work Apoo likes to do, so he’s trying to wheedle out of it. Hawkins wonders idly if the other pirate had hoped to foist the whole thing off on him, or if he was going to use the ride back to try to ingratiate himself again.
Hawkins can’t be bothered to care which it is.
“If they manage to kill you, I’ll avenge your death then,” he says flatly, walking away. “Think of how pleased your return will make Orochi.”
He leaves the lizard behind, a pity for the smallest of the children more than Apoo.
Hawkins isn’t a soft mark. He doesn’t particularly care what happens to these people. He understands why they gathered out here, why they hid, but in the end they had to know it only increased the danger. The settlement brands them as outlaws.
But while he doesn’t care, he also doesn’t want to be involved. Their small lives, the meager layer of safety they sought to earn themselves … the pirates do not belong among them. His and Apoo’s presence is a hurricane in a wheat field.
They presented no threat. Why are we here?
Feeling the prickle of anger beginning to rise, he walks on.
It’s less than half an hour later when the samurai confronts him.
He’s been hearing the man on and off since shortly after leaving the pitiful excuse for a village. The man had to have been the only able-bodied warrior there, and he must have been out of the village when doom arrived. Hunting food maybe? There’s a sense of death and blood around him.
Hawkins waits for the man to make the first move. He is not in the mood to spark another pointless confrontation today.
On a narrow stretch of path, the man finally gathers his courage and steps in front of Hawkins, blade out and ready. His eyes are red with tears and rage.
“Fight me, monster!” he challenges.
Hawkins knows he can just leave. The gulf between them yawns ocean-wide. This man cannot be more than twenty, and clearly has neither the strength (hard to be strong as you starve) nor the skill (for who is left to teach him?) to pose a true threat, but he nevertheless clings to the will of a warrior.
“Why?” Hawkins asks instead. He’s not sure he cares about the answer, but he will give this man his moment.
“Because my sword demands justice for the people you helped send to their death!” The sword in question shakes, the tip wavering and dipping.
He knows the answer, but he asks anyway. “Which people? A great many have crossed my path, and no small number of them no longer live.”
“The village!” His voice claws its way from his throat, raw and full of pain and mourning. Hawkins abruptly realizes the man has come here intending to die an honorable death far from the eyes of the people he failed. “You and your friend took them, and for that … face me!”
Honor is not a concept Hawkins concerns himself with, particularly, but he knows it is held in worship by some measure of the men in this country. So he decides to let the cards decide. Should I do as I would probably be asked to do, and eliminate this samurai? Or do I leave him alive, and give his skill and his hate time to grow into something more mature?
He turns the top card. The reversed seven of swords. He stares at it for a long few seconds.
A minute later, Hawkins continues on his way. Honor lies cooling on the path behind him.
Hawkins knows there’s a running joke that he traded his humanity for the ability to read the cards. Mostly it passes between the lower ranks, though he knows it’s gotten further when Ulti said something about it, a little too loud, as he walked past before a meeting one evening.
He thinks she wanted to draw him into a fight, and if that was her motive, he knows it’s because she truly reveres Kaido, and hates the idea of people like him being in their crew.
He’d ignored her words. Ulti laughed, theory proven true, and he left it behind him.
Truth is, he has the same humors and moods as anyone. But he knows by now, has known since his childhood in North Blue, that emotions and reactions can be weapons. Kept within you, they are weapons only you may use. But if you broadcast them to the world, you hand them over to anyone who sees.
That said, he has his limit. And that limit looms. His walk has him returning late, and he hopes to grab a meal he can bring to his private quarters, and rest until tomorrow dawns. To get the locks back on these feelings of irritation and anger and, under it all, the creeping futility that threatens to suffocate him.
So when he hears Drake’s voice behind him, saying, “Hawkins. A word?” he feels tempted to just keep walking.
But X Drake holds a spot in the Flying Six. So whatever else that means, it gives him the right to impose on Hawkins’ time. He stops. Breathes deep. Then turns and follows the man to a quiet corner in one of the gardens.
“Is it true that you and Apoo rooted out a group of samurai this afternoon?” he asks without preamble once they’re away from trafficked areas.
Hawkins considers the way to answer that. Technically true -- that certainly had been the mission, and if anyone asks Orochi, that’s what he’ll claim. It may even be true, in the way that saying Hawkins and his crew chose to join Kaido is true. But he’s been around Drake long enough to know that that’s not what’s on his mind.
“We brought in members of a small, hidden away village,” he says instead of yes or no. “It may be that some of them were samurai. I’m not the judge of such things.”
Drake has his arms crossed over his bare chest, though not against the evening air -- this part of Wano remains temperate pretty much all the time. He stares past Hawkins, into the darkness. Hawkins waits, impatient but disciplined enough not to let that show for now.
“For Orochi?” he asks at last. Hawkins nods, just once. “So who was it, in the village?”
“Why do you want to know?” Hawkins asks, even though he doesn’t much care. Everyone on this island is playing their own game to survive, and if Drake thinks this information will give him an extra move on whatever board they’re playing on, let him have it.
Drake’s frown deepens. “We signed up to work for Kaido, not the little emperor,” he says. His use of that term rather than Orochi’s proper name or title pulls the image of the inverted emperor card forward in Hawkins’ mind once again. “If the time comes that their alliance fails, I want to understand how long I should take in killing him.”
It sounds hollow, to Hawkins. He knows, from the cards and from talking with the man, that Drake is not generally the sort to plot murder, to plant his anger in the corner of his heart until the day comes for him to cut it loose. But it’s a reason he can pretend to believe, so he chooses to do so.
“Old men, women, children,” he says. “A single guard, who lies dead now. A few of them wore swords, but I think even the Shogun could have bested them himself.”
Shadows play across Drake’s face oddly, and for a moment, Hawkins wonders if he’s about to shift to his dinosaur form. But then he sighs, and the moment passes. “To be brought to Orochi’s justice,” he says, a statement instead of a question. He knows. They all know.
Drake tries to put on a hard front, and to be honest, he doesn’t have to try very much. The man has killed, and will kill without hesitation if required. His devil fruit makes him a monster among men, and his training makes him nearly as lethal without it.
But there is something to him. His reference to Orochi’s justice is sardonic, angry, and Hawkins guesses it’s venom born from Drake’s own idea of justice being so different. He thinks for it to be justice, true justice, the crime and the victim and the cause should all be balanced. He’s never said as much aloud, but when he gives his opinions, anyone can work it out if they listen. It may be justice for a murderer to die, but is it justice for a hungry man to lose a hand for stealing a loaf of bread? Kaido would probably say yes. Oroch would ask for more.
But Drake? If allowed to speak his mind, he would probably say true justice would be addressing the hunger and giving the man the chance to redeem himself.
Hawkins wonders if that comes from his time with the Marines, or stems from something more primal -- some part that’s uniquely Drake. Is it a more fair justice, as people pretend to mean the word? Hawkins isn’t sure. It is certainly a delicate justice -- a weak and uncertain thing, like a fluttering bird next to the wolf of Kaido’s, or the canny, capricious cat of Orochi’s.
Abruptly exhausted, he hopes Drake gets to the point soon.
He expects more prodding on the event, or another commentary, but instead he gets a question.
“Why are you here?” Drake asks, honest curiosity in his tone.
I can ask you the same thing, he thinks. But rather than say such a thing, Hawkins shrugs. “It was the only choice.”
“The only one?”
“The only one that left my crew and I alive. I read all the options,” Hawkins says. “There was no chance of survival from anything except submitting. Anything.”
“So you abandoned everything for this?”
“Whatever your dreams are, it’s hard to reach them when one is dead.”
“I don’t know about that.”
He knows as soon as it happens that his glance is a little too fast, his eyes a little too unguarded, and curses himself. In the space of a second he’s given the game away. There’s no way Drake doesn’t know that he’s brushed a nerve.
It’s not much, and he’s not even sure Kaido would care if his subordinates hated him or regretted joining as long as they followed orders. But it’s the foolishness, the moment that gives information away that he didn’t need to. The seventh card from this morning’s draw comes to mind unbidden -- the inverted eight of swords. A man trapped in a cage of his own making, self doubt and negative thoughts forming the bars and beams. And the inverted four of pentacles in the fifth spot, indicating that the root cause of today’s troubles, the ultimate flaw, lies in his attempts to protect himself.
He almost says something -- almost admits, out loud, that he wonders if Drake isn’t right. If the dreams he had when he first set out to sea might not have been better served by standing against Kaido as Kid had, whatever the outcome.
At this point, he can’t even remember what his dreams were.
But then Drake starts to say something and the moment is broken. Turning away before the words properly form, Hawkins asks, “Anything else?”
A pause. “No.”
He leaves before Drake can change his mind. When compassion feels like pity, it digs deeper than any sword.
Back in his quarters, Hawkins doesn’t even spark a light. He immediately pulls forth the cards and flips through until he recreates the draws from this morning, staring at them and feeling that futility well up again. The final two stare at him, taunting him.
His past: The Star, inverted. His lack of faith -- or maybe, a test of faith. A test he’d failed when he abandoned Kid for Kaido?
Hopes and fears: Knight of Wands. Adventure. Passion.
The full reading is damning -- a man so hide-bound by his fears and unwillingness to step outside his comfort zone that he’s let adventure and freedom become the enemy. Maybe letting the cards rule instead of just asking himself what he wants to do is the wrong answer. And if so, maybe everything happening now is a just punishment.
That word floats up again. Justice. It clangs around the inside of his head. He releases the last card, but stares down at his hand, silver in the moonlight slanting through his window. Could it be this hell is the reward he reaps for his unwillingness to take a stand whatever the odds? But whose justice?
Orochi’s justice of retribution and spectacle? If justice exists, it cannot be that. The shogun builds his worldview out of pettiness and emotionality. It is a notion built of fear and impotence, concerned more with making the adjudicator feel better than addressing any wrong.
So maybe Drake’s? No. Trying to balance out the past may be noble in its way, but nothing that spends so much time looking back can build to a worthwhile future. It appeals to a soft heart, the idea that you can undo bad by doing good later. As though lives exist like simple scales, and as long as they eventually balance you’ve done your job.
Kaido’s then?
As he considers that, the sheer irony of it nearly overwhelms him. His hand covers his eyes, blotting out the cards, but the very idea forces a choked laugh from his lips. Because in considering that justice, he comes back, more strongly than ever, to his previous realization.
Justice does not exist.
Justice, in the end, is just the name people give to trying to impose their own desires on the world. Orochi’s desire to subjugate, Kaido’s desire for some level of order, Drake’s desire for a measure of fairness. They seek to realize those desires in the real world and all grant it the same name to give it validation.
A foolishness -- but an interesting one. “Justice” as the word for manifesting your will on the world? A tempting idea.
If he believed in justice, would he have found the strength to pointlessly draw his sword against Kaido? Would his fate be that of Kid, or Killer? It is impossible to know.
But that unknown flickers in the darkness. It could be a light leading one to safety or a flame tempting the moth, but the possibility … the idea of just embracing what he wants the world to be … it is an intoxicating one, and dangerous, so dangerous, and it fights against every bone in his body. He-
A knocking at the door interrupts the thoughts. He opens his eyes, glancing across the darkened room toward the sound.
“Sir?” Faust’s voice sounds hesitant on the other side.
“What is it?” he calls back, pushing easily to his feet and standing there in the angled moonlight. He feels like he’s caught the tail of something powerful and immense, and tries to hang onto the feeling.
“Sir, there’s a fight brewing down at the tavern between some of our men and some of the Wano natives. Things could get bloody, and if they’re some of Kaido’s men, there might be hell to pay. What do you want to do?”
What does he want to do? A loaded, dangerous question in this moment. He stares at the door, debating. What is his desire? Could he just…
Could he…
…
Tilting his head in disgust at the very movement, his fingers begin to shuffle the cards.