"You can walk," Chopper said flatly, already halfway into a lecture, "and you can exist only with supervision. Heavy supervision. Especially considering you nearly snapped Doctor Sahm's spine when she tried to stop you from escaping the third time."
He held up the syringe like it was proof of divine authority. The thing was massive, filled with enough cloudy liquid to drop something the size of a horse. Or, as Chopper had proudly declared, ten elephants' worth of sedatives.
Varin eyed it like a man staring down an executioner's axe.
"Wasn't me," he said immediately, shifting himself into a sitting position on the bed with surprising ease. The motion was slow but controlled. No shaking, no collapsing. He was far from whole, that much was obvious from the stiffness in his shoulders and the careful way he moved his ribs, but he was mobile. That alone felt like victory.
He couldn't climb walls yet. Couldn't fight. Probably couldn't even take a solid punch without folding. But he could walk, and right now that was enough.
Chopper's eye twitched.
"Seven guards saw you in the window, Varin. Four servants and one nurse."
"I was lookin' outside."
"It's a skylight, Varin. It's thirty feet up."
Varin paused. "…Was a good view."
Chopper stared at him. Varin stared back. Chopper slowly raised the syringe.
Varin immediately leaned away. "Now hold on—"
"You're lucky I'm not using this already!" Chopper snapped. "You're supposed to be resting! Healing! Not scaling palace walls like some kind of criminal wolf-spider!"
"I didn't scale nothin'," Varin muttered. "I climbed."
"That's WORSE!"
Varin flexed his fingers experimentally, ignoring the way Chopper's eye tracked every movement like he was watching a bomb tick down. The tremor was faint now. Barely there. Strength was coming back faster than it should have. Faster than normal healing had any right to be. Zoan fruits were like that. They didn't ask permission.
"You said I could walk," Varin pointed out.
"I said supervised walking! And that was thirty seconds ago! Not during your escapes!"
"I was supervised. There were seven guards, apparently."
Chopper made a strangled noise somewhere between a scream and a sob. "That's not supervision, that's witnesses!"
Varin shifted his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet carefully on the floor. The stone was cool against his soles, grounding in a way the mattress never had been. Beds trapped you. Beds held you still. Stone at least felt honest about it. Something you could push against if you needed to move. He let his weight settle slowly, testing each muscle as it took the strain. Everything ached, deep and dull, like his bones had been hollowed out and refilled wrong, but it held. That was what mattered. He was upright. That alone felt like a victory worth more than anything Chopper was about to say.
Chopper immediately stepped forward, syringe raised like a holy relic meant to banish demons.
"Oi," Varin said, holding his hands up in surrender, palms open where Chopper could see them. "You said I could walk. And you're supervisin', so I'm allowed by doctor's orders to do this."
Chopper froze mid-step, the syringe hovering between them like a loaded crossbow. His eyes narrowed, suspicion written plain across his face as he tried to find the trick in the words. There was always a trick with pirates. Especially this one.
"...hmmm…..fine," Chopper said slowly, lowering the syringe just a fraction. "But if you try to run I will tie you down."
Varin snorted. "Run? Doc I can barely stand."
As if to prove the point, he took a step forward. Slow. Careful. His weight shifted unevenly at first before settling into something closer to normal. The floor didn't tilt. His legs didn't give out. The world stayed where it was supposed to be, which was a nice change from the last few days. He took another step, a little easier this time, rolling his shoulders as he moved like he was trying to shake the stiffness out through sheer stubbornness alone.
Behind him, Chopper matched every step, syringe still ready, eyes locked on Varin's legs like they might suddenly explode into motion. The little reindeer walked with the intensity of a guard escorting a dangerous criminal, which, in fairness, wasn't entirely wrong. Every time Varin's stride lengthened even slightly, Chopper poked him in the thigh or side with the blunt end of the syringe like a cattle prod, muttering something under his breath about "reckless patients" and "uncooperative idiots." It made the already slow pace even worse. They shuffled their way through the halls at what Varin considered a painful crawl, his steps careful more out of necessity than obedience. The castle corridors stretched long and wide around them, polished stone and tall pillars replacing the tight wooden walls he was used to, and even moving at this snail's pace, he could feel the difference in the air compared to his room. It was warmer out here, drier too, the kind of heat that settled into your skin and refused to leave. Still, it beat the bed. Anything beats the bed.
Eventually, Varin spoke, mostly to distract himself from the monotony of moving at a speed he was pretty sure crawling insects could outpace. "Where're the others? Ain't seen anyone but you since I woke up."
Chopper blinked, clearly not expecting conversation, but answered anyway after a moment. "Oh. Well… it's been six days since the war." He said it casually, like that wasn't an absurd amount of time to lose. Varin's brow twitched slightly at that but he didn't interrupt. "Uhm… Nami is being scary," Chopper continued with absolute seriousness. "Zoro's either sleeping or sparring with some of the guards. They like him a lot for some reason. Usopp is tinkering with things and lying about what he did during the fighting. Luffy woke up on day three. He was hurt, not as bad as you, but still hurt."
Varin grunted softly. That sounded about right.
Chopper kept going, warming up now that he had an audience. "Crocodile had spent years gathering local wildlife. Big animals, mostly. And he… he drugged them. And hurt them. A lot. They were released toward the city near the end of the battle. They were supposed to finish off whoever won so he could take over even smoother." Chopper's voice dipped a little at that part, ears lowering slightly. "Luffy stopped them. All of them. Didn't even rest first. Just went straight after them."
Varin huffed quietly through his nose. "Course he did."
"Vivi's been around a lot," Chopper added. "But I had to stop her from interrupting your healing. A lot. She kept saying she just wanted to check on you." He paused, then added, "And Sanji has flirted with every woman in the city by now. And he's been punched by… um… I think half of them."
Varin barked out a quiet laugh at that, which turned into a wince he tried very hard to hide.
"Don't laugh!" Chopper snapped immediately. "You'll pull something!"
"Worth it," Varin muttered.
They turned another corner, Varin moving a little easier now that his legs had warmed up, though Chopper immediately jabbed him again the moment his pace picked up even slightly.
"Slow down!"
"I am slow."
"You're less slow!"
"That ain't a crime."
"It is for you!"
Varin shook his head faintly but obeyed, easing back into the sluggish pace. Six days. That sat heavier than the soreness in his muscles. Six days of being stuck. Six days of stillness. He rolled his shoulders as they walked, trying to work some of the stiffness out, his eyes drifting over the unfamiliar architecture as they went. Tall ceilings, wide hallways, polished surfaces everywhere. It still baffled him how different it was from his own home.
After a moment he glanced down at Chopper. "And you?"
Chopper blinked. "Me?"
"Yeah. You been busy playin' nurse the whole time?"
Chopper puffed up slightly. "Of course I have! Someone had to make sure you didn't die!"
Varin smirked faintly. "Sounded like you were enjoyin' it."
"I was NOT enjoying it!"
"Uh huh."
"I was being PROFESSIONAL!"
"Doc," Varin said, glancing at the oversized syringe, "you've been followin' me around with enough sedative to drop a sea king."
Chopper hesitated.
"…That's professional," he insisted.
Varin snorted.
The reindeer blushed hard enough it showed through his fur and tried to hide behind the oversized syringe like it was a shield. The kid was back to normal. Skittish, loud, easy to fluster. Varin couldn't help the small smirk that pulled at his mouth. Without really thinking about it, he reached out to pat the top of Chopper's hat, the way you would a younger brother who'd done something right. Or maybe like a dog. Hard to say which. His hand barely got halfway there before the world lurched.
One second there was warm stone under his feet and the smell of disinfectant in the air, the next there was nothing. No hallway. No Chopper. No castle.
Just Wind, and a lot of open sky.
Varin staggered half a step before catching himself, boots scraping against something soft that still somehow held his weight. He looked down and saw white stretching beneath him in rolling shapes and dips, like frozen waves. A cloud. He was standing on a cloud.
Far below, the city of Alubarna spread out in pale stone and gold, the palace unmistakable even from this height. The desert stretched beyond it in endless waves of heat and light, the horizon bending into haze.
"What the hell?" Varin muttered, turning slowly in a circle. His voice carried strangely up here, like the air itself wasn't quite real. "Loki, this your doing?"
"Yep." The voice came from directly under his feet.
Varin stopped moving and slowly looked down.
A face pushed up from the cloud beneath him like something surfacing from water, features forming out of shadow and light. Eyes first, sharp and amused. Then the grin. Always the grin. The cloud shifted and swirled as Loki's face settled into place beneath him, stretched wide enough that Varin was effectively standing on the trickster's cheek.
"Not going to lie, little pup," Loki said, the cloud rippling slightly with every word, "you caught on too quick. Takes all the fun out of it when you know immediately."
Varin stared down at him, expression flat, shoulders squared, like this was an inconvenience more than anything else.
"Name any other god I've met," Varin said, voice rough and unimpressed, "and maybe it'll be harder next time."
The cloud chuckled, the sound vibrating faintly through the soles of his boots.
"Oh, I like that," Loki said. "Confidence. Or maybe just exhaustion. Hard to tell with you."
Varin shifted his weight slightly, testing the cloud. It held firm, even if it felt wrong underfoot, like stepping on packed snow that didn't crunch.
"What d'you want," Varin asked. He already knew this wasn't optional.
Varin shifted his weight slightly, testing the cloud again. It still held, even with the subtle shift of his stance, but it felt wrong in a way he couldn't put into words. Not soft, not quite solid either. Like packed snow that had frozen over just enough to carry a man's weight without giving him the satisfaction of a crunch beneath his boots. The air itself felt thin, dry in a way that had nothing to do with the desert below, and the horizon seemed too far away, stretched like a painted canvas. None of it felt real, but it also didn't feel like a dream. Dreams slipped. This held steady.
Loki grinned like he always did, sharp and amused, like he knew something nobody else did and thought it was the funniest thing in existence. He rose out of the cloud in front of Varin, and leaned back slowly until he was floating flat on his back in midair, arms folded behind his head like he was resting on an invisible hammock, boots kicking idly at nothing.
"Well," Loki said, drawing the word out lazily, "you held up your end of the bargain. Sooooo." He tilted his head sideways to look at Varin upside down. "You get a prize. Maybe two. If I'm feeling generous."
Varin didn't react, but his eyes narrowed slightly.
"I won a rather hefty bet," Loki continued, chuckling to himself. "Apo is a rather sore loser. You'd think a god would take losing with a bit more dignity. Can you believe he bet against his own country? Honestly insulting."
Varin stared at him for a long moment, trying to sort through the nonsense and pick out the parts that mattered. There were always parts that mattered with Loki. The trick was figuring out which ones before it was too late.
"…Are there other gods interested in me…" Varin said slowly.
Loki's grin widened. "Oh," he said lightly, "well consider that one a freebie. Yes. A few."
Varin felt something tighten in his chest at that, though his face didn't show it.
"Though none have my level of freedom," Loki added, waving one hand lazily through the air. "Yet."
That single word hung there. Yet.
Varin shifted his stance again, boots scraping lightly against the cloud surface. "That sounds like it'll become my problem."
"Oh it absolutely will," Loki said cheerfully.
Varin exhaled slowly through his nose. "Define interested."
Loki rolled in the air until he was upright again, drifting down until his boots rested on the cloud in front of Varin. He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly, eyes bright with amusement.
"Well," he said, "you're a walking story, little pup. Mortal body, ancient spirit, tied up in fate and teeth and chains. Gods love that sort of thing. More so when you're the first to wield this particular spirit. My son's a rather feisty one, you know. So many divines watching you now… so many vying for a good seat in the theater."
Loki leaned in closer as he spoke, his smile stretching wider the longer he talked, like the words themselves amused him. There was something wrong about the way he said it, not just teasing or taunting but pleased in a deeper way, like a man admiring a fire he'd set himself. His eyes flicked across Varin's face, watching every twitch and tightening muscle like it was all part of a performance meant just for him.
"You've awoken so many immortals, little pup," Loki continued softly. "Even if I were to kill you now, you've already shaken the world."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Varin asked, his voice low as he tracked the god's movement.
Loki had started circling him, boots never quite touching the cloud beneath them, drifting instead of walking. He moved lazily, but there was intention in it, like a predator pacing something it had no intention of killing just yet.
"Nuh uh, little pup," Loki chided, wagging a finger without stopping. "I already gave you a freebie. That question costs extra." His grin returned, sharp and quick. "So you'll have to call in the favor. The one I'll be giving you for helping me win that bet… and for the entertainment you've provided."
Varin opened his mouth to respond, to argue, to demand something more concrete than riddles and half-answers, but nothing came out. His jaw locked in place. Not tight from tension or resistance but sealed, like the muscles themselves had forgotten how to move. It felt wrong in a way that went deeper than pain, like trying to move a limb that wasn't there anymore. He tried again, harder this time, and still nothing happened. No sound, no motion, nothing but the slow burn of frustration rising in his chest.
Loki smiled wider. "One sec," the god said casually, holding up a hand as if pausing a conversation between equals. "I am on a time frame. Let me say everything I need to say."
He stopped circling in the normal sense and instead rolled sideways through the air, spinning once like a lazy wheel before righting himself again. He tapped his chin, thinking, like he was trying to remember a line in a play.
"Hmmm… where was I…" he muttered to himself. "Ah yes."
He pointed at Varin.
"So since I'm not omnipotent, and can't guess where you're going, I'll do this instead. I'll appear now and then and give you something. A favor. A gift. Maybe advice if I'm feeling particularly generous." His grin twitched again. "But only when you earn it. Like with the warlord."
Varin glared at him, silent and unmoving except for the tension building in his shoulders.
Loki leaned closer again, lowering his voice slightly. "Nothing's free, little pup. Not even from me."
Then suddenly the grin vanished. It didn't fade or shift. It was just gone, like someone had wiped it off his face.
Loki's head turned slowly to the left, eyes narrowing at something Varin couldn't see. For the first time since Varin had met him, the trickster looked genuinely annoyed.
"I've used my power too much silencing you," Loki muttered. "Drew attention quicker than I thought."
The air changed. Varin felt it immediately. A pressure, deep and crushing, not on his skin but inside his bones. It pressed down from everywhere at once, vast and distant and impossibly heavy. It didn't feel like Loki. Loki felt sharp and shifting and playful. This felt old. Vast. Like the weight of an ocean suspended overhead.
For a moment Varin couldn't even breathe.
The wolf inside him stirred, not in anger but in awareness, hackles rising against something far beyond teeth and claws.
Loki glanced back at him, and for just a flicker of a moment the amusement was gone entirely.
"Sorry, little pup," he said.
The pressure increased, just for an instant, enough to make Varin's knees almost buckle.
"Till next time."
The cloud beneath Varin's feet vanished without warning, the world ripping away like torn cloth as the sky collapsed into white. The pressure vanished with it, leaving only the echo behind, like the memory of a storm that had passed overhead.
And then he was back. And immediately flinched at the noise.
"VARIN!!!"
The shout hit him like a cannon at point blank range, loud enough that his ears rang before he even fully understood where he was. His balance went with it. One moment he'd been standing on something that wasn't real, the next his knees buckled and he dropped hard back onto the cool stone floor of the palace hallway. The impact jarred straight up his spine and into his skull, knocking the air from his lungs in a rough grunt. For a second the world tilted wrong, like it hadn't settled properly after snapping back into place, the walls bending slightly at the edges of his vision as if they weren't quite convinced they existed yet.
The smell hit him next. Antiseptic. Dust. Stone warmed by desert heat. Fur and medicine and the faint metallic tang of the syringe Chopper still carried around like a loaded crossbow. Real smells. Grounded smells. Not the empty nothing scent of clouds and gods and places that weren't meant for lungs.
His heart was hammering, not in panic but in raw reaction, his body trying to decide if it had just survived something or if it was still in the middle of it.
"VARIN!" That one came with hooves skidding on tile.
Varin squeezed his eyes shut and dragged in a slow breath through his nose, trying to steady himself before opening them again. The ceiling stayed where it was supposed to be this time. That was a good sign.
Chopper barreled into view a second later, syringe clutched in both hooves like a weapon he was absolutely prepared to use. The little reindeer looked halfway between furious and terrified, which on him mostly just looked like wide eyes and puffed fur.
"You just disappeared!" Chopper shouted, voice cracking halfway through the word. "You were right there and then you weren't and then you were on the floor and I thought you died again!"
Varin groaned and pushed himself up onto one elbow. His limbs felt heavy, like he'd run for miles instead of standing still. "Didn't die," he muttered. "Pretty sure I'd know."
"That's not funny!" Chopper snapped immediately, stomping one hoof. The syringe wobbled dangerously with the motion. "You can't just do that!"
Varin squinted at him. "Do what."
"THAT!" Chopper pointed dramatically at the exact spot Varin had been standing. "You were just standing there and then you vanished!"
Varin froze slightly at that. "…How long?" he asked.
Chopper blinked. "Huh?"
"How long was I gone."
Chopper hesitated, clearly trying to remember through the panic. "I dunno! 30 seconds? Maybe a minute! You reached out to pat me and then you just—" he waved his hooves vaguely in the air "—poofed!"
Varin slowly sat up the rest of the way, rubbing a hand down his face. That tracked. Or it didn't. Hard to tell with gods. Time up there had felt longer. Not hours, not days, but longer than a blink.
Loki had said he was on a time frame.
That pressure came back to him then, just the memory of it, and his shoulders tightened slightly without him meaning to.
"Varin?" Chopper said, quieter now.
Varin glanced at him. The kid looked worried again instead of angry. That was becoming a pattern.
"I'm fine," Varin said, which was mostly true. Nothing seemed broken. Nothing new anyway.
Chopper didn't look convinced. "You fell."
"I've done worse."
"You disappeared and then fell!"
"Details."
Chopper jabbed the syringe forward an inch. "I'm serious!"
Varin eyed the needle. "…You ain't stickin' me with that."
"I will if you keep teleporting!"
"I ain't teleporting."
"Then what was it?!"
Varin opened his mouth, then stopped.
What was he supposed to say.
Oh yeah, trickster god pulled me into the sky for a chat, sorry about that. He huffed instead and pushed himself up to his feet. Slower this time. The ground stayed put, which he appreciated.
"Loki," he said finally. "Does weird things."
Chopper narrowed his eyes. He didn't buy it. Not fully. But he also didn't have a better explanation, and that was usually enough.
"…You have to tell me if something's wrong," Chopper muttered.
Varin snorted softly. "Kid, something's always wrong."
He rolled his shoulders once, testing them. Still sore, so he was at least sure he didnt die.
But in the back of his mind, Loki's stuck. 'You've awoken so many immortals.' And worse than that. Something else had been there, something Loki didn't like.
He sighed and let Chopper obsess over him, leading him back to the infirmary. God, or gods. Or other divines. He said it once, and he'd say it again, hell fight anyone and everyone for his family
The next day, Varin was better. Not completely, not even close, but better enough that it was unsettling. The stiffness was gone and the pain had dulled down to something distant, something he could ignore if he didn't think about it too hard. He could move without wincing, without that tight pulling feeling through his body like he was stitched together wrong. That alone felt suspicious.
There was a note sitting on the small table beside his bed, bright enough to catch his eye immediately. It looked like someone had dipped the whole thing in shifting color, glitter pressed into the surface so it caught the light in a way that almost hurt to look at. Across the front, in simple writing, were the words glitter and nothing else. Varin already knew who it was from before he even opened it.
Inside, it read only two words.
another freebie
Loki then. It was mildly comforting, he supposed.
Varin stared at it for a few seconds, his brow tightening slightly. Of all the things Loki could do, healing was not supposed to be one of them. That alone was a problem. A bigger problem was what that probably meant, because Loki never did anything cleanly, and he definitely never did anything for free. If this came from those other divines he hinted at, then it was worse. Much worse. Something like that did not just get handed out without a catch waiting somewhere down the line.
He let out a quiet breath and folded the note once before setting it back down. That was a problem for later. A much later, later. He mentally shoved the thought aside and dropped a few heavy stones on top of it for good measure.
Right now, he had more important things to worry about.
Varin swung his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet on the floor, testing his weight carefully. No sharp pain. No shaking. Nothing giving out under him. Good enough.
First things first, he was getting out of this room. And he was going to enjoy not being poked and prodded for once.