If Olvia's living situation had surprised Finn, Rosinante's left him momentarily speechless.
The man was the son of a Fleet Admiral, even if "son" was a complicated word in the Donquixote family context, and Impel Down had apparently decided that this fact deserved acknowledgment. Rosinante occupied a room on Level 1, which was less a cell block and more the administrative quarter of the prison, and calling what he had a "room" was understating it. There was a small yard attached.
A yard.
Inside a deep-sea prison.
Rosinante was in it when they arrived, watering a patch of noctilucent grass with a battered tin can, moving with the unhurried ease of a man who had made his peace with his circumstances and found them, on balance, acceptable. The grass caught the dim light and returned it in soft pulses, the only living color in the stone and shadow of the prison's upper level.
Finn had been thinking, in the idle way thoughts move when you're walking somewhere you've been before, about where noctilucent grass came from. The New World had a region called the Sea of Eternal Night, a stretch of waters where the sun apparently never cleared the horizon, which made it the precise opposite of Enies Lobby, where the sun apparently never set. Both facts struck him as the kind of thing that should bother him more than they did. Navigation in this world ran on magnetic fields and Log Poses for good reason.
He had a vague memory of hearing about an Island somewhere in the Sea of Eternal Night, once the second-largest pirate haven in the New World, now overshadowed by Beehive Island, which had risen on the reputation of the Rocks Pirates and then declined when they fell. Presumably it would rise again when the right person claimed it.
He had been thinking about this for approximately the duration of the walk, which said something about the pace of the walk.
Then Rosinante looked up, saw them, and every calm quality he had been displaying evaporated instantly.
His face lit up with the uncomplicated joy of a large dog who has just noticed its owner. He dropped the watering can. He started moving toward them at a pace that was technically a run but involved considerably more lateral instability than running usually required. His foot caught something, his arms went out, and he went down onto the stone floor face-first with a sound that made Vergo wince slightly.
Everyone in the visiting party had a moment of silence.
Rosinante got up from the floor looking entirely untroubled by this.
"You're a grown man," Finn said flatly. "Act like one."
Rosinante reached them anyway, grinning. "Brother Finn, do you know how long I've been in here? You haven't visited once."
"Why would I visit? You're not much to look at."
Garp stepped forward and clapped Rosinante on the shoulder with the force of someone who considers this an affectionate gesture. "How are you holding up, boy?"
The dynamic in the yard shifted into something more relaxed after that, the easy warmth of people who know each other's rhythms. Finn watched it with the expression of someone who was not feeling sentimental and would like everyone present to be clear on that point.
The truth of his relationship with Rosinante was, as with most things involving people he'd known for a long time, more complicated than he usually bothered to articulate. He had met the man in the North Blue years ago, traveled back to Marineford with him, watched him make a series of decisions that ranged from idealistic to catastrophically ill-advised, and ultimately gone out of his way to keep him alive at the end of it. Rosinante had, for his part, decided at some point during all of this that Finn was an older brother figure, and had maintained this position with the stubborn consistency of someone who knew it annoyed the recipient.
Finn had never said it didn't bother him. He had also never taken any serious steps to discourage it.
Rosinante's eyes moved past Finn to the figure standing two steps behind him, and the happiness in his face shifted into something more uncertain.
Vergo nodded at him. Pleasantly, even.
Rosinante looked at Finn. "Brother. Vergo. Is he...?"
"He's mine now," Finn said.
Rosinante clearly had things he wanted to say about this. He processed them briefly. "And Doflamingo?"
"Also mine. He's a Warlord now."
The expression on Rosinante's face passed through several distinct phases.
Finn let it run its course, then said, "Doflamingo is what he is. He did what he did. None of that has been forgotten by anyone involved. But he's useful, and he knows it, and he's been considerably less destructive since he decided cooperation served him better than the alternative." He paused. "He asked about you, actually. Couldn't quite bring himself to say it directly. Awkward."
Rosinante didn't know what to do with this information, so he set it aside.
They talked for a while, Garp asking the questions that Fleet Admiral Sengoku had presumably sent him to ask, with the genuine affection of a man who had watched Rosinante grow up underneath the same roof. The yard had a quality of unreality to it, the glowing grass and the stone walls and the comfortable absurdity of a prison visit that felt more like a family gathering.
Finn drifted over to a low stone ledge and sat down, and noticed that Luffy had found the noctilucent grass extremely interesting. He was crouched over it with his backside in the air, examining it with the thoroughness of a scientist, which was where the comparison to anything intellectual stopped, because he then pulled a handful up and ate it.
Then he ate another handful.
Finn stared at this.
Luffy looked up, noticed the stare, and chewed.
Finn decided he had larger concerns.
"Luffy."
Luffy swallowed. "What?"
"Have you thought about what kind of ability you want?"
The question had the same effect as announcing a meal. Luffy was on his feet instantly, the grass entirely forgotten, eyes bright with the specific enthusiasm he reserved for things he had been thinking about for a long time.
"Something powerful," he said. "Something where I could knock you down with one punch and become the greatest Marine—"
Finn pointed at the space in front of him. "Turn around. Stand here."
Luffy did this, because he was Luffy, and Finn kicked him cleanly in the backside and sent him stumbling across the yard.
Luffy spun around with his fists up. "You—!"
"Stop bragging about things that aren't going to happen," Finn said, without particular heat. "Stop announcing your goals to people who are going to make you earn them. Think before you speak, and especially before you boast."
Luffy opened his mouth.
Finn's Haki pressed down on him briefly, enough to lift him off his feet and deposit him six feet to the left.
Luffy sat on the ground, looking at the sky, reassessing.
From across the yard, Garp was watching with the pride of a man whose educational philosophy had always aligned strongly with Finn's on this particular point.
Magellan appeared at the yard entrance with a folder in his hands. "Admiral. The list you requested."
Finn stood, accepted it, and flipped it open. Names, abilities, current status, floor assignments. He ran his eyes down the first page with the efficient attention of someone looking for specific shapes in information.
"Come on," he said, glancing back at Luffy, who had gotten up and was now dusting himself off with the resilience of someone who had been educated this way his entire life and had simply incorporated it into his worldview. "Come pick your Devil Fruit."
The irritation on Luffy's face evaporated in an instant, replaced by the unguarded delight of a child on his birthday.
He was across the yard in three steps.
Finn shook his head at the folder, but the edge of his mouth moved in a way he didn't bother to control, since Luffy was already too excited to notice anything subtle.
Sure enough, this kid.
Remembered everything you offered him. Forgot everything you'd done to him within thirty seconds. Constitutionally incapable of holding a grudge against anyone who had something interesting to show him.
It was, in its own infuriating way, almost impressive.