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elasgottoomuchfreetime · 1 year ago

Text

Sunset

Basil Hawkins/Diez Drake (Ch.1052)

Warnings: Major Character Death | Blood & Injury

Summary: Drake is dying. At least he won't be alone in the process

Words: 2,383

A/N: I wrote this some time ago. I posted it on here like a year ago, but since then I changed it again... so yeah. It's rather cheesy I suppose, but I needed to get it off my mind and the Drawkins fandom needs some love.

[also available on AO3]

~☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ: *⋆☽~

Everything hurts.

Nearly unable to move, Drake lays on the hard wooden floor.

His chest moves with shallow, painful breaths. He feels like hell.

That bastard got him good.

Nobody had cared enough to pick him up or to tend to his wounds, sooner or later he’ll have to drag himself up and away. He’s already send a call for help. Help that probably won’t come or come to late. There is no need to be delusional. There isn’t a single member of SWORD in reach.

Cipher Pol or the Marines will probably kill him on sight, and the people of Wano would be right if they just left him here to die, given the things he’d put them through under Kaido’s rule.

In the end the radio signal his Den-Den-Mushi is sending right now will probably just alert his superiors of his death.

If he hadn’t been confirmed dead already.

He’d have enjoyed to see the dawn of the new era, lead by the Straw Hat Boy who’d managed to unite an army behind him practically from scratch, just by being himself. By being a good man. Coby was right. And Stawhat would be able to do it again, and thereby manage to do what Drake never was and never will be able to do: to make their doomed world a better place.

A sharp pain suddenly pierces through the right side of his torso. It makes Drake gasp and wince.

This is it apparently. There are worse ways to die, he thinks. It’s at least somehow honourable isn’t it? To die on the field, during a war. It had been predictable that his life would play out this way.

Still, if he had the choice, Drake would prefer to not die in the ruins of Onigashima, and he sure as hell never wanted to die slowly and alone like this.

The sharp pain in his side slowly turns into an agonizing ache. It leaves his body tense and shaking. Drake shivers slightly in cold sweat. Panting, he stares at what is left of the ceiling and waits for his inevitable death. Maybe it’ll just break in and smash his skull in the process. Definitely preferable to slowly wasting away to internal bleeding and whatever the hell else is wrong with him.

Drake closes his eyes in exhaustion. He can feel his legs going numb slowly but surely.

Through the faint ringing noise in his ears and his own irregular panting breaths, he suddenly believes to make out the sound of footsteps on the wooden planks.

Apparently he isn’t as alone as he thought, though the sound of the steps alone, heavy and slow, as well as the occasional dragging noise, tell him that whoever his visitor is - they aren’t in a good shape either. A set of jarring and panting breaths adds itself to the steps, and Drake can make out the movements of another person to his right.

They reach out to lean against a post a few meters away. Their breath goes heavy as the sound of their steps suddenly dies down.

“Drake…”

It’s Hawkins, his voice raspy.

“...is it true...? That you were a Marine Dog the whole time?”

Drake slowly moves his eyes to look at him more closely.

A different kind of sickness rises in his throat.

“Do you really expect me to answer that?,” he asks quietly, trying to ignore the distant feeling of guilt.

“...do you have nothing else to say?,” Drake adds with a defensive tone in his voice.

Hawkins falls quiet.

Drake watches as he slides down onto the floor with a heavy thud until he more or less leans against the post behind him.

Once again the air was filled solely by their painful breaths.

Hawkins sits slightly hunched over, a few droplets of sweat shine on his forehead and his skin is ghostly white beneath the dark red blood that covers his face and clothes. Drake can see him shaking from his position on the floor.

Hawkins won’t make it either.

Judging from the thick metallic smell of blood that makes its way to his nose, the magician is bleeding out. The moment that fact registers in his head, his eyes fall to Hawkins’ left.

He is missing an arm.

Drake wants to scream.

“You look like hell…,” he states in an attempt to hide the emotions that are twisting his heart.

”I thought that your cards-,” he coughs, blood runs down his lip,”...promised you safety if you stayed loyal to Kaido” What went wrong?

The cards.

Hawkins certainly hasn’t encountered many people that didn’t make at least one snappy comment about them. Drake himself cursed them more than once. He was certain that one day they’d be Hawkins’ downfall, because he trusted them more than himself.

The faint memory of warm water and a candle lit room flicker to life in the back of his mind.

It was one of the most intimate moments they shared. They talked about fears and pasts and beliefs. It was one of those moments that had Drake questioning what had gotten into him, how he could let the literal enemy get so close. For his own and for his partners sake.

But he’d never managed to stay away. And he’d been too scared to loose what they had to tell Basil the truth.

It’s like they are the earth and the moon, orbiting around each other. Meant to be.

So cliché. Must be the blood loss.

No. Actually Drake has always been quite sentimental at his core. He just doesn’t like to remember it.

The cards belong to Hawkins, Drake knows. He needs them, since they are his most loyal and trusted companions since early childhood. Raised on an island in the North Blue, where people worshipped mediums as prophets, he was somehow bound to turn out this way.

Being born a medium is rare. And being born a magician, like Basil is one, is even rarer.

Word about mediums travels fast once they are revealed, and more often than not, being discovered means their downfall. They get abducted by human traffickers, world nobles and other scum, who treat them like attractions. Others, Basil had told him, had gotten killed by priests of other faiths.

Being born a medium or even a magician wasn’t a lucky draw in this world.

Drake can’t blame Basil for acting accordingly, and clinging to everything that can promise him safety.

His partner was lucky for being able to escape. He was lucky to still be alive.

And he knows that.

The fear of death, imprisonment and betrayal that remained of his past would probably never leave him.

Drake just hadn’t had the strength to tell Basil the truth. Not when the Marines had part in wounding his soul so deeply all those years ago.

“I submitted to that monster,” Hawkins says, his voice deep and exhausted. His words are tainted in something akin to hurt or anger because we are dying and you betrayed me Drake,”because doing otherwise would have been courting death. The only certain way of survival in that moment, was siding with him.”

He pauses and takes a few short breaths before continuing:“But Kid and his Crew fought anyway, they were ready to die, they started their journey prepared to die”

Slowly he lifts his head and lets it fall against the wood behind him. He looks defeated.

Basils eyes catch onto a ray of light that falls through a cut in the ceiling. A tremor runs through his body.

His voice shakes as he continues: “Even if I had foreseen his victory… do you really think I would have gone crawling back to him?”

They catch each others eyes and stay like this for a moment.

Hawkins knows choices have consequences better than anybody, and when he makes his choice it’s after thinking it through thoroughly. Because there usually is no going back. The decisions he makes are final. He is to proud of a man to turn back.

Hawkins decided to join Kaido not ready to face death yet. He’d betrayed his allies. He had weighed the odds and his choice had led him to this moment here, unknowingly maybe, but he had known, that even if he decided to join Kaido, there was a chance for his certain death.

Hawkins chose this. He…

“If the Straw Hat boy would come and liberate this land, would you join him?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. It’ll depend on the circumstances and the odds”

He wouldn’t enter a fight without looking at his chances which means-

He knew.

A hot-cold feeling shoots through Drakes body.

He thinks back to a moment that happened just a handful of hours earlier.

Hawkins told him. Back when he’d tried to push him to switch sides, because he couldn’t bear the thought of Basil dying while he was fighting for a man like Kaido.

“What are your cards telling you?,” Drake asked. And Hawkins had told him that he was predicting the survival chances of a certain man. “One percent. What a pity”

Damn it Basil

“When you were predicting the future… the man you were talking about…”

The magician grins. It looks quite twisted and scary, especially with the blood that trickles out of his mouth at the movement. His eyes fell from Drakes, they seem black, maybe overtaken by one of the Shadows he sometimes talks about.

A Shadow of Death. He’d been trying to escape it for so long - until today.

Today he had decided to face it. And it won.

“It was me…,” Basil nearly whispers, a silent tear running down his face.

Then he collapses.

His body hits the floor with a dull thump.

Quiet.

Drake stares in shock. His body is still, nearly unmoving. There’s shivers rattling through his limbs.

Did he pass out? Just collapse? Is he-?

“Even if I die in the war of liberation that might be about to come, I’ll die in the knowledge that I have been loved”

No.

Drake needs to make sure. He needs to know. He can’t die in peace if he doesn’t know if Basil still knows. He has to tell him-

Determined, he wills his body to move. His arms shift in jerking movements.

When he turns his head to focus on his target, something in his neck area cracks loudly and he groans in pain. His vision turns fuzzy for a few seconds, before he slowly starts to crawl forward.

Suddenly less than three meters feel like an ocean. His body is filled with pain, even though some parts have gone numb already, his legs, he can’t feel at all.

He claws his gloved fingers into the ground and pulls forward with all the strength he can muster, his muscles tremble violently with the effort. Clinging to the slight movement and stray twitches in Hawkins’ body, he hopes, Gods even prays, to the Shadows and Lights and Spirits and whoever the hell else his partner believes in, that he isn’t gone yet.

It takes him what feels like hours to finally reach his destination.

Drake slumps down in exhaustion face to face with Basil, on wood that’s drenched in his lovers blood. There’s more and more leaking from the stump that once had been his left arm. Drake can feel it soak through his clothes. It almost makes him choke.

His lovers eyes are closed. Sorrow slowly settles in his stomach at the display in front of him.

Drake reaches his left hand out to stroke away strands of golden hair that have fallen over Basil’s still features. He runs his fingers back down the side of Basils with a feather light touch, and thinks that he can feel shallow breaths hitting his wrist.

Drakes fingers linger on slightly agape lips for the fracture of a second, before the trembling takes over his body again. His arm falls to the ground, all strength gone.

Breathing gets increasingly difficult and he feels dizzy and sleepy.

“Basil,” Drake whispers and links their fingers together.

“Come on love, not yet” Please

Basils lashes flutter.

He tries to look at Drake through half lidded eyes that are partly crusted by blood. His ruby eyes look pale, the black of his tattoos stands out starkly against his wilting skin.

“Drake,” he breathes.

They look at each other, neither one daring to look away.

“We’re dying,” the blonde states slowly,”I can see the shadows”

Another tear runs down his face.

“...I’m so tired”

Drakes eyes begin to itch, his vision slowly becomes blurry with tears.

“...Drake?,” Basils voice wavers slightly. He sounds small somehow, insecure.

“Was it all a lie…? What we had?”

Two tears slowly make their way down the side of Drakes face. They’re mirrored on the features in front of him. Their tears paint slow rivers through the canyons of drying blood on their cheeks.

“No”, he whispered,”No, it wasn’t. I love you-”

He has to stop because he’s unable to stop the quite sob that makes it’s way up his throat.

“ I swear I do. I- I’m sorry I lied. I was too scared to lose you”

He saw Basils face come closer. Their foreheads touch the next moment.

They just share each others breath for a bit.

Their lives drain away with every passing moment.

“Even when the sunset takes us down with it into the dark of the night,” Basil coughs lightly, “Even if our souls join the Spirits in the realm of fates and we’re nothing more than the essence we were created out of. I’ll always love you”

Their lips touched.

A feather light touch. Eyes closed. Tears streaming down their faces now like rain in autumn.

“And I’ll find you, whether we enter the endless beyond or whether we re-enter the circle of life,” Basil says, and he smiles lightly as he adds:”I’m glad. That you’re here with me”

His body goes completely limp. No more tremors shake his form.

“I’m glad that I’ll die… while being loved,” he breathes.

“So am I,” Drake replies.

They share their last breaths while looking at each other with fading gazes.

The light dies behind their eyes as night falls over Wano.

Their everlasting gaze is all that remains of their love.

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