Chapter Text
Crocodile opened his eyes and the world seemed shifted.
The fever had not gone down. It was getting worse. His body refused to cooperate. Every breath cost him an effort. His skin was burning, but at the same time a strange cold crept into his bones. He tried to sit up. His arms too frail to support his own weight. He fell back against the pillows, short of breath.
Mihawk was leaning over him. His golden eyes scrutinized his face with unusual attention.
“You’re not healing,” Mihawk said in a flat voice.
Crocodile wanted to answer. He wanted to explain. He had kept silent about the vitriol so as not to worry them. The poison had already done its work despite the vampiric blood. He could feel the tissues necrosing in depth, a slow and methodical burn progressing toward his organs. But the words stayed stuck in his throat.
Mihawk placed a hand on his forehead. Then he shook him. Not violently. Just enough for Crocodile’s head to tilt from one side to the other.
“Stay with us.”
Buggy burst into the room, his blue hair disheveled. He was holding a carafe of water in one hand and a canvas bag in the other.
“I took the water and all the flasks he was making in his corner. I don’t know what it is, but there’s a lot. Tell me what to do, doc!”
Crocodile turned his head with difficulty. His vision blurred at times. He saw flashes: Buggy’s face, the ceiling, the edge of the bed. He tried to speak.
“Vitriol,” he finally articulated. His voice was hoarse, barely audible. “The arrow… dipped in vitriol. Concentrated sulfuric acid. Very harmful to humans. Eats away at the flesh. Progresses in the blood. Mihawk sucked out the poison… but the vitriol remains active in me. Not in you.”
Buggy set the bag and the carafe on the bedside table. He knelt beside the bed, one hand on Crocodile’s arm.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Crocodile did not answer. He had not wanted to worry them. Not after what they had done for him in the forest. Not after the carnage they had committed to protect him.
Mihawk shook Crocodile again, harder this time.
“Stay awake.”
Crocodile felt his heart skip a beat. Then another. The room was spinning. The vitriol continued its work. He could feel the burn descending toward his abdomen, toward his lungs. His breathing became shorter and wheezing.
Buggy jumped to his feet. He grabbed a flask at random from the bag, opened it and sniffed.
“What is this? Tell me what to give him!”
Crocodile tried to raise his hand to point to the right flask. His fingers refused to move properly. He saw Buggy fussing, opening flasks, reading the labels he himself had written. Buggy understood nothing about chemistry. He poured anything into a glass, mixed, swore.
Mihawk placed a hand on Crocodile’s chest. He felt the heart slowing down.
“Buggy.”
Buggy turned around. His face changed. Panic gave way to something rawer, more impulsive.
“We can’t lose him. Not now. Not after all this.”
He leaned over Crocodile. His fangs came out suddenly.
Crocodile understood too late.
Buggy bit.
The fangs sank into his neck, with no restraint. The pain was immediate, sharp, like liquid fire spreading through his veins. Buggy drank a long gulp, then another. Crocodile felt his own blood leaving his body, replaced by something cold.
Buggy lifted his head, lips stained red. His eyes shone with wild determination.
“Sorry, doc. We don’t have time anymore.”
He grabbed Crocodile’s head with both hands and turned it with a sharp gesture. The crack was clear. Crocodile felt his neck break. The pain exploded, then everything went black.
Nothing more.
The void.
───
He was floating.
No body. No pain. Just a diffuse consciousness observing the nothingness.
Then came the first sensation.
Fire.
Not the burn of vitriol. Something else. A strangely cold fire starting from his neck and spreading through his entire being. He felt every vein, every artery, every cell transforming. His heart stopped. Then it restarted, stronger, slower, with a rhythm that no longer had anything human.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling of the room appeared with impossible clarity. Every crack in the plaster, every grain of dust suspended, every reflection of the candle. His senses were screaming. He could hear the crackling of the fire in the fireplace at the other end of the manor. He could smell the scent of dried blood on the floorboards, the scent of Buggy, the scent of Mihawk.
Buggy was leaning over him, face tense. Mihawk was holding Buggy by the arm. Buggy’s arm hung at an abnormal angle. Mihawk had broken it. Buggy had one hand around Mihawk’s neck. Mihawk’s neck had also been broken, his head tilted at an impossible angle, slowly resetting itself.
“Let him go,” growled Mihawk.
Buggy didn’t let go.
“He’ll come back. He’s already coming back. I gave him enough blood. You’re worrying for nothing. He’s just going to become like us.”
Mihawk squeezed harder. Buggy’s arm cracked more.
“You turned him without his consent.”
Buggy chuckled despite the pain. “He was going to die. The vitriol was eating him from the inside. You felt it too. I saved him. We saved him, both of us. Now he’s going to wake up and he’s going to be hungry. And we’re going to give him blood. Ours.”
Crocodile tried to speak. His throat was working again. His voice came out deeper, a little dry.
“…I’m here.”
The two vampires turned their heads toward him at the same time. Buggy released Mihawk’s neck. Mihawk released Buggy’s arm. The bones reset with dry cracks.
Crocodile sat up slowly on the bed. His body obeyed perfectly. No more muscle spasms. No more weakness. He felt every muscle, every tendon, every bone with new precision. His vision perceived details he had never noticed: the fibers of the bed’s wood, the venules in Buggy’s eyes, the almost imperceptible pulse of blood in Mihawk’s veins.
He brought a hand to his neck. The bite had already healed.
“Vitriol,” he said in a calm voice. “Sulfuric acid. Very corrosive. Eats away at human tissues in depth. The vampiric blood neutralized the visible part, but not everything. You’re right, Buggy. I was dying.”
Buggy knelt on the bed and pulled him against him. “I knew you would understand.”
Mihawk sat on the other side. He placed a hand on Crocodile’s cheek, thumb following the line of his jaw.
“You are one of us now.”
Crocodile remained silent for a moment. He was listening. His heart was still beating, but slower. He could have sworn he would live without seeing the slowness of the beats. He felt hunger rising in the pit of his stomach. But nothing comparable to wanting to eat a good venison steak. He felt thirsty.
He looked at his hands. His nails seemed sharper. His eyes… he couldn’t see them, but he felt that something had changed in his vision. The colors were more vivid. The black clearer.
“I’m hungry,” he said simply.
Buggy smiled. He bit his own wrist and held it out to Crocodile.
“Drink.”
Crocodile hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he grabbed the wrist and sank his fangs into the flesh. The blood flowed, rich, carrying a taste he had never known. He drank. Long. Mihawk bit his own wrist and offered it in turn. Crocodile drank from Mihawk too. The blood of the two vampires mixed in him. He felt his body stabilize. His senses sharpened even more. The hunger decreased.
When he lifted his head, his lips were stained red. Buggy caressed his purple hair.
“Welcome among us, doc.”
Mihawk pressed his forehead against his. “You are no longer alone.”
Crocodile remained motionless between them.
He felt everything. The scent of blood on their skins, the ancient wood of the manor, the forest outside, the cooling corpses in the clearing. It smelled really strong, how had he not noticed it before?
He had a sense of belonging. He was no longer the hunted human. He was no longer the entomologist who observed from afar.
He was one of them. It was an experience he would want to try with wonder as soon as he was back in full strength.
───
Several hundred years had passed since that night when Buggy had broken his neck.
The manor still existed, hidden in the heart of the forest that had grown around it like a living fortress. The trees had thickened, the stone walls had been covered in dark ivy, but the interior remained the same: vast rooms, black wood furniture, fireplaces that burned without ever completely going out. Crocodile had eventually gotten used to the permanent darkness. He no longer needed candles to read his notes. His eyes saw everything, even in absolute darkness.
He had become a vampire.
And he had learned to control himself.
That evening, the moon was full. Crocodile stood on the first-floor balcony, coat open over his black shirt. His purple hair, longer than before, floated in the cold wind. He could smell the deer in the forest, but also the more acrid scent of men approaching. Hunters. Again. They never gave up.
Buggy appeared at his side, a wide smile on his face. His blue hair was tied in a messy ponytail, his red coat open over a shirt stained with fresh blood.
“They are twelve this time. Well armed.”
Mihawk joined them without a sound. His sword rested against his shoulder, blade already drawn.
Crocodile nodded. “Let’s go.”
They descended together into the night. Crocodile no longer ran until his lungs hurt. He moved. Quick, silent, precise. His fangs came out on their own when he spotted the first group. He jumped from the top of a tree and landed in the middle of the hunters. Two men died before understanding what was happening. Crocodile sank his fangs into the third’s neck, drank a long gulp, then broke the fourth’s neck with a sharp gesture.
Buggy laughed while massacring the others. He tore off arms, bit throats, played with his prey like a child with insects. Mihawk sliced with cold elegance, each blow clean, each head rolling exactly where he wanted.
When it was all over, Crocodile knelt near a still-warm body. He took out a small scalpel from his inner pocket — a tool he had perfected over the centuries — and carefully incised the carotid. He collected the blood in a sterile vial, then a second, then a third. He worked methodically, as he once did in his improvised laboratory.
Buggy approached, wiping his blood-covered hands on his coat.
“You’re going to dissect them again?”
“Yes.” Crocodile closed the vial and put it in a special pocket sewn inside his coat. “Their veins are interesting. Their blood reacts differently depending on age and diet. I want to compare.”
Mihawk stayed back, observing the scene with slight amusement. Before signaling that it was time to go back.
They returned to the manor before dawn. Crocodile went straight down to the cellar he had transformed into a laboratory over the decades. Shelves covered with vials, notes, jars containing organs preserved in formalin that he made himself. He placed the new vials on the workbench and began labeling them with his precise handwriting.
Buggy followed him, pressed against his back, arms around his waist.
“You hungry again?”
“No.” Crocodile noted the date and time on each label. “But I’m going to prepare the pouches.”
He had invented that two centuries earlier: sterile blood pouches, kept cool in special crates he maintained at constant temperature thanks to a system of ice and chemical salt. Each pouch was sealed, labeled by blood type and date. Mihawk and Buggy had first laughed when they saw it. Then they understood the usefulness. When hunting became impossible — storm, too many inquisitors, or simply the desire to stay in the manor — the pouches allowed them to last several days without going out.
Mihawk came down in turn. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“You improved the process again?”
“Yes.” Crocodile filled a new pouch with the fresh blood he had just collected. “The anticoagulant mixture is more stable. They now last six weeks instead of four.”
Buggy chuckled and nibbled Crocodile’s nape. “My mad scientist. You turned our manor into a blood bank.”
Crocodile did not answer. He finished sealing the pouch, put it in the refrigerated crate, then turned toward them. The centuries had changed many things. His eyes had remained light purple, but they now shone with a brighter gleam in the darkness. His fangs came out more easily. His strength had become supernatural. Yet he kept that habit of observing everything, noting everything, understanding everything.
He approached Buggy and Mihawk. He placed one hand on Buggy’s cheek, the other on Mihawk’s chest.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
Buggy raised his eyebrows. “Thank you for what?”
“For breaking my neck that night. For not letting me die. For giving me the time to learn the drastic changes of my resurrection.”
Mihawk placed his hand on his. “It’s natural. We’re not going to leave you to yourself. I suggest we go upstairs.”
They went up to the main bedroom. The bed was immense, covered with black sheets. They lay down together, Crocodile in the middle as always. Buggy pressed against his back, one arm around his waist. Mihawk settled facing him, forehead against his.
Crocodile closed his eyes, dreaming. He thought back to everything he had lived through.
The first years had been chaotic. The thirst had driven him mad at times. Buggy had held him, forced him to drink, calmed him when he screamed in pain during the transformation crises. Mihawk had spent entire nights reading him ancient books, explaining the world as it really was, without human lies.
Then he had learned.
To hunt without killing unnecessarily. To control himself. To use his new nature to protect what he loved.
And above all, to have his lovers by his side.
Crocodile opened his eyes and looked at his two companions. Buggy was already asleep, face buried in his neck. Mihawk was still watching him, eyelids half-closed.
“You still note everything in your notebook?” Mihawk asked in a low voice.
“Yes. But not for the same reasons anymore.”
Crocodile reached out to the bedside table and grabbed his current notebook — a black leather-bound volume he replaced every five years. He opened it to the last page and wrote, in handwriting still as legible and curved:
Conclusion: I was never their prey. I was simply coming home.
He closed the notebook and put it back. Buggy grumbled in his sleep and squeezed him tighter. Mihawk placed a hand on his hip. Crocodile let himself go between them. Outside, the forest continued to live. Men would continue to come with torches and stakes. They would continue to die. And Crocodile, Buggy and Mihawk would continue to exist together, in this lost manor, sometimes protecting other creatures wrongly accused, other “monsters” who had only asked to live.
Crocodile smiled in the darkness.
He was a vampire.
He was theirs.
And he was finally home.
The end.
🤡🐊🦅