A Knit Fabric - SrirachaBunny (2024)

Chapter 1: Robin - The Slip Stitch

Chapter Text

Unlike what one might believe, Robin does not suddenly wake one day and realize that her captain somehow managed to bend time and space for the sake of his friends and family. Rather, it is a gradual thing - small instances that Robin files as strange or interesting, in the same way that one might study a favorite book or play.

Books and plays are easy, Robin thinks, because the characters all fit a specific mold. Often enough, they even share the same goals or aspirations, and the same ‘oh woe is me’ backstories. To Robin, books are something meant for leisure.

The mystery of her captain, Monkey D. Luffy, however, is better than any murder mystery novel she has ever gotten her hands on.

The first clue was the smile he gave when she met him at Little Garden. Considering that she actually had been trying to threaten the Straw Hat pirates within an inch of their lives, Luffy’s typical sunshine smile had struck her as profoundly odd. Not because the young man didn’t smile at his crew - even his poster carried that same cheshire grin - but what struck her as odd was the fact that it was aimed at her.

Nico Robin, the devil child. Being smiled at by an enemy, like he was expecting her. (Like he had missed her.)

A preposterous idea, or so she had thought at the time.

As Crocodile fell and Nico Robin found her place among the Straw Hat pirates, the idea became less preposterous. Monkey D. Luffy knew something, and Robin could not figure out what.

So it comes as no surprise that it is the small things that give it away, in the end.

Her captain paces. Sometimes when he wakes up after a nap, he paces the entirety of the ship, checking on the crew one by one, whether that be through banter or just a brief touch on someone’s shoulder. As if he can’t quite believe they are here. (Where else are the Straw Hats supposed to be?)

There are moments when he falls quiet, and it takes the crew a second or two to realize that the ship is silent in a way it shouldn’t be.

Luffy’s night terrors, too, are a staple at this point. They had been frequent up until Skypiea, but after Enel and everything that happened…

After Skypiea, they became more than frequent.

Luffy had sat them down on the deck, and told them to train with tears in his eyes and a wobbling lip. That was another clue - another morsel of information that Robin had latched onto at the time. (What, on these seas, could ever cause her captain to be so scared?)

More and more instances appeared after that.

Recipes he asks Sanji to cook that have never once been served onboard the Thousand Sunny. Songs he hums under his breath that not even Brook knows. Weather phenomena that should freak out a boy from East Blue, but instead he steps back and Nami takes charge. Murmurs of ideas that trigger something in Franky’s imagination. Or when he looks at the helm, past the silhouette of whoever is standing there, as though the space is meant for someone bigger.

(The stories he regales Usopp and Chopper with, bordering on the ridiculous but sounding earnest. Like truth. Like he has already lived those adventures.)

Zoro is simply the nail in the coffin.

A first mate that none of the crew onboard the Thousand Sunny has ever met, and yet who is familiar with all of them. If Robin didn’t know any better, she might have accused her captain of spending his nights on a Den Den with the swordsman.

But Robin does know better, because there are ghosts in the eye of Roronoa Zoro. He looks at the Straw Hat pirates and does not see the living.

Perhaps she has read one too many novels, but all of it adds up to only one plausible explanation; time travel.

Watching her beloved captain slam a fork next to Usopp’s hand in an attempt to steal half of his breakfast roll, mayonnaise and egg spilling over the edges, Robin silently sips her tea with a smile.

Once someone has spent more than a minute in the company of Monkey D. Luffy, few things seem outside the realm of possibilities - time travel least of all. The hard part is not, funnily enough, believing that her captain somehow managed to travel through time.

No, the hard part will be getting him to admit that he did it.

***

The inevitable downfall of Luffy’s secret happens on an unsuspecting Tuesday, with the News Coo having flown in with a new set of wanted posters. Nami has deemed them unimportant and handed them off for the rest of the crew to peruse at their own pace. Nothing unusual there, except for the grabby hands that Luffy makes for one poster in particular.

“Gimme, gimme, gimme!” The rubber man tears it from Sanji’s grip, and with a stray elbow, knocks the man’s cigarette from his mouth in his wild haste.

“Oi, calm down you monkey, jeez.” Perhaps due to the lack of scantily clad women in this particular stack of wanted posters, Sanji clicks his tongue and leaves his captain be without any further comments - heading back to the kitchen with a grumble, and suddenly, it is only Robin, her captain and their first mate left on the Sunny’s deck.

Luffy pulls the paper close to his face and laughs.

He looks at a poster of Trafalgar Law, his cheeks wide and grinning - and had Robin not been on the receiving end of one such grin, she might have mistaken it for Luffy’s usual, somewhat unexplainable antics, but… It is the exact same grin that he gave her back at Little Garden.

(Does he know Trafalgar Law, too?)

She leans over his shoulder, staring into the tired eyes of the man on the paper. The circles under his eyes seem overly pronounced, and his nickname equally as amusing. Surgeon of Death… Really, what is the Navy coming up with these days? “Have you met him, captain?”

The rubber man’s tongue is already stretching out in syllabus, a bounce in his step that every Straw Hat has come to recognize as unabashed excitement and then–

Luffy stops rocking, stops smiling. Simply… stops.

He thrusts the wanted poster at Robin, and she catches it with the ease of someone who has caught tossed teacups and wayward books for months on end. There is still a smile on Luffy’s face, but it looks wrong.

“Ah, no!” He says, rubbing one hand through his hair and knocking over his straw hat in one smooth movement. Had it been anyone else, Robin might have let them off the hook, but Luffy’s eyes fall on their snoring first mate. “Sorry, I thought it was someone I knew!”

In a span of roughly two seconds, Luffy bounds over to Zoro, smashing his face into the swordsman’s stomach.

Zoro, for what it is worth, barely stirs despite the obvious fact that his abs are slowly suffocating their beloved captain.

The paper in her hand crinkles in a fresh breeze. On his knuckles, dark ink spells out ‘DEATH’ and the eyes of a man haunted by the world stares back at her.

At that moment, Robin makes a decision.

She tucks her sweeping dress under her, poster still in hand, and sinks down on the deck of the Sunny, her back to the railing and the two biggest mysteries in the world sitting right next to her.

“Captain,” she says. He doesn’t stir, but the hand holding onto Zoro’s robe twitches ever so slightly. “Did you perhaps mean that you haven’t met this Trafalgar Law yet?”

She notes the exact moment Zoro ceases his snoring and a hand comes up to grab at the nape of Luffy’s neck. One eye, glinting pure silver in the unrelenting sun on deck, blinks open and glares at her.

“Ah,” says Luffy, head pressing further into their swordsman’s abs until she catches a brief wince on the edge of his face. “You found out.”

“Luffy–”

He shakes his head, black hairs fluttering as he takes a second, then another, before rolling onto his back and keeping his head in Zoro’s lap. His eyes are drawn to a clear blue sky and a seagull flying overhead. “Robin always knows anyway. We might as well tell her.”

Robin turns a snicker into a cough behind one hand.

Why did she think her captain would have a hard time admitting to time travel? This is the same man who has taken down governments, yet can’t lie to their chef when confronted about missing snacks from the kitchen.

A rubbery hand takes hold of the edge of the wanted poster and pries it from her loose grip. Luffy rubs out a few of the crinkles in the paper, eyes set on the smirking face of Trafalgar Law as he holds it high above his head and blocks out the glaring sun. “Zoro and I made it all the way to the end, but…”

Zoro runs a hand through Luffy’s hair, chest barely moving - his one eye fully trained on Luffy and only Luffy.

“Then something happened, and we were back. Back before the Going Merry and the Thousand Sunny and–” he bites his lip, and Robin doesn’t need him to continue. Doesn’t have to ponder on why only Luffy and Zoro made it to the end. She knows, with every fiber of her being, that none of the Straw Hats would have willingly left their boys behind, if given the choice.

It doesn’t take a devil child to realize that their other life had been soaked in blood.

(The blood of nakama, no doubt.)

How strangely anticlimactic.

“So we decided to do everything again, but also differently. Last time, a lot of good happened, but also a lot of bad. We didn’t get to stick together, and everyone trained apart for two years because I wasn’t strong enough–”

Zoro jerks so hard that his knee rattles the back of their captain’s skull. “Luffy!”

“Zoro!” He yells right back, because even when he is discussing trauma, he can’t help himself.

It calms the shaking of her hands, if only by a fraction, to see the two of them bicker with nothing but each other’s names and a difficult eyebrow tango that she has no hope of deciphering in this lifetime.

Luffy wins whatever argument they are having, though, because Zoro grumbles and leans against the railing again.

“That’s why I’ve been pushing for everyone to get stronger,” says her captain. “I don’t want us to go through that again. But I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing by keeping everyone here. Torao always had the best plans.”

Robin doesn’t know a Torao, at least not yet.

(A little voice in the back of her head tells her it is Trafalgar Law. Which is one part ridiculous, and two parts believable, because who else but her captain could come up with such a silly nickname for the Surgeon of Death, and get away with it? )

“I think,” she says, with a hand on her chin in a way that promises wisdom to come. “That not everyone will follow the same paths they did before. People change. We have changed already, haven’t we?”

Luffy nods, still in Zoro’s lap, his head heavy and chin hitting his chest. “A bit. But you’re still family!”

Family. What a strange and wonderful concept. To think that Nico Robin would some day lean against the railing of a ship she calls home, and wonder whether leaving might be the right decision. Whether leaving her captain might be the right decision.

And yet... The swordsman had done it.

Zoro, who drinks and swears and snores.

Zoro, who keeps her company during night watch. Who drinks to forget the nightmares living in his head. Who naps like the dead because he spends the night pacing around the ship; checking and double checking that each Straw Hat is accounted for.

If Roronoa Zoro managed to walk away from Monkey D. Luffy years ago and return stronger for it, then surely she should be able to do the same - surely, they will not forget her.

(They are family now, after all.)

“Then I will take my leave, captain,” she says, because she can’t keep it contained in her chest for a second longer. The way her skin itches to do something and the throbbing in her head is not a headache, but something that causes her heart to beat in an erratic, staccato rhythm.

Nico Robin has one chance to keep her family together, and if it requires her to leave them behind, then she will do that too.

Luffy jumps to his feet, stuffing the poster into his shorts and then he is looking at her like she has just stolen the last scrap of meat on the ship.

She smiles. Mainly because if she doesn’t, the tears that are building up will spill, and she can’t have that. “I know it won’t be easy, but in order for things to turn out different this time, then I believe we must all become stronger. Even if that means we have to part for a while.”

Luffy scuffs the worn sole of his sandals against the wooden floorboards of the Sunny. “But–”

Robin stands and pulls him into a hug.

Her hands clutch at him until he must nearly be suffocating in the strength of her embrace. Luckily, her captain is made of rubber, and has a penchant for hugs.

All Luffy does is wrap his arms around her waist and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

Robin can tell by the warm huffs of air against her neck and the tremble in Luffy’s arms that he doesn’t want her to go.

She doesn’t want to go either.

(She has to. She must. Robin wants to be able to come home to this. To a family that will have missed her, thought of her in the days without her, and who, above everything else, loves her for being Robin. )

Pressing a kiss into Luffy’s sea salt sprayed hair, she gives him one final squeeze before letting go. “It’s going to be alright, captain. We will come back home when you call for us - we all will.” And if someone doesn’t… Can’t… Well, seas have mercy on those standing in their way.

This young boy - a man, really, in his own right - has already performed miracles and traveled through time for them.

It would be silly to assume that his crew would not do the same for him.

Robin sure would.

Luffy sniffles, wiping his red rimmed eyes with the back of a hand. He takes off his hat and fiddles with the inside, tongue poking out and nose scrunched up in concentration. “Ah!”

His fingers clutch at a vivre card - the carefully written Sabo with all its swirls and gentleness is a stark contrast to her captain and everything that he stands for. Luffy tears a corner off and shoves it into Robin’s hands so fast that she loses hold of it immediately.

A third hand sprouts from her shoulder and catches the stub before it can disappear into the wind, and Robin raises an eyebrow. “For me?”

“Yeah!” Says Luffy, bouncing on the balls of his feet, tears already forgotten. “Since Sabo is already with my dad, this way you can find them quicker.”

She has no hope of following his thought process, other than a stray thought that maybe she spent those two years in another timeline alongside the revolutionaries, and–

And this… this wonderful human being that is her captain will never cease to amaze Robin. Her chest is warm, and she knows that despite the cold wind, her cheeks are flushed from more than just the freezing temperature. Her beloved captain is so, so unbelievably kind.

Leaning forward, she presses another kiss into his hair and Luffy giggles.

“Thank you, captain.”

For finding me again. For believing in me. For trusting in me. For loving me. For giving me a family that loves me as much as I love them.

There are too many things to thank him for, so she leaves it at that.

Luffy merely grins and puts his straw hat on her head.

I love you too, he says, but no words leave his lips. They don’t have to.

Robin tucks the straw hat over her face as her eyes water, because Saul was right - she has met brave friends who will protect her.

And whatever the future may bring, known or unknown, Robin will protect them too.

***

Robin sets out from the Thousand Sunny with a wave and a smile, and she does not look back. The vivre card crawls under a glass bell, guiding her from one island to the next.

It takes a month for an island of white soil to come into view, and something in Robin’s chest settles at the sight, her hands trembling and heart beating in her throat. She has never stepped foot on this island before in her life. Has never gazed at it before.

(And yet… and yet her body is carrying her along an invisible path before she has even confirmed the direction with the vivre card.)

She wanders into what should have been a vast desert that must have killed unlucky wanderers in droves, and yet she stands before a large rock formation that is clearly some sort of secret base.

Before Robin is even a hundred feet within the one visible door, there are four people with guns and swords pointing her way.

All it takes is a few extra arms, and all four of them are down on the ground.

The door to the base flies open, and out strolls a familiar blonde in a tophat. “Please, don’t embarrass my men any further, Nico Robin. They clearly haven’t looked at the recent wanted posters, despite them being in the mess hall for everyone’s perusal.” For such soft words, the four people all wince and grumble.

“Sorry, chief…”

With a co*ck of his head, the Second in Command of the Revolutionary Army sends his wounded men back inside. White soil whips in the air between the two people left standing.

“I’ve been expecting you, Nico Robin of the Straw Hats,” says Sabo, with a grin not quite unlike that of both his brothers’. “Welcome to Baltigo.”

Oh .

There is a glint in his eye and a curl to his lip that has less to do with scarring and more to do with the fact that Sabo knows.

How curious.

***

Sabo takes her under his wing, and while it should be weird - this young man years her junior and her captain’s older brother - it is everything but.

He is so much like her captain, in the way that he looks after every recruit and revolutionary, in the way he does not eat, but simply devours whatever is set in front of him, and in the way that he looks at her and sees.

When he looks, it is not at the devil child.

When he looks, he sees Nico Robin.

And for that she has no words to express her gratitude.

Maybe that is why, on the third week of slinking around the base at Baltigo and not yet having found a position in which she fits, she hunts him down and knocks down his door. Or, she knocks politely on his office door and turns the doorknob before Sabo has even given her an affirmative.

Oh well, it is as much knocking down a door as she can muster, but judging by the twitch in Sabo’s eyebrow, he is fully aware of her intention.

“Can I help you?” His tongue is sticking out, halfway through that horrible habit of his in which he licks the inky part of his feather pen and somehow gets it smeared all over his cheeks. It typically stays there until dinner, when Koala chases him down and rubs a cloth in his face until his cheeks are red and sore, only for the cycle to repeat itself the next day.

Robin raises an eyebrow at him in return. “I’ve heard you can crush stone with your bare hands, and yet you have no devil fruit. So, if it wouldn’t be a terrible imposition, would you be so kind, Sabo-kun, as to teach me?”

(Help me protect my captain.)

He taps the pen against his cheek once, twice, thrice, creating a small patchwork of faux freckles that will undoubtedly end up smeared on his jabot later.

“Hm,” he hums. Then he puts down his pen and folds his hands in his lap. “Very well, Nico Robin - but first, what do you know about Haki?” The grin on his face might have made lesser men pee their pants, but Robin merely smiles with just as much teeth.

***

Monkey D. Dragon, while menacing with his mere presence and the weight of his reputation, is so much like his son that Robin feels right at home in Baltigo. The Revolutionary leader is elusive at the best of times, but when he does dare grace the mess hall with his presence, he eats with the same vigor and appetite as his son (and his adopted son, for that matter).

She looks at the most wanted man in the world devouring his third rack of lamb ribs in two minutes, and has to put one hand in front of her mouth, lest she laugh in the man’s face. From the corner of her eye, she shares a look with Sabo, who undoubtedly knows exactly where her train of thought is at.

***

Sabo trains her for two months before he sends her into the field as an undercover operative at a place called Tequila Wolf. She goes in with nothing but the clothes on her back and Bon Clay at her back.

She shakes, not from the cold, but from excitement. There are children here - sick, wounded, betrayed. People of all ages who are in desperate need of a revolution, and it should be at least a bit frightening, but–

Bon Clay, much to her delight, makes an excellent partner.

He slams a swan shoe in the eye of a slave trader before turning to her and wiping a speck of blood from the blush on his cheeks. He stomps on the vile man’s stomach until he coughs up phlegm and stomach acid, then takes a bow and sweeps out a hand. “After you, Miss All Sunday.”

Robin does nothing to quell her laughter. “Why, thank you Mr. 2.”

She steps on the slave trader’s broken ribs as she crosses the threshold into the guard’s main office, just to be petty. Grabbing the keys to the slave collars and kicking whatever guard she comes across in the nuts - armament Haki hard - also brings her immensive joy.

No reason for scum like that to reproduce anyway.

***

It isn’t until they lose a handful of fellow revolutionaries by the end of her stint on Tequila Wolf that Robin sees that Dragon, too, is not so different from her captain in this aspect either.

(In loss, and the aftermath that comes with it.)

The man, for all that he is stoic and a rock for his people, also bites his lips bloody and grips the fabric of his cloak until his knuckles turn white behind closed doors.

It is a little silly, though - no door has ever remained locked for Robin, with all of her eyes and ears, and so she opens the door to his office with no remorse and all the bravery of a D.

“I said I don’t want to be disturbed until morning,” says Dragon, worrying at his bottom lip despite the droplets of blood that have already spilled down onto the paper he is looking at. “Whatever it is can wait, can’t it, Nico Robin?”

He finally deigns to look up, and Robin sees a face so pale that she knows she can’t leave well enough alone.

(If there is anything her captain has taught her, it is that no one should be alone when they are feeling like this - leader of the revolutionaries or not.)

Robin stalks forward, Dragon’s tiny cage that constitutes as an office is, as always, dark and filled to the brim with enough paper to make an entire forest fear for their lives. She pauses in front of the second bookshelf to the right, removes two thick volumes on naval warfare for Marines, and reaches for the bottle of rum that she knows is hiding in the back.

“Ah,” says Dragon, leaning back in his chair. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“Don’t worry,” Robin smiles, and grabs two used mugs from the table that might have once held coffee. “I won’t tell Koala. Or Sabo.”

She pours as much as Zoro would; that is, just below the rim, regardless of the beverage of choice.

Dragon takes one of the mugs without prompting, but doesn’t drink. He merely swirls the contents in the mug until a good splash of it goes above the edge and trails over his hand.

Grabbing a stray, crumpled piece of paper, Robin wipes away as much of the mess on his hand as she can, and proceeds to take a seat on his desk. “To fallen comrades.” She clinks her mug against his.

Dragon startles, eyes wide for a second before his gaze goes from the mug and then to her. Robin smiles, because there is little else for her to do. No words of comfort will help - she didn’t know the fallen well enough, and empty platitudes is not something a man like Dragon might appreciate.

Companionable silence is something she can provide, and so they drink in silence.

Not enough to get plastered, but just enough that Dragon puts his head in his hand after two refills, and when his shoulders shake, Robin pretends not to hear his sobs.

(Perhaps the strangest trait the father and son share, is the way their cries are oddly similar. Something wild and furious - untamed storms and skies full of thunder, it shakes their whole bodies and takes and takes and takes until there is nothing left in them to give.)

Dragon falls asleep with his head on a stack of inked paperwork that will smear in the morning, but Robin doesn’t dare wake him. Instead, she fetches him a blanket, and puts up a proper ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door before she slips out at the crack of dawn.

***

Losing people does not become easier.

Going on missions do.

She burns the flag of the government and snaps the necks of corrupt officials and warmongering royals who see their subjects as nothing but cannon fodder. She tears down buildings and breaks islands until all that remains is dust and grime that has a chance to one day be rebuilt into something functioning and healthy.

She passes out medical equipment and stirs the ladles of forty pots all at once, because there are hungry mouths to feed and children who have seen too much of what the world is like at the tender age of three.

With every mission, a part of her - the part of her that still hears the adults whisper devil child in the corners - scabs over. It does not heal, but it hurts less.

It also helps when she is slapped over the wrist with seastone cuffs and her captors think they have the upper hand. Robin can’t help but smile in the face of their victorious laughter and far too early celebrations.

Maybe in another timeline, Nico Robin the devil child would have relied entirely on her powers. On limbs that can grow bigger, multiply, and slap men silly. Might have favored running away over a direct confrontation until she could get backup from her crew, or a more suitable opponent crossed her path.

But here and now, Robin smiles at the corrupt guard in front of her, and a second later, she grabs him by the skull with fingers locked like the claws of a dragon protecting its hoard.

Then she applies force, and the man’s skull cracks and pops with a ryosuken that has become second nature to her.

The guard crumbles to the floor, foaming blood at the mouth, and Robin lifts a shackled, bloodied hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Oh my,” she says. “I do apologize for the mess.”

***

Later, once empires have fallen and armament Haki is as easy to summon as a third eye or a fifth hand, there is a call to Baltigo.

Sabo throws her a backpack and a smile alongside a tilt of his tophat. “My brother sends his regards. He says to meet him at Sabaody in two weeks - pack your stuff, I’ll take you there myself.”

So she packs.

Baltigo has been her home for nearly two years, or at the very least, a place to return to and with people she has come to deeply care for. But… but they are not her captain, with his endlessly sunny smile and a first mate who loves so fiercely that he, too, would traverse time for them.

Baltigo is arid heat and white sand, while the Thousand Sunny is wood and warmth and family.

She hugs and waves goodbye to those she has stayed with - Koala and Bon Clay both attempt to outcry each other when she gives them a tight squeeze farewell, and Hack has given up trying to hide his tears. Dragon does nothing more than grunt at her, and then offers her a final round of rum from his secret stash.

Sabo sets a course for Sabaody, and Robin can’t wait to see her family again.

Chapter 2: Brook - The Cross Stitch

Chapter Text

Nico Robin leaves the welcoming lull of the Sunny’s deck on a warm morning, with nothing but a wave and a smile. “Take care,” she tells them, and then she is off. No tears, no lingering - just a face set with determination, that appeared out of nowhere, if you ask Brook.

The air on the ship changes as her small vessel disappears over the blue horizon, sea and sky melding into one. The sun is unfairly bright, considering they have just said goodbye to a friend.

“Robin-chan…” Sanji bites into a handkerchief, tears streaming down his face, and Brook can’t help the mournful yohoho that leaves him.

Their captain stands at the bow of the ship, eyes on the sea as it lulls back and forth, glinting in the sunlight. “It’s okay, Sanji,” he says, with that familiar grin on his face as Chopper blubbers next to him, banging his little hooves against the railing. “It’s not a goodbye, it’s just a see you later!”

Brook might be old, might be a skeleton and an acting captain who failed his crew but while Brook has not been with this crew for long, he sees the soft tremble of Luffy’s fingers where he clutches the hem of his vest. His hands are relaxed, but there is tension in those joints.

Fear, Brook thinks.

Panic, his mind stresses as well.

Zoro, their newest addition, says nothing, but his eye is trained on their captain.

Ah, it is good to know that Brook isn’t the only one who has seen it.

“Robin-chan…!” Sanji gives another howl of sadness, the handkerchief nearly chewed through and split at the edges. Zoro, for all that he has been onboard the ship for the least amount of time, strolls over to the bawling chef and slaps him in the back of the head.

Rocketing forward, Sanji’s face scrapes along the deck and leaves him with a bloody nose that, sadly, has nothing to do with women’s underwear.

As light as Brook is on his feet (although they are more than a bit bony by now, yohoho ), Sanji jumps into Zoro’s face just as quickly for a man made of flesh and blood. “Oi! What was that for? You stupid moss-head!”

“Stop whining and go cook or something,” growls Zoro, forehead pressing against Sanji’s, and Brook can’t help but keep an eye on his captain. The man is looking at the two snarling and spitting adults, a crinkle in his eyes and a fond smile that has Brook clutching at his nonexistent heart.

(Is that how his lips might have curved around his teeth, if he met Laboon again in his own skin? Ah, he supposes there is no reason to ponder on it, his flesh has long since rotten away, like the strings of an abandoned violin.)

Much to Luffy’s glee and echoing shishishi, Nami strolls over and punches both chef and swordsman on the head before the fight can escalate .

How fearsome she can be, when she puts her mind to it.

Would now be a good time to ask for the navigator’s panties?

“Nami-san, may I please see your pa–”

The punch on his head does not sting half as much as Robin’s departure does.

***

The mood onboard the ship remains depressed for far too long.

Brook fiddles with his violin day in and day out, trying out tune after tune in hopes that it will raise the spirits of his new crew.

(It doesn’t. Usopp and Chopper dance away on the deck and Franky cheers them on, but… they dance for a number or two, and then they return to their tinkering and their medical books. Nami holes herself up in her room full of maps and log poses, emerging from her dark cave with ink smeared on her cheeks only when Sanji drags her away for food.

Luffy spoils him, Brook knows, because his captain is always eager for a song and a dance, and yet… Luffy’s smiles are wonderful and big like always, but his eyes remain hollow. If only Brook could find the right tune.)

This won’t stand any longer, if Brook has a say in all this dreadful melancholy that lingers in his beloved crew. Clearly, the skeleton needs a good, long talk with an unlikely ally who might have an idea on how to lighten the mood, if only through booze and countless naps.

And so, when Zoro once again takes the first watch that night, Brook volunteers to keep their first mate company.

***

“Zoro-san.”

The swordsman has his back to Brook, one eye overlooking the calm waves of the sea. In the darkness of the Grand Line, it shines with the same gleam as spilled oil. Something just as slimy and toxic seems to hang in the air, and Brook is certain it should have made his eyes water if he still had them.

“Hm?” Zoro doesn’t turn, but he doesn’t stiffen either, even when Brook sidles up next to him, one hand clutching his bow and violin. His other hand lands on Sunny’s railing, his bony fingers making a soft click against the polished wood.

It is silent as Brook wrangles with the thoughts in his head. (It is always easier to speak through songs - those are practiced and the skeleton knows enough of them by heart to apply them to most situations… But for this particular one, his skull remains frightfully empty of song suggestions.)

He takes a second too long, apparently, as Zoro turns his gaze to the skeleton and raises a brow. “Are you okay?”

“Ah, I feel like I should be asking you that, Zoro-san.”

That piercing eye leaves him and returns to the blackened sea. “I suppose I’m okay,” he says. “Sort of, at least.”

“I see.”

He doesn’t. Not really. He still doesn’t have eyes.

But Brook thinks he understands, at least partially.

Because Zoro looks at the sea like Brook once did.

Like he lost everything he ever cared about and doesn’t know how to start again.

Brook grabs the neck of his violin just a tad tighter.

“I find it hard to believe that Luffy-san will be satisfied with my repertoire of songs as they are now.” Brook hums for a moment, plucking at a string and adjusting a peg. “Zoro-san, if possible, can you teach me some of the songs you used to sing with your previous crew? I think it would do the both of you some good. Remind you of happier times.”

Help you heal, he doesn’t say.

The swordsman is far from subtle when he startles. He whirls on Brook, face pale and mouth open.

“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost? Yohoho!” The skeleton can’t help himself, because Zoro is gaping like a fish and heaving for a lungful of air that seems to refuse him.

He plucks another string, just to double check the tension. “No need to act so surprised. People like us…” says Brook, and wishes he could get rid of the way his throat still seizes up despite being nothing but bone. “People like us have a certain sound in our hearts. Others might not hear it easily, but we tend to find each other. I hear the same sound in Luffy-san.”

A sound so hauntingly bitter and lonely that it should have frozen the sea.

Zoro stays silent, standing stock-still. Looking. Listening.

So Brook talks, because this conversation has fallen on his shoulders for now. “The loss of a crew stains all three of us.”

A shuddering, little breath is all the response Brook gets, but it is enough of a confirmation. Zoro’s jaw snaps shut and he leans just a tad bit closer to the musician.

Placing the violin under his chin, Brook gives him an encouraging nod.

“I don’t–” The swordsman screws his eye shut, the Adam’s wood railing under his fingers creaks and groans. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Brook smiles - as much as a skeleton can. “From the beginning, Zoro-san. That is usually a good place to start.”

His silver gaze darts to the door leading further inside the Sunny, as though Brook has broken some unspoken rule, and Luffy will come crashing through the door at any moment. He wets his lips, once, twice, his hand twitching for a bottle that isn’t there.

As though speaking of it will make it all too real.

Will make it more likely to happen once again.

“Whatever happened to the two of you,” says Brook, because standing in front of him is a man who has been hurt by the world, and who has done his part to hurt the world in turn. A man who has suffered far more than any person ever should, and yet still looks at this crew with so much love that it is difficult not to choke on it. “It will never come to pass again. Your crew and mine might be gone, but we have a new chance.”

“I know.” Says Zoro, so sharp it cuts him to the very bone.

Conviction, Brook thinks.

A promise, his mind stresses as well.

The crash of waves against Sunny’s hull envelops them, a steady rhythm consisting of a thump-thump-swoosh, thump-thump-swoosh. It is a decent rhythm, and one that Brook can work with.

“Do you have a song in mind?” The skeleton asks, because his ribs rattle with a need to fill the air with music.

Zoro palms his eye and rubs it so fiercely that he loses a few lashes in the process. “Yeah,” he says, and Brook ignores the way his voice cracks. “I think I know which one to start with.”

And then Zoro hums, something soft and melodic and so unlike anything Brook had expected, that it takes him a second to comprehend.

It is a new song.

Something that makes the back of Brook’s skull tingle with familiarity. Like a melody that he might already have been half finished with, but then forgotten in passing. Strange, how it can be foreign and feel so much like home at the same time.

Zoro breaks off the humming, and Brook’s chest falls with disappointment for the barest hint of a second before the swordsman starts to sing.

The skeleton hastily throws his bow on the strings of his violin, thumping his foot in a beat as words; meshed together in patterns and rhyme schemes that Brook has never heard before, pierces the air and leaves his lungs without breath.

The first mate sings of a calm before a storm, and how, as far as they know, the sky is blue. He sings of a whisper that slowly takes shape, and the shout that follows it surely being loud. Most importantly, he sings of a ship’s course having been set for a cape nicknamed the Good Hope.

It is short, soft and hopeful.

The swordsman ends his singing with another hum that trails off, and Brook ignores the wetness trickling down his cheekbones.

“We used to sing it when we needed a bit more, well, hope,” says Zoro. “Didn’t matter how few of us were left, it just always helped us feel a bit better.” His shoulders have slumped into something akin to relaxation. Nerves no longer as bunched together and tight as they had been when their night watch began.

“Might I ask who composed it?”

Zoro laughs - his first genuine laugh in a while - the kind that is as loud and as boisterous as their beloved captain’s. Then he pats Brook on the shoulder and says; “You did.”

A violin string snaps.

“Ah,” says Brook, and wonders if the fact that he doesn’t have ears left have finally impacted his hearing for good. The snapped string hangs limp and defeated from his instrument, and he makes no move to repair it.

In a way, Brook should have known.

He might not have been part of the crew for long, but anything that involves Monkey D. Luffy is undoubtedly steeped in mystery, impossibility, and wrapped in a layer of insanity, just for good measure.

Their captain would do anything for them, hasn’t he already proven that?

“Time travel?” The musician asks, because is it really that big of a stretch? He is a walking, talking skeleton, who can somehow still play the trumpet despite having no lungs or lips left.

“Yeah,” says Zoro with a shrug. “Time travel.”

For a man such as Monkey D. Luffy, time travel is probably not even the craziest thing he has ever done.

(This is why Robin left to train, isn’t it?)

Fishing an extra pack of string from the breast pocket of his suit, Brook plucks the broken string away and replaces it with a new one. He tucks his chin to rest on the violin, and turns to his first mate. (In this life, and the one before it. A strange adventure surely awaits them in the future, he thinks, and being a skeleton isn’t even half of it.)

“I composed more than one song in my previous life, didn’t I?”

He doesn’t even need to look to know that Zoro is nodding.

Brook is a musician through and through - he would rather die than stop composing. “Seeing as how I’ve written them once before, would you kindly teach me more of my discography? I would hate to end up plagiarizing myself, and we do have almost two years to go before we need to pick up Robin-san.”

I will stay, he says; not with words, but with the gentle tap of his bow on a new string.

Something akin to a smile tugs at the corner of Zoro’s lips, and he hides it in the sleeve of his robe before Brook can call him out on it.

“Sure thing,” he says. “Soul King.”

Soul King?

Hm, that has quite a nice ring to it.

***

When Zoro volunteers for the first watch the next night, Brook joins him again.

They sing and hum and stomp their feet to a rhythm that the skeleton somehow knows, yet doesn’t.

And Brook learns.

Song after song after song.

(A week later, he plays all of them for his beloved captain, and even though there are tears, Luffy is smiling through all of it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the mood onboard the Thousand Sunny lifts with every song hummed, every chord struck, and every laugh that is echoed on the waves of the sea.)

***

Brook plays music morning and noon and afternoon and evening and well into the night. He plays until his fingers should bleed, and yet they don’t. Ah, for once, being a skeleton is coming in handy. (He can only imagine the blisters he would have gotten if he had had skin, yohoho. )

He plays and plays and plays–

The musician plays until he feels his soul leave his body, and then all he can think is oh, this is what Zoro-san meant with Soul King, isn’t it?

Music has always been an out of body experience for him.

It has just never been this literal before.

***

It takes only one try to peek into the women’s bathroom as a soul before Nami catches him. She screams and yells so loudly that Brook fears he might go deaf in his old age.

He leaves the interaction with an additional four bumps on his head and two cracked ribs to add to his collection, much to Chopper’s dismay.

Oh well.

It was worth a try.

***

He plays the songs that Zoro taught him as one by one, some of their crew leaves.

For training, they say, with tears dripping down their faces and a fire in their eyes.

It’s not a goodbye, Luffy insists each and every time, it’s a see you later!

And Brook plays the song of a ship heading for a cape nicknamed the Good Hope and pretends not to be awake when his captain cries himself to sleep on each of those nights, gasping sobs leaving him as he clutches his swordsman close.

Zoro hums the same song under his breath, hands carding through Luffy’s hair, and the small, wrecked noises of a man broken by the world seems to ease a little every time.

Every morning after, Brook herds out the remaining Straw Hats from the men’s shared quarters with a bony finger to his non-existent lips.

He leaves the captain and his swordsman to sleep a bit longer, curled around each other in their small hammock and snoring in symphony.

Brook can handle their morning chores for the day.

They need the rest.

***

Brook gets his ass handed to him by both Luffy and Zoro, each and every day.

Training, they call it, with a grin the size of both the sun and the moon combined.

Utter torture, Brook argues.

Still, he gets up from where he has collapsed on the grassy deck and brandishes his sword once more. “Again,” he demands, whether it be against Luffy’s mysterious Haki, or Zoro’s swords that keep coming for his afro.

“Just an incentive to make you try harder,” says Zoro, and Brook knows the swordsman would never actually follow through on the threat.

For good measure, Brook wakes him up with an untuned guitar the next morning.

Zoro does not go for his afro again.

***

“Luffy-san,” he calls out one evening, over a year into their aimless drifting of Paradise as they wait for their captain to deem them ready for what lies ahead. There is no one else on the deck but himself, his captain, and Nami’s mikan trees swaying in the gentle breeze of a nearby summer island. “I asked Zoro-san if I had any other abilities from before, that I have not yet managed to reacquaint myself with.”

Despite having never said it out loud; the time travel, his night shifts with Zoro, the songs he relearned–

Luffy does not look surprised that Brook knows.

Instead, his captain taps a fist against his temple and frowns. “Hm…”

“It appears that my skills are not quite up to par with my previous self.” Haki comes easier to Brook now than what it did before, apparently - but observation is a tentative thing, and it only comes to him when he plays and forgets everything else around him… While that is all well and good, if not slightly impractical, Zoro has also shared bits and pieces of their shared past, and Brook has not yet managed to gain any semblance of ice powers. “I’m sorry.”

Luffy lets out a little shishishi.

“It’s okay if you don’t know how to do everything you knew from before,” he says, blinking at the skeleton. “Brook is Brook. I don’t care what you can or can’t do - I just want you to be happy. I just want you to live. ”

Those sad chords in his captain’s soul ring out clear as day to Brook’s ears. A soft, sad, desperate tune that pleads for him to stay alive, stay alive, whatever you do just stay alive.

And although Brook is bony and uncomfortable and probably not the best choice for a pillow, Luffy hugs him with all of his might and then some more until they end up sitting in the grass.

The strength of it makes his bones rattle, and to Brook it sounds like the chimes of a bell.

Luffy falls asleep in his lap, nose scrunched and hands grabbing at the fabric of his paisley suit. It will without a doubt wrinkle, but Brook can’t make himself wake the young man up.

Instead, Brook hums a song and runs his fingers through Luffy’s hair, marveling at the man he calls his captain. He dozes off himself minutes later, and wakes again only when someone else settles beside them.

The sight of Zoro, cross legged and already snoring as he leans against Brook’s shoulder, greets him.

His heart might burst with love at this rate.

(If only he still had one, yohoho! )

***

Just to be on the safe side, Brook braves Nami’s wrath and borrows money from the treasury. “I swear on my life that I won’t spend it on booze or women or used panties.” He assures her.

She stares at him, those eyes peering over the rim of her glasses and through his skull and bones and his very soul. “Okay,” she says, “I really don’t need you to clarify any of those points.” Nami hands him a pouch full of gold that Brook doubts he will ever be able to pay back, considering her interest fees.

He ends up at a stall, on an island with snow that tastes of peanut butter, and Brook does not hesitate to spend it all in one go. Nestled on a velvet pillow is a tone dial, one capable of recording a long message - or rather, a song, and it is exactly what he is looking for.

When he returns to the Sunny, his coin pouch damn near anemic and tone dial hidden away inside his rattling skull, he joins Sanji’s feast with a guitar slung over his shoulder and doles out several numbers on request. He laughs until his nonexistent lungs should have collapsed, and he shares an unhealthy amount of tea with Sanji when they do the dishes together, side by side, once the rest of the crew have turned in for the night.

“You coming, Brook?” Sanji holds the door open, one foot outside and ready for his last smoke of the night, but the tone dial weighs heavy inside Brook’s head.

“Ah,” he slumps half over the dinner table, brandishing a cup of darjeeling. “I think I’ll have a final cup of tea and just enjoy the quiet for a moment.”

“Suit yourself. Goodnight.” The door shuts behind the chef, and suddenly Brook is alone in the kitchen. Every bone in his ribcage aches and aches in the silence, but if he strains his ears, he can already hear Luffy and Zoro snoring in tandem.

(How lucky must he have been in an earlier life, to end up with such a wonderful crew like these people?)

Brook cracks open his skull, takes out the tone dial, and presses record.

In the dark of the kitchen, on a ship that holds the future crew of the Pirate King, Brook is dead and should have been alone, but he isn’t. While only a handful of Straw Hats now roam the halls of the Sunny, Brook is far from alone.

He sings and talks and cries into the tone dial, and when he ends the recording, he tucks it away next to Laboon’s.

Just in case, he thinks, and hopes his crew will never have to play it out loud.

After all, the Straw Hat pirates aren’t made for goodbyes.

***

Four weeks before they reach Sabaody to meet up with their missing crew members, Brook has taken the first watch of the night by himself and taps out a melody with his fingers against the railing.

A tiny shard of ice springs forth and oh.

He doesn’t tell his captain or his first mate.

When the time is right, he will surprise them with this.

And perhaps a new song, too.

One of family, second chances, and whatever adventure awaits them in the future.

Chapter 3: Usopp - The Running Stitch

Chapter Text

Between all of Luffy’s, frankly, downright ridiculous connections to powerful people in nearly all the seas, it is easy to forget that sometimes it is not Luffy’s name or straw hat that grants them safe passage on islands.

Sometimes, people look at Usopp, and they see Yasopp in his stead.

It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, and Usopp isn’t quite sure how to feel about that. It isn’t like it is some grand secret that his dad is on an Emperor’s crew, but it’s certainly not public information either. If it was, his dad wouldn’t have stayed away from Syrup.

When the other kids had started to press the issue of his dad, his mom had sat him down on his fourth birthday, stroking his hair while he cried into her skirt. “He’s keeping us safe,” she would say. “He’d come by if he could.”

Usopp has always loved his dad, unconditionally and completely, raised on the stories his mom would tell him over a hot meal, or the edge of her sickbed.

“He’s a brave man,” says his mother through a cough, before she passes.

“He’s a brave man,” says the elderly woman on one island, whom Yasopp apparently helped during a particularly vicious spat with another pirate crew. “You look just like him!”

(Does he, though?

Everyone keeps telling him that, but it’s not like Usopp is actually brave or smart or any of the things his dad is. Genetics aren’t everything, and it’s hard to listen to comments of you have his hair or I know that smile or same skills as his father, that one!

They should make him happy, and they do, for the most part.

But some days it’s hard to stop the resentment from filling his face.

How come they got to meet his dad, and he doesn’t even have a picture?)

Usopp loves his dad to the end of the sea and back again, but some days, he wonders if his dad ever loved him and his mom.

***

A wave of ocean water hits the side of the Sunny and drenches Usopp and Luffy in a fine spray of salt. “Urgh, come on!” Yells Usopp, brandishing a fist at the cloudfree sky. The sun is beaming down on the two of them, far too hot where they sit on the railing. Fishing poles are tucked in each of their grips, and their clothes are damp from the unruly waves.

The other Straw Hats have sought refuge inside, but there is only so much food left in the aquarium, and once again Usopp and Luffy have drawn the short end of the stick. (Usopp really should come up with a way to cheat at pulling straws, but the mere thought of Nami’s wrath is an effective prevention tool.)

Next to him, Luffy shifts and frets, chewing on the collar of his vest. “I’m hungry,” he whines and slumps half over the railing. “Why won’t the fishies bite? Come and get eaten already!”

A hungry captain is a destructive captain, and Usopp wracks his brain for a solution that won’t end up with half the ship damaged, Sanji’s secret pantry cleared out, or a tail of ten marine ships. “Why don’t you tell me a story?” The sniper hops down from the railing, attaching another squirming worm on his hook and throwing it over the edge of the Sunny.

Bite already, you damn fish.

Usopp leans against the wood, Luffy sitting next to him with his legs crossed and a frown on his face. Usually Usopp is the one telling stories, but for once it might be fun to push Luffy to do it.

His captain’s face turns red, nose scrunched and chin in hand as their fishing poles bob and remain unfairly empty out in the blue waves. “Hm,” says Luffy. “I think I have a story, but I’m not sure if it’s any good.”

“That’s okay, just go for it.”

Here’s the thing–

Usopp’s captain isn’t the greatest liar. He is not the greatest storyteller either, but Usopp has always enjoyed whenever Luffy tries to tell a lie, or conjure up a story of his own volition. (Seas knows his captain’s childhood has been weird enough to fill up an entire book by Noland the Liar himself.)

But Usopp doesn’t like this story.

He doesn’t like the way Luffy clenches his fist on the fishing pole, or the way his nails dig too far into his rubbery skin and pulls. Tears drip down Luffy’s face - short, weak little things accompanied by the briefest of hiccups before his captain wipes his snotty nose on his arm and drags it over his puffy eyes as well.

Luffy weaves a tale so morose and sorrowful, that Usopp’s knees quake and shiver until he drops down on the deck, fishing pole swallowed by the waves. His kneecaps twinge and protest at the rough wood, but all Usopp can see is Luffy, and all he can hear are words that he wishes he could ignore.

He can’t.

(The Straw Hat pirates conquer the Grand Line, his captain tells him. But they aren’t whole. They die, one by one by one by two, until only the captain and the first mate is left, and even then their victory is a sobering affair. A cheers, a trust me, and all of a sudden, Luffy tells him that time travel is real.)

“O–oi, Luffy, that’s not funny.” He forces it out between his lips, his tongue darting out to wet them when, oh, he has been gaping this entire time, hasn’t he?

A bead of sweat trickles down the back of his neck, curling the hair at the nape. There is a tangled knot there, too, and his hand comes away damp when he pulls it apart. (Focus on something else, Usopp!) “I think you need to leave the lying to me in the future! Your stories are way too dark, you’ll end up giving poor Chopper nightmares!”

It is probably because Usopp is a certified liar, that when Luffy doesn’t refute his claims immediately - doesn’t banter back or yell at Usopp for not believing him - his entire body seizes. Every nerve and muscle cramp up at once, because Luffy’s eyes are so, so dark, and the bite of his grin speaks of death and decay, doled out in equal amounts.

His shoe gives a squeak against the floorboards of the Sunny. (When did Usopp take a step back?)

It’s his captain. It’s Luffy. He’d never hurt him.

With Luffy’s sunshine demeanor, it is so easy to forget that he is still a pirate - and if push comes to shove, his captain will gladly hurt people who hurt them. Usopp knows this, just as he knows that the East Blue sun can burn you if you are not careful.

The East Blue sun has always burned bright.

Luffy burns brighter.

***

In the swaying of his hammock and the snores of his friends, sleep escapes Usopp.

He has always been a vivid dreamer, both asleep and awake, but now - now, every time the sniper closes his eyes, all his brain can conjure up is images of his loved ones dead. (It shouldn’t be like that. Adventuring should be fun. Sailing should be an opportunity for stories. Leaning on his captain shouldn’t feel like burning his skin, and yet it does.)

How can Luffy and Zoro sleep?

Because they can - the swordsman’s snores are loud, snuffling gasps of air, and Luffy always murmurs in his sleep when he is dreaming about meat. But it makes sense too - because sometimes Zoro and Luffy take a double shift through the night, or they end up sleeping on the couch by the light of the aquarium, or, or–

(They scream in their sleep too, and Usopp hates that now he knows why.)

“Hey,” he calls out, picking at a loose thread from the cover of his pillowcase. “Is anyone awake?”

There comes a soft whisper from the hammock next to him. “Yohoho, I am, Usopp-san.”

And Usopp steels himself, because how many people know?

“Do you– have Luffy or Zoro told you about… About–”

“Not in many words, but yes.”

Ah. Okay.

“But I don’t think Luffy-san or Zoro-san have told anyone else on the ship. Not yet, at least. It’s why Robin-san left, and why I chose to stay.”

“I just– I can’t believe I didn’t get to meet my dad before I…” He doesn’t have to say it out loud. Can’t say it, for all that lies and truths leave his lips with the ease of an oiled penguin down a slide. Sniffling, just once, Usopp drags a hand over his eyes and blocks out the soft moonlight from the window.

Another, unusually soft voice rings out. “Do you want to meet your dad?”

(When did Luffy wake up?)

Usopp lets out a sob. He wants to. Seas, he really, really wants to meet his dad.

The strings of a suspended hammock creaks and groans, and then Luffy stands next to Usopp’s own bed, tangling their fingers together. He pulls Usopp’s hand from his face, and his smile is so damn soft. “I’ll ask Ace’s Pops for Shanks’ number. I’m sure they’d be happy to have you stay for a while - take all the time you need, Usopp!”

His captain leaves their room, disregarding the fact that it’s ass o’ clock in the middle of the night, and it is highly unlikely that the Whitebeard pirates will accept a Den Den call for anything less than an emergency.

(Robin left and Brook chose to stay and Usopp has a choice to make, even if he already knows the answer.)

The tears Usopp licks from his lips taste less like salt and more like the same frustration from Water Seven.

How can he call himself a Straw Hat if he isn’t even here?

***

The Red Force finds them on a winter island, three hops and a skip away from Sabaody. Standing on the Sunny’s deck, Usopp isn’t quite sure whether he is four seconds from vomiting or two blinks from passing out. (It’s totally both.)

Franky slaps his shoulder, sending the sniper stumbling forward and it’s only a quick grab at the railing that prevents him from breaking his nose on Adam’s wood. “This is going to be a super experience for you, Usopp-bro! I’m totally not jealous of you getting to spend time with an Emperor’s crew.” He ends it with a wink that does nothing to help Usopp’s quivering knees.

Nearly the entire remaining crew has gathered to send him off - all except his captain, who had been swinging from the sails to burn off some of his nerves before he sequestered himself in the men’s quarters at Nami’s urging.

(“I can’t see Shanks yet,” Luffy had said, throwing a petulant glare at the approaching ship, his cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk and a pout on his lips. “It’d be breaking our promise, and that’s not fair, even if I’ve sort of already become a great pirate…”

Zoro had patted him on the head and scoffed. “Suit yourself, captain, but I’m raiding their booze stash if you’re not there to stop me.”

So Luffy went downstairs and Zoro is definitely going to follow through on that threat and Usopp is going to hurl in three, two–)

“Permission to come aboard?”

A reindeer hoof catches Usopp’s pant leg and pulls the sniper out of his head. “Are you feeling faint? Increased heart rhythm?” Chopper stage whispers, loud enough for everyone to hear regardless of intention.

Zoro pointedly ignores them all and waves over a man with red hair the color of blood, one arm, and a scar running down one side of his face. “Permission granted,” says the first mate of the Straw Hat pirates, and for once, his hands aren’t planted on the hilt of his swords. Zoro’s shoulders are slumped and he doesn’t seem to mind one bit when Red Haired Shanks steps onto their ship, tilting his head in a curt greeting.

Seas, that’s a freaking Emperor!

That should have been enough to steal all of Usopp’s attention, and maybe it would have, if there wasn’t another man dogging at the Emperor’s heels; blonde dreads pulled behind a headband and a handkerchief dabbing at his wet eyes.

That’s his dad.

That’s his f*cking dad right there!

“Dad!”

“Usopp!”

Suddenly, vomiting or passing out seems like less of an issue when faced with the man whom he has only ever heard about. Living, breathing, bawling his damn eyes out just like Usopp is doing.

The man– Yasopp. Dad. Whatever, trips over his own feet and it is only Shanks’ quick grab at the back of his jacket that saves the man from planting his face into the deck of the Sunny. Then he whips his head up to stare at Usopp, the sobbing nearly drowning out any hope of coherent speech. “Usopp! My little boy, look at you! Seas, I’m so proud of you! You got so tall, and, and–”

Usopp leaps at his dad and Shanks lets them topple to the deck.

There is a sharp elbow in his stomach and hair in his mouth, and he just bowled over a man twice his age from an Emperor’s crew, but then they are sprawled in a sobbing heap of limbs and hair and laughter. And tears. Lots and lots of tears. (They have a lot to work through, but this feels like a good start.)

Saying goodbye to his crew won’t be easy - but spending time with his dad? Learning how to better himself for the sake of his crew?

It’s the easiest decision Usopp has ever made.

***

Running with an Emperor’s crew is a whole different beast than what Usopp is used to. Still, of all the Emperors the sniper could have possibly ended up with, Red Haired Shanks (“Call me uncle Shanks, dahaha!”) is probably the one who is the most like his own captain - and that makes the transition just a tad easier.

Because Shanks likes to party.

A lot.

He also likes to screw over the government, go on a bender for two weeks on some deserted island (is that Mihawk? Wha–) and sometimes he drags Usopp with him for a sparring session that has the young man crying before it begins.

“You might be a sniper,” the man argues. “But even your dad or Roux can hold their own in close combat if something happens.” And so Usopp is beaten with a stick, then a pipe, then a sword, all while he pelts tabasco and eggs at one of the strongest men in the entire world.

It’s only when Usopp is panting on the ground - his skin turning black and blue from mere grazes of Shanks getting his hand on him - that his dad crouches down next to him, plucking a sweaty strand of hair from Usopp’s mouth before he can choke on it. “Ya’ know, son, we could probably improve on that ammunition of yours…”

***

Ammunition, apparently, means growing a garden. His dad starts him off with a few seeds from an island called Greenstone, and it also happens to be the day that Usopp finds out that he inherited his two green thumbs from his dad.

(Seas, he hopes the mikan trees have survived his and Robin’s absence.)

It’s two months later that they start crossbreeding the plants for the fun of it, much to Benn and the rest of the crew’s dismay.

Vines are not supposed to have a hankering for lamb cuts, and that fast growing wild privet is not supposed to expel an airborne toxin. Whether it be bouncy, sharp, or sprouts growing faster than weeds, Usopp enjoys tending to his garden with his dad by his side.

(In the third month, with both generations of snipers trying to cram seed pods into ammunition for both slingshots and guns, they have a minor mishap. One of the pellets explodes in Yasopp’s hands and the resulting hedge of tumbleweed overtakes half of the Red Force in the span of twenty seconds.

Benn puts them on dish duty for a month.

Uncle Shanks decides that it’s time for Usopp to learn observation Haki properly, if only just to stop the father and son duo from making the shipwrights cry again.)

***

Usopp needs to take the shot.

He needs to take the shot, and he needs to take it now.

Seas, why had they gotten this drunk? Some backwater island in the New World, right next to a goddamn Marine base (of all places, Shanks!), hadn’t been the best of places to stop, but the captain had insisted and so the rest of the Red-Hair pirates followed along. Usopp has been with them for over a year now, and Shanks getting black out drunk has never really been a problem before.

And it had been fine.

The booze had been great and the food even more so.

Then the first shot had hit.

Just a regular bullet shattering a beer mug, and then it had escalated as it always did.

Except–

Except Usopp is leaning half outside of the crow’s nest of the Red Force, looking through his lens, and Lucky Roux is going to get shot. Lucky Roux has his back to some knobhea*d Marine with his finger on the trigger, and the man won’t turn around in time - won’t be able to redirect his Haki to the back of his skull in time for it to bounce off, and no one else is seeing this and dad is busy, and, and, and–

Usopp needs to take the shot.

He can barely see through the sweat dripping down his browline and stinging his eyes. His hands, why are they so darn sweaty, are shaking too much to give him any sort of hope of hitting the Marine instead of Lucky Roux himself and Usopp needs to take the damn shot–

If he doesn’t, Lucky Roux is going to die, and Benn is too busy handling three marines on his own and Shanks is locked in a brawl with a vice admiral and–

Oh.

Time…

Time is moving rather slowly, isn’t it?

Or has Usopp’s heart always been beating this frantic slowly? (This loud?)

He can see the trigger finger bending, one joint at a time, and the clash of swords and howls of guns should have been instant, but instead it rings hollow and empty on the sudden battlefield.

Usopp has all the time in the world, and he needs to stop panicking.

Taking a breath, he squints one eye shut, draws Kabuto’s string back and fires!

Sound returns with a roar.

His heart, the swords, the gunshots.

The Marine, a hair’s breadth from that final joint bending and taking the shot, falls to the ground from a bullet to the head. It knocks his white cap straight off his head, and it flops down beside the man as he convulses and gargles on the ground.

Lucky Roux doesn’t turn around, and Usopp stays in the crow’s nest. He keeps a sharp eye on his uncles and he takes down Marine after Marine, and once the stupid seagulls have retreated, he hugs the sh*t out of uncle Roux.

He can’t fathom losing even one of them, and the Grand Line will freeze over before he lets that happen to his own crew again.

***

Luffy would kill him if he knew he was even considering asking this question, but Usopp has to know. He has always been a liar - had lived from hand to mouth on tall tales alone for weeks after his mother had died - and Usopp has to know.

So he finds his sealegs, puts on his big boy pants, and seeks out uncle Shanks one inconspicuous evening after dinner.

He knocks on the door to the captain’s cabin, a quick bam-bam-bam, and he hopes Shanks can’t tell he is shaking from the other side of the door.

“Come in,” he calls, and Usopp gulps.

Now or never.

He pulls down the handle and steps inside. “Sorry for the intrusion, captain!” Throwing the man half a salute, Shanks is already laughing at Usopp from the seat at his desk, a bottle of booze next to an open logbook - that bright grin on his face so much like Luffy that Usopp has to fight down a sudden bout of homesickness.

Red Haired Shanks waves him off. “No need for that much formality, dahaha!”

Usopp’s knees betray him, though. Each step closer is a yawning chasm that he can’t physically cross, and his vision darkens at the edges. (Should he even ask? Does he even have the right to ask?)

“Have a seat.” Shanks co*cks his head towards his bed, where it remains well-kept and clearly not having been slept in for at least a week. (Usopp knows this for a fact, because sometimes he wakes at night in the men’s quarters and he can see Shanks curled around Lucky Roux or Benn or even his dad from time to time. He is always gone in the morning, and Usopp does not call him out on it. Luffy does the same thing, after all - sleeps near his crew like he can’t quite believe they are alive.)

So Usopp sits and fidgets with his fingers while words elude him.

Funny, how a liar like him can run out of words sometimes.

“What’s the matter with you? Haki training too hard, all of a sudden? Did Lucky Roux shoot you in the ass like he did with your dad last year?”

And okay, that is a story Usopp needs to ask about next time, because that is blackmail worthy material right there, and Shanks is clearly eager to hand it to him on a silver platter. Still, it will have to wait.

“Uh,” says Usopp, and takes a deep breath while scrunching his eyes shut. He lowers his head, hands on his knees and back rigid as he bows and spills out what he knows is blasphemy in his captain’s mind. “Have you ever seen the One Piece?!”

The candle on Shanks’ desk flickers, making Usopp’s eyelids go from black, to orange, to black again. He feels sick.

He shouldn’t have asked. He shouldn’t have asked–

“Look at me. Usopp, look at me.” Shanks’ voice is so gentle it rips into Usopp’s chest, and he dares a peek with one eye only. His temporary captain, for all that he is an Emperor, looks at Usopp with the gaze of an adult assessing how much truth a child can handle.

“I have never seen it,” he says.

Shanks pulls his chair closer - only to abandon it a second later to get up. He takes a seat on the bed next to Usopp, the mattress dipping under the man’s weight. “While I sailed with Roger, I didn’t go to that final island. Buggy got sick, so I stayed behind to take care of him. Can you imagine? Buggy was so excited, and he couldn’t go because he caught a cold! Dahaha!”

Why is Shanks laughing?

“Wha-wha-what do you mean?! You don’t know if it’s even real! What if your captain just made it up–”

“Usopp!”

He flinches. Not because Shanks is angry, but because the disappointment is so tangible that it cloys the air between them.

“Sorry…”

Shanks leans back on one hand, blowing a strand of red hair from his face. “It’s alright to have doubts. But never once have I thought my captain lied about going to that final island. Not once have I ever doubted that the One Piece is real.”

And he sounds sure. He sounds so sure that Usopp wants to vomit for even insinuating–

“I know it’s there, just as I know that the sun shines and that humans need air. I know Luffy is aware of it, too. I know you aren’t doubting your captain, so tell me, what is this really about, kiddo?”

The thing is, Usopp isn’t doubting Luffy.

He is doubting himself.

“Luffy is going to be the Pirate King,” says Usopp, because just as the sun shines and that humans need air, this he knows for a fact. “But what am I doing? How can I ever be part of the Pirate King’s crew when I can’t even–”

Can’t control observation Haki. Can’t hit all the targets. Can’t, can’t, can’t.

There is a warm, broad hand on his shoulder, and when Usopp turns, it is to be greeted by Shanks’ smile. “It’s fine to doubt yourself from time to time. But when you do, think about the fact that Luffy chose you. Doubt yourself if you must, but never doubt his belief in you.”

Luffy, his captain who has chosen him twice over.

He can’t stem the tears, because real men are allowed to cry, and so Usopp cries. Big, heaving, ugly sobs, right there on his uncle’s bed and dripping into sheets that will need washing after all the snot and salty water stops leaking from his eyes.

He is so, so happy to finally be with his dad, but more than anything, Usopp wants to go home to his family. He wants Luffy to punch him in the shoulder when he gets caught up in his own head. He wants Zoro to drag him into a sparring match he never asked for when all he can think about is how he isn’t good enough.

Here on the Red Force, Usopp has his dad and his uncle and so many other great people, but all he wants is his brothers.

***

“Oi, oi, oi, what are you thinking? I’m just going back to the Sunny - there’s no need to get all sentimental on me! I’m a brave warrior of the sea now, I don’t need some going away present!” Usopp is shaking, and it is not exactly a new feeling. But shaking from excitement? From the gift box he is clutching close to his chest? Yeah, that one is new.

They have gathered in a bar on Sabaody owned by some old guy named Ray, waiting for the rest of the Straw Hat pirates to gather once more, and all of Usopp’s uncles are in varying stages of drunkenness despite the early morning hour. The fact that they never went to bed last night probably helped.

Having spent more than a year on the Red Force, Usopp has come to the firm conclusion that most of his uncles are just roaring drunks that shouldn’t be applauded for their ability to hold their liquor.

The floor is sticky underneath his boots, and the air is thick with Benn’s continuous chain smoking (“Our nephew is leaving the nest, Shanks, let me stress smoke if I want to.”). Usopp’s eyes sting just a little and no, uncle Roux, it’s just from the smoke, okay?!

“Come on, come on, open it!” His dad wraps an arm around Usopp’s shoulder, and the sniper tears into the paper. The box is small, and without the wrapping paper, it looks even smaller than he first assumed. “Go on, I think you’ll like it.”

Honestly, there isn’t anything that his dad and uncles can give him that he wouldn’t be glad to have. Whether it be an empty gum wrapper or a crown of gold, Usopp will cherish it simply because of who it came from.

It’s a wooden chest, about the size of a closed fist, and Usopp makes a motion to shake it for the fun of it. Benn chokes on an exhale of smoke. “Hey, hey, don’t shake it, kiddo!”

“Huh?” What sort of gift can’t be shaken when it’s this size? It is not like it is a prized bottle of sake or a glass trinket. Or well, if it was, it’s most likely in pieces by now. Whoops.

Shanks laughs, that loud, drunken stupor of a snort that might have choked a lesser man. He raises his hand, fingers curled around a bottle of high proof whiskey that Usopp is pretty certain they can’t afford with the current state of the Red Force’s treasury. “Three cheers for our boy - off he goes to become a pirate!”

“I’m already a pirate!”

“Cheers!” Shanks clinks his bottle on Lucky Roux’s head and the man takes a wild stumble back to regain his balance. Usopp’s dad is laughing in his ear and slapping his knee.

Sighing, Benn gestures to the box. “Open it before we get kicked out.”

The lid pops off easily enough, and Usopp’s breath catches. The inside is lined with blue silk so deep it mirrors the waters of the Grand Line. Nestled there like three, priceless artifacts, sits three bullets of shaped seastone.

“We all chipped in!” Calls Shanks, throwing his arm around Usopp’s waist and pulling him into a sideways hug, liquor spilling down the front of the sniper’s shirt and his dad’s arm.

“Oh, come on, boss, that was uncalled for!”

Usopp sniffles and leans into the hug, because seas, what the f*ck.

(Now the sorry state of their treasury makes sense.)

Seastone bullets–

It’s a cruel form of torture.

It’s a weapon that only the worst of the worst would inflict upon their enemy, and Usopp can’t see himself using them any time soon, but… somewhere, Luffy and Zoro had outlived the rest of them. Between his captain’s explanation of an alternative timeline and blood and death, Usopp knows that one day, someone will come along who deserves a seastone bullet to the head. The sniper will be damned if he isn’t the one pulling the trigger.

He won’t miss ever again.

Usopp might not always believe in himself, but maybe he doesn’t have to. His dad believes in him. The Red-Hair pirates do. His uncle, an Emperor, does too.

But out of all of the people, it’s Luffy’s unshakeable belief in Usopp that warms his chest the most.

Chapter 4: Sanji - The Basting Stitch

Chapter Text

Sanji isn’t fond of their new moss-head.

It is nothing personal. Well, kind of.

It’s just– the Straw Hats are a well seasoned dish, and any good chef knows when to stop adding more spices, lest he ruin the flavor of his masterpiece. The Straw Hats are egg fried rice, and adding the swordsman to the wok is a bit like emptying an entire bottle of soy sauce.

Salty.

Unnecessary.

(He knows it is not up to him. He knows, okay? The decision is entirely Luffy’s to make, and judging by how buddy-buddy their captain is with this so-called first mate, that decision was made long ago. Longer ago than Sanji, probably, if he has to hazard a guess.)

“Oi, cook, more sake!” The swordsman slams his mug down on the countertop that he just cleaned, and spills leftover alcohol droplets all over it.

Sanji immediately aims a kick at his head. “Go get it yourself, you piece of sh*t! I just cleaned that!”

Moss-head dodges, because urgh, of course he does.

Luffy, seated at the head of their dinner table, chews on another drumstick and laughs. Had Sanji been on any other crew, trying to dropkick your ‘technically’ superior would most likely have gotten you keelhauled.

On the Thousand Sunny, with the future Pirate King as their captain, all it gets you is a snicker and a punch in the head from Nami to knock it off you two!

Sanji still doesn’t like Zoro, but anyone who can make their captain smile like that, well…

The stupid moss-head is growing on him.

***

So, the thing about moss is that it is tougher than it looks. Moss also has a tendency to grow in places that it really shouldn’t thrive at all. Moss, as Sanji is about to learn, is also capable of giving him an ulcer before the age of thirty.

Turning to their captain, the swordsman co*cks his head at him and jabs a thumb in Sanji’s general direction. “Hey, do you mind if I take the sh*tty cook on a trip?”

And Sanji’s captain; his stupid, amazing, foolish captain, merely grins that grin of his that is rooted in unconditional love for his friends and family– Sanji thinks he might die a little inside, because he can’t remember having family look at him with that much love, and not a speck of disappointment in sight.

(Is this what having brothers should feel like?)

“Where are you gonna’ go?” Luffy bounces over to them, decreasing the distance between him and Zoro until the rubber man is hanging off the swordsman’s neck in a hug that should be debilitating.

“I was thinking of North Blue.”

Ah.

No.

Absolutely f*cking not.

(Does he know about Germa?)

“Okay,” says Luffy. “Take care!”

Sanji is going to have a stroke. Has anyone checked if Chopper is around? His heart is certainly beating loud enough for it to potentially be a stroke in progress, isn’t it?

(Or maybe it is the sound of his own breathing, stuck behind a helmet made of metal, that fills his ears. He can’t tell the difference.)

“Oi, cook - pack a bag, we’ll take Mini Merry.”

Biting his cigarette in half and letting ash dump onto the deck, Sanji whirls on the swordsman with panic clawing at his throat. “If you think I will ever, willingly, subject myself to your company for hours on end–”

***

They end up taking Mini Merry.

And no, Sanji did not come willingly.

(Zoro dragged him onboard, hissing and spitting and motherf*cking clawing, until Luffy’s damn laugh was out of hearing distance.)

“Do you at least have any idea how we’re going to get there?” Sanji bites into an apple, the crunch of it oddly melodic to his ears. The green skin of the fruit being ground to absolute dust between his molars does something nice for his blood pressure, too, unlike the other green menace he is currently staring down.

Zoro snorts. “I called up Sabo and got some information. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“Alright,” says Sanji, spitting out an apple seed that lands squarely on Zoro’s forehead, just because he can. “But do you know how to get there?”

“…”

Sanji is going to drown himself.

***

Sanji doesn’t drown himself.

(He wishes he did, as he stares at the gates of Germa Kingdom. Every breath is short and his knees are shaking like they haven’t done in years. He isn’t ready. He isn’t ready–)

Zoro throws down Merry’s anchor, pats her wooden railing and climbs out. “Come on,” he says, not even sparing a glance in Sanji’s direction. “I have a few ideas of some sh*t we can pull.”

“What the Hell do you mean sh*t we can pull?!”

He is catching up with Zoro before he can think about it, a furious pounding in his skull. Whether it is from this whole… situation, or if it’s merely because the swordsman is that infuriating, he can’t tell.

Zoro grins, sharp and with one hand on his swords. If Sanji didn’t know better, he’d say the swordsman is buzzing. Spoiling for a fight, even. Huh, how weird.

“Wanna’ sneak into Vinsmoke Judge’s stupid castle and trash the place?”

He shouldn’t say yes.

Every part of him should be screaming for him to leave, leave, leave, and yet… “f*ck it,” says Sanji, and lights a cigarette. It takes him three flicks of his lighter for his hands to stop shaking. The smoke in his lungs is familiar with every inhale, and surprisingly, the directionally challenged, alcoholic swordsman at his side feels familiar too.

“Let’s go.” He says it like the man was always meant to have Sanji’s back.

They venture deeper into Germa territory.

Sanji keeps one hand on Zoro’s robes, tugging him back whenever he tries to wander off in what is clearly the opposite direction of the Vinsmoke mansion. It is stupid, and they yell and fight and scream at each other to the point where they really should have gotten caught.

They aren’t.

(No one would be stupid enough to invade a military kingdom like Germa, right? A myth to most, and a scary tale for children in the North.)

The trip is twice as long as it should have been - Sanji should know, he ran from bullies and dogs and his dad for years on that very same road - but then they stand in front of what used to be Sanji’s prison of a home, and all he can think is oh.

It had always felt so big, when he was a child. Like an impossible, impenetrable fortress with no chance of escape.

But–

But looking at it now; the brick just a shade darker from wind and rain, the flowers still cut to the same height and yet barely reaching his waist, the paint chipped here and there - it is rundown and sad and Sanji is okay with it.

So he kicks down a rosebush and throws his cigarette in a patch of wilting hydrangeas. “That’ll keep them occupied for a little while,” he says, when Zoro merely lifts an eyebrow as flames start licking and spitting at the dry flower bed. “Come along, moss-head, we’ll go ‘round the back.”

Zoro doesn’t question how he knows where the back is.

Sanji doesn’t question how Zoro knows about his family, either.

They kick down the door and Sanji proceeds to kick down a golden vase, shattering it into a million pieces. He tears down tapestries, artwork, suits of armor, and Zoro rips up carpets and slices curtains.

It feels great, and Sanji has no intention of holding back the laughter that is swelling in chest. It comes out in a loud, disbelieving burst that nearly chokes him. Zoro smiles too. That feral, toothy grin of his that Sanji has come to learn means trouble.

Well, trouble for the Vinsmokes at the moment, so he can’t complain.

“This way,” he co*cks his head towards the room where he knows Judge used to collect his spoils of war, and lo and behold, it’s still there. Shields, weapons, paintings from countries that no longer exists, jewelry of dead Kings and Queens and–

Zoro whistles, eye blinking at the sheer amount of treasure stuffed into the room. “Should probably grab some of that for the witch,” he says, as Wado cuts a pearly, decorative shield in two.

There is already a pile of gold and diamonds and priceless gems being gathered at his feet and Sanji hisses back, “Nami-swan isn’t a witch!”

The swordsman rolls his eye and huffs, swords returning to their destructive path.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A voice booms, and Sanji’s heart drops out of his chest and through the floor - all the way down to the cells deep below. His nose tickles with a smell that he knows isn’t present in this room; there is no mold, no wet mice and stale bread up here. No metal grating on his mouth, and no hair slick with sweat and grime.

Vinsmoke Judge enters the room like a furious storm, and Sanji can’t breathe.

The swordsman (stupid, foolish, brave, amazing) co*cks his head at Vinsmoke Judge as though the man doesn’t tower over him, and glares up. “What does it look like? We’re trashing the place.”

The man spares Zoro only a brief glance, jaw gritting and then he sets his gaze on Sanji. He hasn’t felt a pressure this intense since he was a child, but then the chef looks at Zoro - the first mate of their crew, planting himself firmly between Sanji and Vinsmoke Judge with a growl so fierce he might as well have been an animal in human skin.

(His own skin buzzes something fierce, each light breeze like fire licking at his nerves and something in his chest loosens. Zoro’s squared shoulders and drawn swords knock over the part of him that has always been Vinsmoke and tosses it to the sea. Because he is sh*tty cook and Sanji, more meat! and he is a Straw Hat. He doesn’t belong to them, but he belongs with them, and that is all he has ever needed.)

He huffs out a puff of smoke and raises one swirly eyebrow at Vinsmoke Judge.

“Like he said, we’re trashing the place,” says Sanji, as though it needs a second clarification. “And looting it.” Then he scoops up what he can hold of diamonds and pearls and pure gold, and takes off with a laughing Zoro at his heel.

He runs straight past the man who he once called father and looks back, seeing only a stranger.

So Sanji turns around and does what Zeff, his dad, taught him. He sends a flying, flaming, Haki infused kick straight to Vinsmoke Judge’s face and smiles when that awful, golden helmet of his bends and creaks and snaps under his power.

They leave a twitching Vinsmoke Judge on the floor of his trashed trophy room, and Black Leg Sanji of the Straw Hat pirates has never been happier.

***

In hindsight, letting Zoro take the lead when trying to get out of the castle was a stupid idea. Downright moronic, actually, thinks Sanji as he stands in what is apparently a room full of clones and Ichiji, Niji and Yonji stare back at them from a control panel.

“What the–”

“Onigiri!” Zoro slashes through three rows of clone containment tubes, and the resounding alarm is loud and blaring and just the right amount of distracting. Smoke fills the room, and Sanji is more than ready to turn his back on the people dressed as though a rainbow barfed on them individually. Except, Zoro lingers even as the Vinsmoke siblings try to contain the leak of toxic clone fluid spilling out on the floor.

“What are you waiting for, dammit, come on already!” His hands are still full of diamonds and gold - and really, they should find a bag or something - and as much as he wants to kick in some teeth, escaping seems like it should be their priority at the moment.

Zoro runs inside, and Sanji grabs an awful tapestry of Judge and his children from the wall. He wraps it around their bounty, throws it over his shoulder, before opening his mouth for a yell. Three screams ring out, and neither belong to the swordsman.

“Oi, if you’re not back in the next five seconds, I’m leaving without you!”

Those appear to be the magic words as Zoro runs out of the smoke, wisps of it clinging to his hair and clothing.

The swordsman pockets two things as they take off, and at this point Sanji is afraid to ask just why he would risk their reckless escape for what appears to be a black can with the number three on it, and a signed copy of Sora that he stuffs into his robe.

Who knows what the mind of a drunk swordsman is like on a good day?

“When we get back, I need you to sign the comic.”

Sanji splutters, because what?!

Maybe Zoro got brain damage from breathing in that clone fluid. Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? On a scale from one to ten, how mad would Luffy get if he left their first mate behind?

***

A single rose stalk has survived their earlier thrashing of the garden, and Sanji grabs it with his bare hands. He curls his fingers around the stem of it, fingers carefully nudged around the thorns.

They should run.

They should leave, now that Judge and his kids know they are here and causing havoc.

But he can’t.

His feet take him down a familiar path, and Zoro falls into step beside him.

The swordsman’s eye, ever so vigilant, is on every flickering shadow and he stays quiet. Which is, for once, a good thing, because Sanji isn’t quite sure he can talk without crying.

The cemetery looks the same.

Plaques for fallen and unnamed soldiers, and a singular, overgrown headstone with a familiar name etched into it.

“Hey mom,” says Sanji. “I wish I could have brought you something to eat, but this trip wasn’t exactly planned. I swear I’ve gotten a lot better at cooking since the last time I saw you.” The rose is a fresh bloom of color in a lifeless landscape, and his chest aches at the state of her last resting place. (Judge never cared about her either, did he?)

Zoro plops down on the ground, legs folded and head bowed in a greeting.

“Thanks,” the swordsman says, forehead pressed against the ground. When he looks up at the headstone, there is a smear of grass on his skin, and Sanji can’t stop smiling. “For giving us the sh*tty cook. Our captain is stupidly fond of him, and for some reason, I guess I am too. His food ain’t bad either.”

It is such a small thing, and yet, Sanji’s cheeks are flushing at the praise.

And then Zoro’s head whips around, and Sanji stares too.

Because standing there, out of breath and a whole inch taller than himself, is Reiju.

His sister.

“What are you doing here?!” Is she angry? She sure sounds like it, with a face as splotchy red as a wine stained tablecloth.

So Sanji dusts off his pants, and crosses the five, four, three steps between them and draws her into a hug so tight he can hear the air leave her lungs in a sharp exhale against his ear. She is warm. So, so warm, and Sanji has never stopped thinking about the one sibling who did her best to at least try and help him.

Help him leave this hellhole behind.

And suddenly, with watery eyes and a hitch in his breath, all he can think about is those warm days on the Going Merry. The days spent slaving over a picnic that is eaten on the Thousand Sunny’s grassy deck, surrounded by laughter and family and Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Chopper, Robin, Franky, Brook–

None of that would have happened, if not for his sister.

“The ocean is wide,” says Sanji. “And I was able to meet kind people.”

He feigns ignorance when his own shoulder grows wet and Reiju clings to him, just as tightly as he clings to her. Thank you, he doesn’t say, because that has never been who they are as siblings, and he doesn’t know how to start now.

But then he blinks, and another few drops of tears fall down his face, and through the blurriness, Zoro is smiling at them both. Maybe, just maybe, today is the day he does start.

He keeps his eyes on Zoro - pins the swordsman with a gaze so intensely happy and before he can think better of it, says, “Thank you,” out loud. It is meant for Reiju, but a part of him, the child that had still been stuck in a prison and a metal helmet, says it for the swordsman.

***

Poor Mini Merry is nearly tipping over with the pile of treasure they drop on it.

He waves goodbye to Reiju, and when she finally disappears out of sight and Sanji drops his hand into his lap, he wonders why she didn’t come with them. (He would gladly trade all of the gold in this boat if it meant she would leave too. She doesn’t this time, but Sanji hopes that one day she will take that final step and free herself like she freed him. She deserves to be happy, too.)

The last cigarette left in the packet comes out slightly charred, but when he lights it, it tastes oddly of all the best desserts he has ever made, rolled into one. They sit in silence, drifting, and Sanji has long given up hope of Zoro navigating them anywhere.

They will make their way back to the Sunny in due time.

He taps his cigarette against the railing, dumping a bit of ash into the gurgling sea below them.

Zoro, for all that they have just left behind a burning kingdom of assassins and assholes, is already nodding off in the corner against a bag of gold and pearls. He isn’t snoring yet, and Sanji knows that if he doesn’t ask now, he never will.

“How did you know?”

About my family. About what they did to me. About my mom.

Grunting, Zoro blinks himself awake from his easy slumber and barely stifles a yawn.

“What do you mean?” The swordsman crosses his arms and wiggles a bit in his spot, pillowing his head on the bag while keeping his one eye trained on Sanji. It is unnerving, having that piercing gaze directed at himself.

Clicking his tongue, Sanji frowns at him. “You know what I mean, asshat.”

Because Zoro does know. Sanji can see it in the way he stiffens and his fingers clutch at the skin of his arms. A minute twitch, so fast that he might have missed it if they hadn’t been sitting as close as they are.

The swordsman is too proud to ask him to leave it alone, and Sanji is too stubborn to even consider giving in at the first sight of Zoro being uncomfortable. If his ass gets dragged all the way to North Blue on a damn roadtrip to see his ex-family, then Zoro can handle this conversation, whatever it is.

Silence hangs in the air between them.

Sanji’s cigarette is nearly through, and still they are quiet.

“You told us about them. Kind of, I guess.” He says with a shrug.

“Hm?”

“Your family, you deaf cook. You told us about them.”

Sanji is pretty f*cking sure he didn’t, so he tells Zoro just that, “I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I suddenly spilled the beans about that sh*t. And I have no recollection of doing that.”

Zoro scoffs. “Of course you don’t. You told us in the other timeline - or, well, Big Mom forced you to marry one of her daughters and Luffy had to drag you back kicking and screaming because you couldn’t wrap your head around the fact that we all care about–”

Sanji raises a hand and the swordsman shuts up. “I’m sorry.” He says, and runs a hand through his hair. “Did you just say other timeline? As in there have been several?!”

“Relax, sh*tty cook. Pretty sure there’s only been one other, at least for me and Luffy.”

Ex-family bullsh*t aside, what the f*ck, Zoro?!

“How come you remember and I don’t? If you somehow - and I can’t believe I’m saying this - time traveled, then why don’t I remember?”

Zoro pales and he averts his eyes. The tick in his jaw is back, and he grits his teeth so hard that Sanji is just a tiny smidge worried he will have to put him on a liquid diet once they get back to the Sunny.

“Everyone else died.”

There are no details, no immediate follow up. What is there to expound on?

f*ck. f*ck.

(He is their chef, he’s meant to look after them too, isn’t he?

How did he fail his family this badly?)

“Well, then tell me how I can stop it from happening again.” There has to be a way to prevent it. There has to be. And because Sanji is Sanji and Zoro is Zoro, the blonde co*cks an eyebrow at him. “I bet my bounty was higher than yours, wasn’t it?”

“Ha. Ha.” Zoro grits out, pointing at his closed mouth. “Do you see me laughing, sh*tty cook? You’re a riot.”

And then Sanji is kicking him in the shin, because that’s how they have always been, and if he is going to force Zoro to tell him all the nitty gritty details of their his own violent demise, then they might as well start it with a fight, just like they always do.

(Later, when they are both out of breath and bleeding into Mini Merry’s pristine deck, Sanji keeps a hand on Zoro’s shoulder and the moss-head keeps a foot hooked around his ankle. Neither make any motion to move. Sanji takes another drag of his cigarette stub, the ash tickling his chin as it falls, and then Zoro drops another bombshell that has Sanji coughing and sputtering, because what the fu–

“You and Luffy are together together?!”

Zoro huffs, turning his head and co*cking an eyebrow.

“You’re pretty dense, aren’t you?”

sh*t, that hurts! The goddamn moss-head finding him dense - him, of all people?!

The stupid algae can’t even find his own way out of a shoebox on a good day!)

***

When they set foot on the Sunny again, it is not the treasure that Nami makes a wild sprint for. She clutches Sanji tight and he has to take a moment to wrap his head around the fact that she is hugging him.

“If you ever leave for that long again, I will personally murder you in your sleep and feed you to the nearest sea king, is that understood?!”

He hugs her back - because who wouldn’t - and doesn’t fight the smile on his lips. “Did you miss me, Nami-swan?” His hands wander just a bit lower, and then she punches him in the head with a wild screech.

“No! But if I ever have to eat Luffy’s cooking again, I will hold you liable for any and all damages that it incurs!”

The mere thought of Luffy in his kitchen - alone and unsupervised - is horrifying enough.

His captain is standing off to the side and whistling with his hands folded at the back of his head. He rocks back and forth on his heels, and laughs when Sanji finally manages to pin him with a glare.

“Welcome home, Sanji!” He laughs, slamming into the chef’s side with far too much force.

I missed you, his hands say as they skim over Sanji’s suit, patting him down for any injuries. He doesn’t draw back until Sanji pats him on the head. “Thanks, captain. How about I go ahead and make us some lunch?”

Luffy lets out a whoop, arms thrown high in the air, and maybe–

Maybe if Zoro hadn’t told him that they had all died and left them behind, Sanji wouldn’t have noticed.

Would never have seen the way Luffy’s arms give miniscule trembles, or the way his smile is the tiniest bit wobbly. Even with his eyes closed and a wide grin, Luffy’s gaze is somehow still on all of his crew. Assessing. Checking. Alive? Healthy? Happy?

Even with what little observation Haki that Sanji has, he pushes back and tangles his Haki with Luffy’s. Alive. Healthy. Happy. Because he is all of those things, isn’t he?

Luffy looks at him, really looks at him, and Sanji smiles as wide as he can.

“Let’s get some food in you before you eat Chopper.”

The reindeer squawks, but Luffy just laughs until he falls to the floor, wheezing, his stomach growling so loud that the chef might go deaf.

Seas, Sanji will protect these people with all that he has.

He will protect them, and he will never, ever let his captain or their first mate have to go through that again and maybe…

Maybe he should ask Chopper for some medical lessons - it can’t be that different from cooking, can it?

***

Zoro approaches him after dinner, dumb comic tucked under his arm.

“Sign it,” he says. “We can use it for bribery later.”

Sanji kicks him out and threatens to burn the damn thing on the stove. He doesn’t, but only because he wants to know what is going to come of it.

And yes, he signs it as Stealth Black instead of Sanji before he tucks it inside Zoro’s pillow case later that night, shushing his giggling captain as he is caught in the act.

***

He finds Chopper in the infirmary two days later, sorting out herbs and weighing bundles on a scale. His small hoof clutches at a pen, nose frowning as he labels and marks and puts away.

It’s like watching himself prep ingredients.

Knocking on the door, Sanji steps inside and Chopper whirls around on his swivel chair. “Sanji?” Asks the deer, one ear flicking at a pesky fly. “Is something wrong? Did you pull a muscle? Ah, I have something for that!”

Before he can confirm or deny, the reindeer is already rifling through his drawers, quick as a bee. “Where is it?” He grumbles. “I left it in the third drawer to the left, I know I did!”

Sanji pats his head, palm against soft fur, and the chef wishes he had a smoke right now. “I didn’t pull a muscle Chopper, don’t worry. But I do have a question, if that’s alright. Or I guess you might call it a request.”

There is a piece of lint stuck in his pocket, and Sanji flicks at it with his fingers. (Zoro’s eyes that day on the Mini Merry had been… asking should be easy after that, so why isn’t it?)

The reindeer co*cks his head, blue nose scrunching and it’s so easy to forget that he is only fifteen. Their doctor is a literal child. A child who died on his watch.

“I– sorry, how do I put this… Could you teach me some basic medicine? First aid and stuff.” He jerks out his hand, the lint getting caught in a torn nail. “Just enough to maybe help you out if anything should happen. I wouldn’t want to take over, but it just looks really similar to cooking, and it would be awful if something happened to you–”

“Is something gonna’ happen, Sanji?!” Shrieks Chopper, jumping out of his chair and tugging at Sanji’s shirt so hard that his hooves nicks off a button. It falls to the floor with a hollow click.

Sanji tugs the reindeer close. “No! No, Chopper, nothing is gonna’ happen to us, okay? I just figured having only one person capable of basic first aid on this boat is probably a bad idea - Zoro might stab himself and Luffy could be choking on a fishbone, and I’d rather there be two of us to deal with those idiots!”

“Oh!” Chopper pulls his head back from where his antlers had been digging into Sanji’s ribs, and breathing suddenly gets a lot easier. “That would actually be really helpful!”

***

Sanji spends three evenings a week at the infirmary, and Chopper lets him practice stitches and proper hygiene protocol whenever Franky accidentally hits himself a bit too hard with a hammer on skin, or when Nami gets a bit scraped up from all the roughhousing training. It goes beyond basic first aid, but the reindeer doesn’t call him out on it.

Chopper guides him through dislocated shoulders and wrapping broken bones, and Sanji improves.

One afternoon, the reindeer teaches him that moss can have medicinal properties. In certain areas of the world, they are used as a cure for coughs. Which is a bit funny, Sanji has to admit, as he sits under the shade of a mikan tree with a sleepy doctor in his lap.

Ever since he left Germa behind all those years ago, there has always been a constant niggling in the back of his throat. It is the reason why he started smoking, and yet, all that nicotine did little to relieve the cough that refused to leave him.

He sneaks a glance at Zoro, who is snoring just a few trees further down.

Since they returned from their trip, Sanji hasn’t coughed once.

Moss, apparently, is good for a few things.

***

Whenever the silly swordsman pulls a muscle or Luffy says that his ribs aren’t broken, just bruised, both Sanji and Chopper yell and hiss until moron #1 and moron #2 sit down and let them treat them.

And if someone says that he is too delicate when wrapping those two in bandages, then they have a kick coming.

Sanji isn’t soft.

He’s grateful.

There is a difference there. Probably.

Chapter 5: Franky - The Buttonhole Stitch

Chapter Text

Franky knows something is off.

What exactly it is, well, that remains to be seen, but whatever it is, it feels off. Not in the way that most things feel off around the Straw Hats – those typically involve a lot more bloodshed and toppled governments, but there is something nagging the back of Franky’s mind and he can’t damn well concentrate.

How did Zoro know?

How did he know that the floorboard three steps to the left of Luffy’s their hammock squeaks when the weather turns colder? How did he know that Luffy had insisted that the set of weightlifting equipment be installed in the crow’s nest, of all places? And why– why did Zoro not allow Franky to give him the damn tour?

(He is totally allowed to show off his proudest achievement, right? Right?! The Thousand Sunny deserves to have every pirate and person ogling her beautiful hull and the detailing he did inside. And Zoro told him that he didn’t need a tour.)

The whole thing is preposterous, and Franky can’t let it go, and worst of all—

Zoro avoids him.

Whenever he tries to rope the younger man into a quick tour or a cool contraption that he has made, Zoro gives him a brief glance and a huh, neat, before he slinks off to train or nap or drink or whatever the man does when he actively tries to avoid Franky people.

Because their first mate is avoiding him, thank you very much.

And it ain’t all that super, bro.

***

In the end, he hunts down Luffy to talk, because Zoro still won’t do it.

He tried, okay? But as soon as he opens his mouth and the conversation shifts even remotely in a direction that might give Franky some answers, the swordsman is off with a nap, or a training session, or a the sails need rigging.

It’s frustrating, because they are all legitimate reasons for Zoro to go.

A nap is deserved after those night shifts (and the increasing night terrors that they don’t talk about either). A training session means that whoever is on the receiving end of Zoro’s intensity is going to be crawling instead of walking in the morning, and Franky ain’t up for that sh*t. The sails do need rigging, too, or Nami will skin all of them alive.

Actually, Franky might do it first. The Thousand Sunny deserves only the best treatment, after all and–

Yeah, Zoro is still avoiding him.

But Luffy isn’t.

So Franky grabs his captain between midday snack one and midday snack two, dragging the rubbery boy into his workshop.

“What’s up, Franky?” Luffy bounds over to a barrel of cola, climbing on top of it. His eyes take in every invention like he has never seen them before.

“Why does Zoro avoid me?”

Luffy picks at his nails, then he brings his hand to his mouth and chews on it for a second. “Zoro’s just a little embarrassed, because he can’t act like he used to. He keeps wanting to talk to you about stuff that hasn’t happened yet. It’s pretty funny, shishishi!”

What?

“What?” Did he just say stuff that hasn’t happened yet?

Nodding, Luffy swings his feet back and forth. “Mhm,” he hums. “That’s probably it. All the time travel stuff can get a bit confusing at times, but if telling you means that Zoro will stop being dumb about it, then I guess I can tell you.”

Time travel? Hold on– “Hey, hey, captain, what the heck are you going on about? Time travel, as in with a machine or?”

But then Luffy talks and talks, about war and death and dead nakama and a pain so deep neither captain nor first mate could breathe through the grief of it and…

His captain smiles through it all, like sharing their story doesn’t hurt. Like each death spoken is chased away by the knowledge that they are all alive, currently.

Seas, this is so not super.

“Then Zoro went ahead, and that’s how he knew to leave the wreath for Merry!”

Wait… If Zoro left the wreath in Water Seven before the rest of the Straw Hats got there, then– Zoro was the one who stole one of his ships and left a crate of cola on his doorstep, isn’t he?

Oh, that idiot.

Franky is going to choke him to death with the tightest hug imaginable, and then he is going to punch him in the head for not telling him this stuff himself. (Time travel or not, Zoro can lean on him. He’s made of steel, after all!)

***

In the middle of dinner, over shared plates and boisterous laughter bordering on manic glee, Franky makes his decision.

Luffy chucks a piece of bread at Chopper that gets stuck on his antler, and the doctor makes a high-pitched shriek, growing three times his size and puffing himself up like an extra furry gorilla before he leaps over the table to shove the same piece of bread down a snickering Luffy’s throat.

Flushed and red, Sanji screams at them. Snorting into their drinks, Nami and Zoro are both gasping for air and trying to breathe through the inhaled beer with foamy mustaches on their faces. It falls quiet for a second, and Sanji slumps back in his chair until Brook grabs his own piece of bread and hurls it straight in the chef’s face with a yohohoho!

The cycle starts all over again, and Franky raises his glass of cola from the table before it can fall victim to the dinner routine of the Straw Hat pirates. It’s dumb and stupid and all kinds of perfect.

“Hey Luffy,” he says, his voice barely reaching over the din of noise. “Would you mind if I went ahead to Fish-Man Island?”

Chopper pauses, one hoof in a glass of apricot jam and a dollop of it smeared all over his furry cheeks. “Franky?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I realized that I’ve never actually met my Uncle - Tom’s brother, I mean. It’d be really super if I could spend some time with him before we take on the rest of the Grand Line.” His chest is burning, a bit of uncomfortable pressure from the carbon dioxide coursing through his system. Yeah, it’s totally just from the carbon dioxide, no need to worry about it.

His captain is quiet. Those wide, brown eyes blink slowly, and it is only then that the cyborg notes that Luffy’s pinky finger is somehow also stuck in the same jam jar as Chopper’s hoof.

It’s a wonder Sanji hasn’t kicked them both off the table yet.

“Sure, Franky! If you want to, I won’t stop you,” Luffy says with a smile, but Franky knows his captain. Knows that the man would never stop him from leaving, but that leaving will also hurt in a way that none of them can help him heal from.

The glass of jam clatters to the table with a thump.

Franky hastily puts down his glass of cola before he gets an armful of tiny reindeer flung at him. “But Franky–!” Cries Chopper, speech slurred through a stuffy nose and his shirt is already drenched in tears. Tiny hooves tug at Franky and he can’t help but smile, patting the hat nestled between a set of antlers.

The mood is different now.

No more food fights, no more belly deep laughter that echoes in the room.

Tomorrow there will be one less Straw Hat at the table, and one less mouth to feed. No one to drink all the cola in the door of the fridge. (Wow, who’d have thought saying it out loud would make it hurt so much more than the thought of leaving?)

Tomorrow is going to suck.

Licking the jam off his fingers, Luffy keeps his eyes on his hand and Franky finds himself speaking before he can help himself, clutching a crying Chopper a tad too tight to be comfortable. “If you need me, I’ll only be a call away, captain. I’ll get a Den Den Mushi set up as soon as possible, so you better call, do you hear me? Any call from my captain is always super!”

(The burning in his chest isn’t carbon dioxide, because his eyes are burning now too.)

Luffy picks up a sandwich – three layers of ham and four slices of cheese with an extra crispy crust, and says; “I know, shishishi! Franky always makes time for us.” And then he stuffs the entire thing in his mouth and Zoro raises his glass for a cheer.

No one mentions the tears, because they are all crying anyway.

***

Stowing away on a ship bound for the Sabaody Archipelago, Cyborg Franky spends two days in a storage cupboard. Squared away in a sequestered corner between a crate of dried beef and a hemp sack full of clothes that reek of fish guts. He passes the time chugging his leftover rations of cola and tinkering with his arms.

On the third day, the ship’s mast cracks straight down the middle during a lightning storm, the noise of it deafening even down below. Franky stumbles out of hiding and straight into a pack of headless chicken on the deck of what should have been a proper pirate vessel.

Oh boy.

Rookies.

“Ey!” He shouts, and watches fifty men swirl their heads in his direction. “Keep your heads on straight! Get me whatever metal sheets you have on hand, and start packing away those sails before they rip any further!”

They stare at him, all blinking and wide eyed and very clearly not comprehending that a stranger is standing at their helm and barking orders. Judging by the pompous hat, the captain is the guy curled up in a corner underneath the stairs (is he crying?!).

Franky will be lucky to make it to Sabaody alive.

Dammit, he should have taken Luffy up on that offer of a lift instead of hitching a ride.

Another smear of lightning crawls across the sky, and the men jump into action.

It takes Franky all of five minutes to reinforce the cracked mast and take the helm.

On the fourth day, Cyborg Franky eats dinner in the mess hall of the ship he has stowed away on, and gets a ride with a grateful crew all the way down to Fish-Man Island within the span of a week.

He oohs and ahs appropriately at the sea creatures peeking at the passing ship. He holds back a super until he lands with his feet in the sand of Fish-Man Island, relatively unscathed and waving goodbye to the crying crew of rookies.

Left by the docks on his lonesome, Franky stands there like a lost, flashing neon sign - a bag of tools slung over his shoulder and a small sack of clothing clutched in his hand.

(Hopefully the Thousand Sunny’s descend to Fish-Man Island will be just as smooth.)

Franky wanders for a bit, because how the heck is he supposed to find his uncle anyway? Sure, he’s got a name, and Tom and Kokoro talked about him sometimes, but that’s not much.

His feet take him through the roads of Fish-Man Island. The coral reefs are beautiful, with their blues and reds and the textures of it all is something that he can only strive to replicate one day.

A merman swims past him, floating on a… a bubble-like thing that Franky really, really wants to know the mechanics of. “Ey, excuse me! Can you point me in the direction of a guy named Den?”

The merman wiggles his eyebrows into a scowl and crosses his arms. “Uh,” he says, glancing at Franky’s small bag. “I know a lot of fishfolk called Den. Who you looking for?”

“Just one Den. Uh, had an older brother named Tom, so I guess he’s around, maybe, his late fifties or early sixties? Never really paid too much attention when dad talked about him - too busy tinkering in the junkyard.”

He really should have listened more.

The merman jerks a thumb in the direction of what looks like a genuine forest of trees under the sea, and Franky heads off with a jaunty wave and a thanks!

His fingers curl around the strap of his tool bag, metal gears whirring and clicking and–

The trees clear out into a sunny field full of colorful bubbles and there’s someone standing there, tall and broad and tinkering with a little boat. His tail swishes back and forth, nearly knocking over a bucket of bubbling liquid. A hand grabs a paintbrush, and he hums the same tune that Franky has heard Tom sing before, on those nights when he talked about a home far from Water Seven.

(Franky knows him. He knows him, even if they have never met before, because the hammer in the guy’s belt is the exact same make and model that Tom had.)

“Uncle Den?” Has his voice always been this high? Surely not, it’s got to be the nerves doing the chatting.

“Hm?” The paintbrush drops into the bucket, spitting rainbow bubbles up and into the air around them. The rim of his hat catches on one, and it bursts apart in a sprinkle on his nose that makes him sneeze. “Who’re you?”

“Uh, I’m Franky.” He says, and puts down his bag of tools. It thumps to the ground, and the sack of clothes follows right after. Words, words, words, come on. “I don’t know how much you know, but Tom took me in before he– before he died. Me an’ another kid. He was sort of our dad.”

Then the man, uncle Den, surges forward and gathers Franky in a crushing hug, with arms as big and strong as his dad’s. The cyborg sinks into it with the same aching relief that he had done when Tom had hugged him after Iceburg teased him for Battle Franky eight.

He hugs back because he can’t not hug back, that’s his uncle! And it’s… it’s right.

Everything about this feels right.

Den smiles into his shoulder, beard scratching along the lines of Franky’s wiring. “Kokoro told me about you two-don! I’m so glad to meet you, kiddo!”

***

Luffy calls him on the Den Den Mushi Franky sets up at his uncle’s house.

Morning or night or noon, Franky makes sure to be there on the other end to answer. Whether it is something as mundane as what Sanji is making for lunch, or that he won’t let Luffy taste test it for a fifth time - or when Luffy calls and the line stays quiet for too long.

Neither of them talk, but Franky makes sure to leave the receiver close enough on his pillow that it will pick up his snores. Maybe Luffy sticks around even after the cyborg has nodded off, on those few, rare night calls, or maybe Franky’s captain falls asleep right after.

He doesn’t ask, and Luffy doesn’t tell.

But it is okay, because Franky will answer that Den Den Mushi, come hell or high water.

(And sometimes, it isn’t Luffy that calls.

It’s Zoro.

And it feels like progress.)

***

Staying with uncle Den is a bit like healing.

Tom had stayed an open, gaping wound for so long that it never actually scarred. It just remained weeping and raw in the air since the day his dad had been killed. On Fish-Man Island, his routine starts and ends with good morning and good night and had a good day, kiddo-don?

Franky cooks breakfast and Den teaches him how to make the same watery, thin pancakes that Tom whipped up on the nights him and Iceburg couldn’t fall asleep. He buys him a coating brush and talks him through the application of it, and never once does he care about Franky being a pirate or having a bounty.

When he shows Den his wanted poster, all it gets him is a loud laugh and a smack on his back. “Tom would have loved it, hahaha!” And then he regales Franky with tale upon tale of all the sh*t that Tom and Den got up to in their youth, and Franky hasn’t laughed this hard at Tom’s expense in years.

Every day the wound feels more like a scab. It might not heal, but it’s no longer bleeding in a place that Franky can’t reach. If only his brother were here, too.

For the first two months at Fish-Man Island, Franky learns how to coat. “You’re a natural!” Den tells him once he finishes another ship - a vessel on the smaller side, with torn rigging and sails that might have once carried a Jolly Roger.

His fingers become nimbler; his designs are made with just as much wood as they end up metal. Some end up as aesthetic pieces that Den proudly displays in their house, and others can blow apart a mangrove tree with a bullet the size of a fingernail.

Everything is great until it isn’t.

The sea forest, or at least one corner of it, is the unofficial spot for Den and Franky to work at, and most of Fish-Man Island is aware of this by now. It isn’t that Franky isn’t keen on getting to know others, but that the cyborg is busy and, well, he’s working. Then their routine gets interrupted, and Franky stops hammering away at a new store sign that Papagu has requested of him. (With an inbuilt security system and enough gunpowder to pulverize a few thieves, just in case.)

The laughter coming from the edge of his and Den’s grove isn’t one he has heard before. Neither is the girl screaming alongside it.

Ten pirates - because that’s what they are, decked out in a Jolly Roger with a chicken, of all things - all laugh and cheer at a man who must be their captain, as he stumbles forward and drags a mermaid along the ground by her hair.

Her clothing is dirty and scuffed, and it doesn’t take more than a second for Franky to register that she didn’t come with them willingly. “Ey!” He calls, the hammer in his hand suddenly not big enough for what he wants to do to these assholes.

Den, too, has stopped tinkering at his own project, one hand hovering over a Den Den on his toolbelt. “Franky,” he whispers. “Don’t do anything stupid-don.”

While not a D. like his own captain, dumb has always been his middle name, whether he go by Cutty Flam or Franky, right alongside reckless and super. And someone dragging a nice girl by the roots of her curly hair, that is the opposite of super.

“Hah?” The guy in the ‘captain’ hat, an ugly piece of clothing that Papagu would burn if he ever saw it, snorts and spits out a glob of snot, right next to the whimpering mermaid. “The f*ck ya’ want?”

“Don’t you know this is Whitebeard’s territory? Causing trouble like that ain’t a good idea, bro.” Franky taps the handle of his hammer against his shoulder, the click, click of it just enough to draw attention away from Den and the sudden phone call he is making.

Another guy, with his nose so crooked he must have broken it more times than Luffy has stolen snacks from the kitchen, gives an ugly laugh and sweeps away a patch of his frizzy hair. “Hah! So what? The old goat is away in the New World, so who cares! We can do whatever we want, right captain?”

They laugh, a loud cacophony of shrieks and snorts and hiccups that grind Franky’s gears in all the wrong ways.

“Hm? That so?” There are a lot of things Franky can say. Stuff like, I have Whitebeard’s number, or do you have a death wish? He doesn’t, because where would the fun be in that?

Franky cracks his neck loud enough that the so-called pirates cease their laughter. He taps his hammer against the palm of his hand, then spins it between his fingers and points straight at the captain. “You got three seconds to let her go, or I’ll break your nose. Five seconds and I’ll break your shins, too - that’s like a super deal, if you ask me!”

The captain, chicken hat wobbling on his head, bares his teeth. He shoves the mermaid’s head down into the dirt, planting one booted foot on her back as she cries out. “I think you’re a little too full of yourself, tin-man,” the guy cackles. “You and what army?”

Those pudgy hands are thrown out, gesturing to the whole clearing, but the thing is; Franky doesn’t need an army.

All he needs is the element of surprise.

So Franky leans back where he stands, bending over so far that his back curls and the tip of his hair drags along the seaweed grass. Then he jerks forward and hurls his hammer straight into the captain’s face with a suuuper!

A nose should never make a sound as harrowing as it does, but the man goes down howling and screaming, clutching his bloody face. The skin around it is ruptured and bleeding, bone white fragments peeking out from between his unkempt beard.

Writhing on the ground, mermaid forgotten, his crew of ten men stand around him, gaping with wobbling lips. A second later, they draw their swords and Franky meets them head-on with a strong right, followed by a strong left.

And then bullets, whatever nails he has on him, and his hammer get to shatter a few kneecaps too.

Look, a shipwright has got to be able to improvise.

The fight doesn’t take long, and Franky is immensely glad that for all their indignation at him, they appear to have forgotten all about their hostage and uncle Den. While keeping their attention locked on the cyborg is a good thing, Franky is also just one guy, and even just a second of inattention has consequences.

Like a sword through the fleshy part of his stomach.

Huh.

Should probably fix that soon.

“Ow,” he grunts, and vaguely picks up the sound of someone yelling.

It better not be uncle Den trying to get in the middle of this fight, because Franky can’t keep both of them safe.

The guy with a hand on the sword smiles, a sort of curling twitch of his lips that show off his canines. Then the voice yells again, and the guy’s eyes go wide. Blood spills from his mouth in clumps of red, and there’s a trident poking through the man’s stomach. It stops short of Franky himself by an inch, and if the cyborg takes a deep breath, he might be able to feel those three, sharp prongs.

The man crumbles to the ground with a shriek, and in his place stands Prince f*ckaboshi and his brothers. Royalty that Franky has only ever seen in passing and never spoken to.

Franky falls to his knees too, sword still stuck in his guts, because wow, he is woozy.

A platoon of guards corral a handful of pirates, and another prince rushes to the mermaid’s aid. She cries, sobbing and clutching at his clothing, then points to the bleeding captain and Franky.

Ryuboshi jabs the palm of his hand forward at the bleeding pirate captain, and water bends and snaps to the Prince’s command.

Franky stops breathing, because his dad had mentioned Fish-Man Karate once or twice. He had laughed when Franky had begged and tugged at his arm to please teach him, only to be sorely disappointed when his dad didn’t know how.

Franky, while older now, still wants to learn.

He is a shipwright and a cyborg and he wants to protect those who are his.

(Water has always been meant for him, in one way or another, and this feels like a natural progression of it. The sea spoke to him even before his birth parents abandoned him for the swell of waves, and his beloved Sunny had longed for it just the same. Water has always been in his skin, stuck beneath the grime of his fingernails - back when he had those - when Iceburg and him had been scrounging around the canals of Water Seven.)

Franky bows low, gut wound pulsing at the movement, until his swooping coif of hair is matted with seaweed grass and the blood on the ground. “Teach me some of that super swell Fish-Man Karate, please?”

The rustling of armor halts abruptly.

“Why should we teach a human?” Snorts f*ckaboshi, arms crossed and trident slung over his back.

There comes a thump from beside him, and Franky turns his head to look, smearing his cheek further into the dirt.

Uncle Den is bowing too, forehead smashed against the ground so hard that his hat is half an inch from toppling off his wild hair. “Please,” he says. “My nephew is a good kid. And if you’ll excuse my bluntness, I believe Queen Otohime would have been pleased with him-don.”

The silence stretches on for so long that Franky thinks they are going to say no. Then f*ckaboshi sighs, and says, “Very well. Tomorrow morning at Ryugu Palace. Don’t be late.”

Franky doesn’t raise his head, for fear that the grin he is sporting might scare them off.

Man, he can’t wait to show his captain how super strong his shipwright is gonna’ be!

***

Stance by stance, Franky learns.

He sticks to the moves that flow naturally - the ones that allow him to jostle his shoulders and swirl his hips and push and pull the water itself like a rope at a shipyard. Water bends and twists and twirls between his large, clicking fingers and the back of his knees tickle whenever a particular strong stream passes him by.

Nature had never been a thing he ever imagined he would be able to feel again after the train. After the blood and the pain and the metal shrapnel jutting out from his skin.

(Water had carried him then, too. Back, back, back to Water Seven.

It had choked him, the salt getting in his nostrils and making his chest burn until the roof of his mouth had blistered and swollen to three times its proper size.

Cola had been the only thing he had been able to taste for months.)

Sometimes he learns by watching, and sometimes the princes let him tag along for a fight or three. Well, they let him tag along at first - then they start to party, because Manboshi throws a mean disco and Franky has never once in his life refused an invitation to dance.

King Neptune isn’t terrible either.

A bit careful at first, when he starts to frequent the palace. It doesn’t take more than a well-mixed rum and co*ke for Neptune to soften up, and by the end of his nearly two-year tenure at Fish-Man Island, Franky is a familiar face at Ryugu Palace. He hears rumors of the Warlord that roams the island from time to time, but never sees the man himself.

Franky attempts to teach Hoe how to do the robot, one whale joint at a time, when Ryuboshi snaps a picture with a Den Den. He waves the photo around in one hand and tries to stifle his loud giggles with the other.

It’s a good picture, though, and Franky asks for a copy to send to his crew.

Then he asks for a second copy, because there is a letter on his desk in his room that has been sitting there for a while. It isn’t finished, because words haven’t always been easy between the two of them, but–

Talking to uncle Den about Tom has helped, and he wants to share those moments with his brother. He wants to mend that bridge with Iceburg, and for the late night calls to go from Fish-Man Island and the Thousand Sunny, all the way to that lonely Mayor’s office at Water Seven.

Dammit, Franky wants to have a relationship with his brother again.

Missing that stick-in-the-mud is distracting, is all.

In the end, he leaves the letter blank aside from the number to his personal Den Den Mushi and slips in the picture from Ryuboshi. Licking the edge of the envelope, he puts in a second picture before closing it.

(A copy of the framed picture hanging above Den’s coral mantel in the living room, with a young Tom and Den laughing at the camera. It’s his favorite, and Franky already has a copy in his wallet. Iceburg deserves a picture of their dad and uncle too.)

He posts it that same night, from the post office next to Papagu’s shop, before the jittery nerves in his circuit get the better of him.

“Name of sender?” The merman behind the desk asks him, and Franky flounders for half a second because he has a bounty now and he can’t just–

“Cutty.” His mouth vomits out before he can stop himself.

Hopefully it doesn’t get intercepted by a random Cipher Pol agency.

***

In the part of the Grand Line known as Paradise, on an island with inlets of running water and the steady hammering of carpenters in shipyards echoing deep into the night, the Mayor sits in his office with a letter in his hand and two photos in the other.

Iceburg scratches the mouse in his pocket and takes a deep breath, all the way down in his stomach. Exhale out the mouth. Repeat.

He picks up the receiver of a snail.

“Hello? Am I speaking with Cutty?”

Chapter 6: Chopper - The Blanket Stitch

Chapter Text

Chopper tries not to interfere, he really does.

The crew is entitled to their secrets - they might be family, but Chopper knows that some things have to be shared in their own time, if at all. But then, there is Zoro. Brilliant, a bit scary at times, and a great pillow for naps.

But–

There are times when Chopper has to put his hoof down as the ship’s doctor, and so when Zoro wakes up the men’s quarters for the third night in a row while gasping for breath and hands reaching for a sword, the reindeer orders him to the medical bay.

“I’m fine,” says Zoro, like Chopper can’t see his hands shaking from half a room away. He might be gullible, but the swordsman is far from fine. Even Sanji has gotten out of bed without a word, returning with a cup of tea that he shoves into Zoro’s hands.

The tea doesn’t work either, when Zoro wakes up half an hour later, choking on a scream and startling Luffy so badly that their captain falls to the floor like a discarded teddy bear. Rummaging around in the chest by the foot of his bed, Chopper throws a herbal remedy together that can hopefully help Zoro calm down a bit, because if the stubborn man refuses to go to the medical bay, then he will have to make do with a slapdash solution for now.

(Chopper doesn’t know what Zoro is dreaming about, when his night terrors strike.

He isn’t sure he can handle whatever makes their first mate so scared.)

It works for a little while.

And then it doesn’t work any more, and Zoro wakes in cold sweat and vomits over the side of his and Luffy’s shared hammock. Their captain holds him tight to his chest, unbothered by the mess and carding his hands through Zoro’s sweaty hair. He catches each tremble and responds with a hug so tight that the swordsman must be halfway to suffocation.

It speaks volumes that Sanji makes no comment, and simply fetches a pitcher of water while Brook gets a bucket and a mop to clean the floor.

“That’s enough,” says Chopper, once Zoro is breathing in a somewhat steady pattern. “Medical bay, and it’s not up for discussion!”

It is four in the morning as Luffy, Zoro, and a distraught reindeer make their way through a quiet Sunny. Nami is on watch, but only gives them a frown once she sees the way Zoro clings to Luffy, half of his face smashed against their captain’s shoulder even as they walk.

Chopper hopes he can get them to sleep just a little more, before the sun rises.

He forces Zoro into a bed and takes his blood pressure. Sanji steps in at one point, a freshly brewed canister of tea in his hands which he sets on the table, and then he disappears just as quickly with a brief nod.

“I’m fine,” says Zoro, once Chopper digs deep enough in his drawers to pull out an EEG headband. “I just need a shot of liquor - one for each leg, and then I can walk straight to bed. Problem solved.”

He attaches the headband, and then the words register. “That’s terrible advice!”

So he shoves a mug of tea under Zoro’s nose and stares at the swordsman until he sips it with a pout. (Is it just him or does the black tea smell like rum?) The first mate throws himself under the covers of the nearest cot, drawing them up and over his head until only the cables from the headband are visible.

Luffy stays in the infirmary next to Chopper, and none of them get another wink of sleep that night.

***

The EEG results the next day are… puzzling.

For all intents and purposes, Zoro dreams in all stages of his sleep. Despite this, the dreams during his REM sleep cycles have such big anomalies and spikes in brainwave activity and stress levels that he might as well have been fighting an Emperor of the Sea in his sleep.

“You’re staying another night,” says Chopper, the sun far behind them and the moon dominating the sky. “I’m not sure what I can do to help you yet.”

The swordsman isn’t happy about it, but Luffy laughs and proclaims the sudden urge for a sleepover in the medical bay. Before Chopper can even think of telling his captain no, the rubber man has pushed together two beds and jumped into one of them. He pats the other one until Zoro sits down on it and falls on his back.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Zoro heaves a sigh that is as exasperated as it is fond, and Chopper can’t stop a small smile from spreading across his face. It takes barely two minutes for them to fall asleep, and the reindeer keeps a lamp lit on at his desk, noting and timing the shifts in Zoro’s sleep pattern.

And then there is a whimper.

Chopper swivels on his chair, half intending to wake Zoro up before panic can settle in his limbs, and then he notices–

It isn’t Zoro this time.

It’s Luffy.

His captain is drenched in sweat, cover thrown off his body and hands (curled, nails sharp, desperate ) are digging into his chest so fiercely that his skin is spattered with specks of blood.

It takes exactly two seconds for Chopper to take it in, before he is halfway across the room and shaking Luffy. “Wake up!” He cries, making a grab for those flailing hands. “Wake up! ” But his captain has always been stronger than him, and no matter how hard Chopper tries to tug those hands away from a bloody chest, nails digging gouges into his own skin, they seem to slip from the reindeer’s grasp.

“ Luffy! Wake up, please!” Cries Chopper, because he has never had a patient hurt himself this much during their sleep - not with Dr. Hiriluk, and not with Doctrine either.

Why won’t Luffy wake up?!

He tugs and tugs and tugs at those hands until his vision is swimming with tears, and then a blur of green jolts awake on the other bed. “Wha– sh*t! ”

Zoro throws himself over Luffy’s chest, grabbing both of his hands and pinning them to his side. (And Chopper is just standing by their bedside, sobbing when he should be helping, but he doesn’t know how! )

“Luffy! Luffy, it’s okay! We’re all okay! Ace is alive!” The swordsman yells.

On unsteady legs, Chopper makes his way to his antiseptic kit, half of him wondering what Ace has to do with this. The other half wonders why Zoro, alone, knows what Luffy is dreaming about.

“ No! ” Luffy’s eyes fly open, and even in the dim light, Chopper can see that his pupils are dilated in pure panic. His clawing, thank the Seas, stops the moment he registers Zoro on top of him. “Z–Zoro?”

His teeth are clattering, breath staggered and entirely too shallow for the reindeer’s liking. “You with me?” Asks Zoro, and when Luffy nods, he slowly lets go of his hands. Their captain flexes his fingers, then casts one look at Chopper by the side of his desk, kit in his hooves, and then the palms of his hands are pressed against his eyes.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, his entire body shaking. “I’m sorry…”

The swordsman shakes his head, bringing one hand to gently rub against the pulse on Luffy’s wrist. “We’re alive,” he says. “We’re all alive.”

Then Luffy’s sobs start in earnest, and Chopper finds himself crying all over again, biting his lips to stifle the noise. (You’re their doctor, keep it together!)

Luffy shouldn’t cry, not like this - should never be reduced to this, and it hurts Chopper to know that something did this to his family. Something hurt them beyond belief, and Chopper can no longer sit by and let them suffer in silence.

So he trudges up to their bedside, and Zoro rolls away from Luffy to grant him space, but does not let go of his wrist. Luffy’s breath stutters, just once, and then it resumes his shallow gasps.

And his chest… Seas, his chest.

Deep, red and bloody scratches mar his chest in the shape of an X, and Chopper patches him up with shaky motions. “I wanted you to tell me in your own time, but this– this has to stop. Both of you.” He says, dabbing cotton and tossing away the bloody pieces. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong…”

He lets it hang in the air and stifles his sniffles to the best of his abilities. The reindeer works in silence, and when he chances a glance at Zoro, the first mate has his eye trained on their shivering captain.

“I–” begins Luffy, heaving down a gulp of air. “ We time traveled. Me ‘n Zoro made it to the end, but without you. All of you d–died…”

“Eh?” Chopper stammers out. “ Eh?! ”

“But this memory was– this was about Ace. He died, too, and I held him in my arms when he took his last breath and told me that he was thankful that I loved him. And then I–” He cuts himself off, biting his lip until those, too, become bloody. Zoro moves his other hand to rest it against Luffy’s wet cheek.

Chopper keeps dabbing antiseptic on the scratches. He doesn’t need Luffy to finish his sentence. His self-inflicted, mangled chest is evidence enough of what probably followed.

Because it makes sense. Seas, it makes too much sense, doesn’t it?

“Is that why Sanji has been asking me for lessons? Why he suddenly wanted to learn medicine after that trip you went on?” It stings a little. He is their doctor, and they didn’t tell him.

He bites it down, though, because they are telling him now and that will have to be enough. (This isn’t his trauma, he can’t treat it like he would scratches on a chest.)

“Yeah. Sanji knows. Brook too. Nami is the only one here who doesn’t know, at this point.” Zoro snorts, like telling their crew that time travel is real and most likely the trigger for his increased night terrors is a funny thing.

“Okay,” says Chopper, because he can’t quite think of what else to say. What does one say to that sort of thing, anyway? “I still want you to stay in the infirmary for now. And I want both of you to work with me. I don’t care if we try ten different kinds of tea, yucky herbal remedies or a nursery rhyme - I’m helping you through this, okay?”

Maybe it is too big of a promise. Maybe Luffy and Zoro will never recover from the traumatic experiences that haunt their dreams. Maybe Chopper isn’t good enough to help them just yet.

***

Over the course of two weeks, Chopper settles his captain and their first mate in a routine of tea, herbal co*cktails and set sleep times. It works, if only a bit, but Zoro is no longer vomiting from panic, and Luffy’s chest is healing nicely.

It isn’t a cure, but it is a step in the right direction.

Chopper, however, is not satisfied.

Which is why he approaches Luffy in the kitchen, his captain having eyes only for that magical roast that Sanji is currently slathering in a honey marinade. The chef has one foot extended and pressed against his captain’s chest in order to keep Luffy from getting too close, and Chopper decides that his inquiry can wait no longer.

“Luffy?”

His captain, wiping a string of drool from his mouth, turns towards Chopper. “Hm?”

Okay, come on, Chopper, speak up!

He slaps his hooves on his cheeks and shuts his eyes tight. “I want to go and study medicine with the Whitebeards!”

The room falls silent. The sizzling pan is the only thing that Chopper can hear as he keeps his eyes closed, too scared to see the utter disappointment on his captain’s face and–

Then there are arms around him. Familiar, rubbery arms encircling him in a hug and lifting him up. “Are you sure?”

Chopper finally dares to take a peek.

His captain, his amazing captain, is looking at him with so much love that the reindeer blushes under his fur. Like his words had been a plea for an extra cookie, and not a year off gallivanting with an Emperor’s crew.

So Chopper nods, and Luffy gives him another squeeze before putting him back down. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll call Ace and ask.”

Then he strolls out of the kitchen, magical roast forgotten, and Chopper is left staring Sanji in the eye. “You’ll take care of them for me, won’t you?”

It hurts, knowing that what he has asked for will keep him from his family - but then Sanji comes over and places a firm hand on Chopper’s hat for a quick pat. “Of course,” he says around a cigarette. “You’ve taught me plenty, doctor. And I’ll keep studying on my own as well.”

They are both sporting grins with misty eyes, but no tears fall.

“Mhm!” Chopper nods, wiping his runny nose.

He hopes the Whitebeards say yes.

(And maybe, him keeping an eye on Ace will help Luffy sleep better.)

***

They do say yes.

Enthusiastically.

Marco is pleased for any and all help in their medical bay, and so Ace shows up with the Striker and all too suddenly, Chopper is leaving… He suggested it. He planned for it. Still, it happens all too fast for his liking.

Ace helps him onboard his little skiff, and then the remaining crew of the Thousand Sunny is yelling and crying, leaning over the railings and nearly tipping into the ocean.

“I’ll be back! I’ll learn lots of things! How to heal more, and how to fight better, and– and–”

And please wait for me.

Luffy leans back, takes in a large gulp of air, and screams at the top of his lungs; “Take care, Chopper!”

The reindeer fights back the rest of his tears as the silhouette of a sunflower lion disappears, and then an orange cowboy hat plops on top of his own hat. Ace’s hand is warm where it rests against Chopper’s neck, and it takes all he has not to keep crying.

“It’ll be alright,” says Ace. “I bet they already miss you.”

Thick, wet tears trickle down his face, and thankfully, Ace lets him cry his heart out.

***

Being onboard the Moby Dick is unlike anything Chopper has ever tried before. With Doctrine, the visits to villages were few and far between, and rarely did he treat patients without her supervision. With his crew, his family, things had worked differently, too.

A sprained wrist when Usopp got into a tug-of-war match with a fish, or cuts and bruises when Zoro and Luffy decided a spar was in order. But nothing, nothing could have prepared him for the whirlwind that is the medical bay of the Moby Dick.

The first time a crewmate pops in, casually plopping into a chair and swiveling around, Chopper thinks ah, another sprain. Except the guy - tall, buff and half shining from a patch of diamonds on his skin, unwraps his arm and presents an elbow bone that has not only popped out of its socket, but is protruding from a large gash in his skin.

“Can you set it?” Asks Jozu, rubbing the back of his head with his other, healthier, hand. It is grisly, and while Chopper has seen worse, there have been no major scuffles in the past three days. There is no reason for Jozu’s arm to be looking like this.

Chopper grabs his kit, looks Jozu firmly in the eye, and puts out a hoof to stop the man from swiveling in the chair. “What happened?”

“Just got a little too eager with a sparring match. Didn’t harden up in time, so Marco sent me down before I made it any worse.” Any other person would have curled up on the floor, bawling their eyes out at the mere sight of the injury, but Jozu simply shrugs it off.

(This is way too intense of an injury for a sparring match!)

“Does this happen a lot?” The reindeer asks, blue nose wrinkling as he cleans, sets and wraps the mangled arm.

“Eh,” says Jozu with another shrug. “It happens more often than Marco would like, but Pops knows us kids can get a bit rough. There’s never any hard feelings, though.”

In the following days, Chopper learns just how true that statement is.

There is a steady stream of people in the infirmary - Whiskey, Marco, Chopper and the rest of the medics have their hands full with just training accidents. Light burns, fingers clipped by swords, a concussion or fourteen, gunshot wounds, and even a burst appendix.

Through it all, Chopper sticks close to Whiskey and Marco, peering over their shoulders, discussing remedies and rest schedules when time allows it. Which is surprisingly not often, and Chopper struggles to deal with the sheer volume of people who stumble in the door with sheepish grins and half a hole in their stomach.

(“Stop moving before your guts fall out, are you stupid?!”)

So Chopper bandages faster, cleans more effectively with the time he has, and prescribes caution as a viable treatment, to Marco’s great amusem*nt.

“I don’t think that’ll make them stop maiming each other during spars,” he says once they are done with their shift and Chopper is catching his breath on one of the free beds. “But I appreciate the sentiment-yoi.”

(They don’t heed Chopper’s advice, much to his dismay. But when their first major clash with some of Kaido’s Beast Pirates happens - the torn spleens, broken hip bones and one especially memorable case of a 16th division crewmate with half his intestines actually spilling out of his stomach lining and into his hands… None of it fazes Chopper.

He gets to work, blood matting his fur and his heart pounding in his ears. Hooves digging bullets out of thighs and human-esque fingers doing chest compressions while singing one of Brook’s songs under his breath as he presses and presses.

Not all of them live. Not all of them will fully recover. But Chopper does his best, and by the end of the day, when he and Marco and Whiskey huddle together in the corner of the medical bay and watch over their patients, Chopper thinks that by the end of his stay, he will have learned so, so much.

By the end of his stay, Luffy and Zoro will never have to suffer a second longer than they have to. His family will live, the little reindeer will make sure of it.)

***

For what it is worth, Chopper stays mostly below the deck - the Whitebeards travel in the New World, and while part of him wants to explore and learn all that he can, he also knows that it isn’t the way it is supposed to be.

The Whitebeard pirates are great, but they are not his crew, and exploring islands without Luffy and the rest is a task he cannot wrap his head around. He wants to come explore these islands when the time is right - anything else makes his heart beat a guilty tune.

However, there are times when Chopper cannot stay below deck.

Like when Ace has finally managed to drag him to a quaint port town (“Come on, Chopper, they’re known for their medical books - wouldn’t it be great to go?”).

So Chopper follows along, eyes resolutely on the ground in front of him and one hoof curled around Ace’s shorts to help guide him. He gets two books on dealing with trauma and another one on herbal remedies.

All in all, it is a good day - Ace keeps one hand on Chopper’s back, a warm comfort on his fur, and even buys him a hot chocolate once they settle down at a café to wait for their other crewmates to come crawling back from their various errands.

(It isn’t hard to see why Luffy loves his brother so much. Ace is a natural at it. He keeps a careful eye on Chopper in the crowded areas, and yet still teases him for swinging his little legs on a chair that is much too tall for the reindeer.)

It is just their luck that a squadron of marines walk into that same café, just as Chopper is licking the sides of his glass to get to the last remnants of chocolate. They fire one gunshot into the ceiling, and then the civilians are screaming and Ace is a living inferno.

His little heart goes thump, thump, thump as he turns into his gorilla form, muscles bulging and ready to punch the first Marine to come near him. He isn’t used to this yet, for all that he is a Straw Hat - the way that Ace charges straight into the mess of it all, and Chopper can only do his best to follow.

It is different with Luffy, because Luffy is rarely alone. Zoro or Nami or Sanji or– well, the point is, Luffy is never alone when he does these things. (Stupid things, like attacking marines in an enclosed space.)

But here it is just Chopper and Ace, and while the Marine goons clearly aren’t a match for the Logia, the reindeer does his best to keep up. He smashes jaws and throws a punch at a Marine’s liver until the man collapses to the floor.

Surprisingly, it is going great.

And then he turns, and a Marine four feet away levels a gun at Ace’s bared back. The Whitebeard Jolly Roger smiles and smiles and smiles, and Chopper sees the moment the man puts his finger on the trigger and pulls.

Logically, he knows Ace will be fine.

Logically, a Logia will barely even register it as a flea bite.

But his brain isn’t being logical. (Luffy in the Sunny’s medical bay, clawing at his chest and crying out for his brother. Bleeding and hurting–)

Chopper sees a human raise a gun towards someone his mind tells him is part of his herd, and instinct blinds him.

His hands change to hooves, his mouth twists and his antlers grow. A full grown reindeer stares at the Marine with a smoking gun, four hooves stomping and shattering the wooden flooring. Then he charges.

He registers only vaguely the feeling of a human body covering his antlers, and then he dips his head down and tears upwards. The man screams, gun clattering to the floor as his stomach is torn open on sharp antlers, and Chopper’s face is sprayed with blood.

Other Whitebeards spill in through the door, the windows - wherever they can find an opening. All the while, Chopper stands on four very unsteady legs, chest heaving and mouth open in pants that won’t go deep enough into his lungs to give him air.

Then Ace’s hands are in his fur, hugging him around his neck, uncaring of the bloody tissue clinging to him and the squelching blood beneath booted feet and sharp hooves.

“Hey! I’m okay, Chopper. I’m fine, I’m fine–”

His herd is alright. They are all alright.

***

Chopper does not sleep that night, cuddled between Ace and Marco. The freckled boy snores loud enough to wake half a ship, and yet the rest of them sleep through it with practiced ease. Everyone except for Marco.

The Phoenix lies awake, just like Chopper, and one tentative hand comes up to stroke the reindeer’s damp, furry cheek. (When did he start crying?)

“Sometimes, us Zoans have to give in to our instincts,” Marco’s voice such a quiet whisper that Chopper’s ears flick and swivel in the man’s direction. “Sure, it takes a while to get used to it, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing-yoi . Still, for the record, I loathe my urge to nest and I will never get used to that part-yoi.”

It is enough to make Chopper giggle, hooves over his mouth, and Marco breaks into a tentative grin. Then Ace snores, a big one that shakes the bed they are in, and Chopper’s smile falls just a little.

Ace’s chest rises; slow and steady right next to him, devoid of magma and a hit meant for Chopper’s captain. “I haven’t felt like that in years…” he mutters. “I– I was a reindeer before I was a human-reindeer. It was just so different, learning to walk on two legs, grabbing things with my hooves, talking. ”

Marco stays quiet, rubbing Chopper’s chest as his heartbeat quickens. It soothes the panic for a moment, and the reindeer takes a deep breath. His eyes water again and he hates it. He hates that he killed a man, someone who wanted to hurt what is Chopper’s, and he hates that he can’t stop crying about it.

“I’ve tried so hard to be human that when my head told me that Ace was part of my herd and that he was in danger I just– I haven’t been a reindeer for so long. It–it scares me. I haven’t felt like that in years. What am I?”

His blue nose scrunches with another sniffle. (Blue and different and neither human or reindeer or–)

“You’re you, Tony Tony Chopper.” Marco pulls him into his chest, a flicker of blue feathers at the edge of his vision. “A brilliant doctor. Beloved crewmate. Family. It doesn’t matter what you are or what you aren’t-yoi. All that matters is that you’re you.”

A monster, he had called himself back in Drum.

The son of a quack and a hag, others had called him.

And maybe he is all of those things. A doctor, a monster, a son, a reindeer and a human, all rolled into the package of a tiny, furry creature with shapeshifting abilities and a heart the size of a mountain.

“I’m Tony Tony Chopper,” he says, through the knot that sits in his throat and the tears dripping down his cheeks. “And I won’t ever let anyone take my herd from me!”

Marco, someone who is so much like him - a doctor, a monster, a son, a phoenix and a human, all rolled into the package of a man who is much too warm and kind for his own good - pats Chopper until his little sobs and hiccups die down.

And in the morning, when he wakes to Ace snoring in his ear and his freckled arms around Chopper, Marco strolls inside with a newspaper. A bounty poster sits on top of it, and the image that accompanies it is grisly.

A reindeer with a blue nose, horns dark with blood and guts, and fur matted with sweat. It’s his own face staring back at him.

“Raging Bull” Chopper - 32,000,000 beli.

Affiliation: Straw Hat Pirates. Whitebeard Pirates.

He should be horrified about the consequences of this, shouldn’t he? Yet all Chopper can think about is how Luffy will shishishi once this newspaper reaches the Thousand Sunny.

***

His favorite napping spot is on the deck, right next to Pops’ chair and with Stefan curled up next to him. The giant dog is as much a cuddlebug as Chopper, and sleeping in his reindeer form has become a usual occurrence since the late night chat with Marco.

He dreams of the Sunny and his family more often than not, and when Stefan snuffles in his sleep and kicks out a paw that catches Chopper in his flank, he snorts himself awake.

Bleary eyes blink and his ears swivel around, taking in the amused snickers of who he knows is Haruta and Jozu. Stifling a yawn, he stands up on all four hooves and shakes his head, antlers clicking against the Adams wood.

“Hey, we just fixed that, Chopper!” Haruta grabs him by one pointy antler, tugging his head upwards, and the reindeer can’t help but help him along - he flicks his head up with such force that the division commander loses his balance and falls on his ass.

“Good morning, Haruta!” Says Chopper, prancing around his fallen friend. “Want a hand?”

“Ha, ha, laugh it up! I’ll get back at you one of these days, just you wait. You’ll wake up with pink fur and polka dots!” Haruta resolutely does not grab the proffered antler to help himself up.

Up in the crow’s nest, Chopper can hear Ace and Marco snickering.

Heavy footfalls precede the cabin door banging open, and out steps Whitebeard himself. Pops. Chopper’s friend, after more than a year on his ship.

“Gurarara! You might have to wait a bit with that revenge of yours, son,” Whitebeard slaps a giant hand on Haruta’s back, forcing the commander to take a stumble forwards. “I’ve been informed that it’s time for Chopper to return to his crew.”

And Chopper - antlers sharp, mind buzzing with medical knowledge, Whiskey’s book on trauma counseling, and the pleased hums of his extended family before him - is ready to go home.

Chapter 7: Nami - The Zigzag Stitch

Chapter Text

When Chopper leaves too, the Sunny starts to drift. They are down to a skeleton crew at best (and no, Brook, that was not a skull joke!) - it is just her, Sanji, Brook, Zoro and Luffy.

Frankly, it’s weird.

She spends most of her time in her office, drawing map after map, and she can’t help but wonder if it is her fault. (Are they all leaving because of her?)

It is a train of thought that she has struggled with since she hugged their beloved doctor (her little brother) goodbye and sent him off to live on an Emperor’s ship. It is the same train of thought that causes her concentration to slip, and when she drags her knife down a sheet of paper to cut it, she barely registers the nick in her finger until it drips tiny, red droplets onto her clean sheet.

“Dammit!” Grabbing a wad of tissue paper, she holds it as tight as possible and immediately heads for the medical bay. (Except… Chopper isn’t there to stitch her up, is he?)

Thankfully, Sanji is, although that is just as weird.

Ever since his roadtrip with Zoro, Sanji has been oddly attentive to any and all injuries, and she has caught him pouring over medical books with Chopper more than once.

It is like something caused all of them to suddenly shift towards new paths.

Everyone except her.

“Nami-swan! What happened?” Sanji is on his feet in an instant, notepad and medical book forgotten on what used to be Chopper’s desk. Gauze and antiseptic is in his hands from one blink to the next. (When did this become routine for him?)

He directs her to a chair, and for once she is glad that she allowed Chopper to splurge a bit when they refurbished the Sunny’s medical bay. It is, in fact, an unfairly comfortable chair. “I cut myself when I was prepping a new map. I’m sorry, my head was… somewhere else.”

Sanji hums, no cigarette in sight. “Not like you to be distracted.” He dabs an antiseptic cotton onto her cut and Nami holds back a hiss, but not the wince that follows.

“But isn’t it weird?” And oh, she didn’t mean for it to come out so harsh, but– “Everyone is leaving to go somewhere else, and it’s like they– like they don’t even want to be here!”

With me.

“Nami!” Perhaps it is the fact that he shouts, or perhaps the fact that he has never raised his voice at her like this before, but the rest of her words suddenly taste dry and ashen on her tongue.

He is pale, lip quivering, and he holds her good hand with a grip so gentle it might as well have been made of feathers. “Don’t talk like that,” he says, because he has always been unfairly good at reading between the lines. “Them leaving is not on you. None of this is on you.”

(And yet she can’t help but feel that it is. If she hadn’t been as rough, hadn’t pushed everyone so hard, would they have stayed? If she had been a better first mate when she had the chance, would that have changed anything?)

“Nami,” he says again, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “Listen to me. Something kind of just kicked us into gear, okay? It’s nothing you have, or haven’t done.”

That… That doesn’t sit well with her either.

“What kicked you into gear?”

One careful step at a time, he patches up her finger and Nami lets him have a moment to collect his thoughts. Sanji is worrying at his lip, eyes darting between her face and the cut on her finger.

“Personally, it was the road trip for me. At least partially.”

“Partially?” She presses, leaning in.

“Partially.” He says, letting her go and clapping both of his hands on his knees before standing up properly. “It’s not up to me to tell you, alright? Whatever the crew has decided to do, it is their own choice. Whether that be joining the revolutionaries or an Emperor’s crew for the foreseeable future.”

Shaking his head, he gives a short huff of a laugh, muttering under his breath. “A goddamn Emperor’s ship… Usopp I get, but Chopper, what is the world coming to?” He plops right back in his seat, by his open textbook and a handful of scattered notes that have been written as meticulously as any of his recipe cards.

Getting up from her chair, Nami flexes her finger just a smidge. It will be alright again, good as new in a short while. “Sanji,” she leans over his shoulder. He is looking up how to set bones, and the images are grisly enough that she feels faint. “Thank you.”

Sanji gives her a smile. A careful little thing, like he is scared his newfound interest in the macabre medical arts might scare her away. “Any time,” he says, and Nami knows he means it.

***

On their third week of drifting, after their beloved reindeer went off to gallivant and study under Whitebeard’s crew, Luffy slams his face into the grassy deck of the Sunny and whines.

“Adventure!” He calls, as though saying it out loud will manifest a new island that will inevitably hold some form of mortal peril, and an oppressed population that Luffy can liberate without meaning to.

Standard fare at this point.

Nami tries to ignore his tantrum - the grumbles and sighs, the flailing of his limbs as he knocks over a pitcher of orange juice that she catches by reflex because she has gotten used to his wayward, rubbery arms.

However, when the bored grumbling persists well into a fourth hour, Nami can no longer focus on her ledgers and the planning of next week’s budget. “Luffy! Can you go do your dramatic rendering of a dying sea king somewhere else, or can you be quiet for a second?”

She doesn’t say she is almost finished. Seas knows Luffy would take that as a go-ahead to keep up with his behavior. Best nip it in the bud in the fourth hour, if possible, or they will have to give in again next time he pulls out the tantrum card.

Her captain lifts his head from the grass, spitting out clumps of weeds from his mouth and his face smeared with dirt. “But Nami– I’m bored.”

“And what do you want me to do about it? You’re the one who said we had to stay in Paradise until everyone is ready, whatever that means.” Sometimes she forgets that her captain is an idiot. A loveable one, but an idiot at least half of the time.

“But I didn’t think it would be this boring!”

Scratch that - he is an idiot most of the time.

Zoro, bless his sodding soul, finally deigns to look up from where he is cleaning his swords under the shade of a tree and throws Luffy a look that clearly spells out you’re being a dumbass.

It is good to know she isn’t the only one who has those moments with Luffy.

“If you’re that bored, then let’s go somewhere. Anywhere that springs to mind, captain?”

Luffy hums, kicking his legs in the air and frowning for a good half a minute.

Then he clicks his tongue, looks at Nami and grins.

Oh no.

What now?

“Let’s go to Alabasta!”

Nami’s face bursts into a splash of lovely red, that has her captain laughing, pointing at her in two seconds flat. “What–why–Luffy!”

Still, she wouldn’t say no to seeing Vivi again.

***

She should have seen it coming. She really, really should have.

Luffy alone is enough of a disaster to cause international incidents on a good day. Pair him up with Zoro and, well, Nami needs to stop being surprised at anything any more.

They don’t have a direct Den Den number to Vivi, and the whole oh no, we’re wanted pirates that shouldn’t associate with the princess kind of puts a damper on most communications. So it isn’t a surprise when Luffy tells them to stow the ship away in a cove near Nanohana, and then proceed to have them don the weirdest disguises Nami has ever laid eyes on.

“Nope,” she says. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Luffy is munching on a chicken drumstick, holding up the gaudiest, and ugliest, puke green pair of suspenders with a matching polka dotted shirt in bright yellow and red. It looks like something Buggy the Clown would wear if everything else had been eaten by a swarm of moths and then spat back out.

She puts her hands on her hips, for a second wondering if this is worth committing mutiny for. There is no way she is seeing Vivi again for the first time in a year while looking like that. “Where did you even get it?”

Brook, in a rainbow three piece suit made from crushed velvet, merely sips his cup of piping hot tea, as though what he is wearing is not the biggest fashion crime this century.

Her captain grins and laughs, rustling the clothing in his hands like one might try to lure in a dog with a treat. “Isn’t it awesome? Bon-chan left some of his stuff for us, in case we ever needed disguises. Usopp thought it was a great idea!”

The door to the kitchen swings open and out steps Sanji - dressed in a horrid orange boiler suit and some smiling skull she has never seen before. (It… doesn’t really seem like Bon-chan’s style at all.) Zoro, the only one to not get a ridiculous outfit suggested just yet, breaks out in great guffawing laughs and clutches at his stomach.

“I hate you.” Says Sanji, and goes right back inside the kitchen, his jaw clenching so hard Nami fears he might be biting his cigarette in two.

“What the heck was that?” She throws a hand in the direction of the kitchen door as it slams shut, and Luffy doesn’t even try to hold back a laugh.

Zoro pats Nami on the shoulder, a gesture she has come to learn is partially commiserating and partially him not having an ounce of self preservation. It makes her want to hit him, but she refrains at the next words out of his mouth.

“I picked up that outfit a while back. Don’t worry about it.”

Oh no, he can’t just say stuff like that and have her not worry about it.

“Anyway,” says Zoro, eyes on the setting sun. “We should probably go soon if we want to make it to the palace some time tonight.”

Not in those eye disgusting disguises, they’re not.

Safe to say, Nami bites the bullet and digs into the treasury to buy them all suitable outfits at the first stall they come across. She keeps the receipts, too - it’ll be added to their respective debts in due time, whether they like it or not.

Luffy whines all the way to the palace in Alubarna, sticking to Zoro’s side like glue once the temperature drops throughout the night. The swordsman lets him, walking in step with their captain, one arm tucked over his shoulder like it is a perfectly reasonable place for Luffy to be.

With those two, it is - anyone else and Nami might have considered them crazy.

But she sees the way Zoro takes up the rear, eye checking behind just as often as he faces forward, keeping an eye on Sanji at the head of the pack. And when Nami stumbles one too many times in a row, Zoro gives a loud yawn and forces them all to sit down and take a minute to rest up. No calling her out, no ribbing her for not being up to par with the rest of the monsters on their crew.

In his own way, their swordsman takes good care of them.

Once they sneak inside the palace, welcomed by both Igaram and a healthy-looking Pell, they find Vivi in a library with marble floors and minimal guards. She beams at them despite the late hour, and greets Luffy and Sanji with hugs.

Nami alone gets a peck on the lips and a squeeze of her ass.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, princess Vivi,” says Brook, already bowing so deep that his hat topples off his afro and hits the floor. “May I see your pan–”

Nami kicks him in the shin and leaves him crumbled on the floor.

Vivi laughs, a hand covering her mouth and eyes crinkled at their antics.

Their swordsman steps forward and pulls her into an unsolicited hug. “Oh, uh, hello,” she says, patting him on the back and tilting her head towards Nami with a frown. “I saw your wanted poster. Zoro, is it?”

“Huh? What happened to calling me Mr. Bushido?”

Vivi crawls out of the one-armed hug and smoothes out the wrinkles in her dress, quirking a delicate brow. “I… don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you yet, as far as I am aware.”

Zoro, the absolute dumbass, is frowning at them all. Like he doesn’t understand why Vivi is saying what she is saying. A second later he groans and puts his head in his hands. “Goddammit, I forgot.”

Brook, still on the floor, tips his hat in Zoro’s direction. “Yohoho! I guess the cat is out of the bag now, Zoro-san!”

Sanji mutters, but exactly what, Nami can’t make out - something about feet in mouths, and the hand he is carding through his sweaty hair looks to be tugging just a tad too tight to be comfortable. Sanji might actually pull out a few strands of blonde hair at this rate.

(Why doesn’t she know what the boys are muttering about? Clearly everyone but her knows. Why doesn’t she?)

“So, uh–” the swordsman clears his throat and shoots Luffy a glance. With a nod from a straw hat clad head, Zoro takes a deep breath and looks Vivi dead in the eye, before settling on Nami. “There’s no easy way to say this, so let me finish before you ask any questions or yell at us.”

Unable to tear her gaze from Zoro’s singular eye and the way it burns, burns, burns itself into her soul, Nami makes a wild grab for Vivi’s hand. She locks their fingers together and squeezes the hand in hers until she can feel the ground beneath her feet again.

“Luffy and I time traveled here from a future where everyone but us died. I don’t want to talk about the how, just that only the two of us made it to the end of the Grand Line and it– I’ll be honest, it was hell. I’ve given up trying to figure out how Luffy managed to pull off said time travel, but the crew remains the same. We’re just…”

Her stomach is churning and she is frightfully pleased that they haven’t had a chance for a banquet yet. She is certain whatever food she might have eaten would have traveled right back up again. Seas, her boys–

“We’re just making sure that everyone makes it to the end this time, okay? So yeah, I knew Vivi the first time around. Kind of forgot we, uh, weren’t there for a second.” His fingers are scratching at Wado’s hilt, his eye still on them and Nami can’t, she can’t–

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She asks. Because somehow, that stings the most. With the way Brook and Sanji have been taking the explanation in stride, they already knew. They all knew and no one deigned to tell her that her boys had been traumatized so badly that Zoro most likely went into self-imposed exile to try and fix things.

(Except… that is exactly what he did, wasn’t it? Luffy insisted on them already having a first mate from the very beginning, and he hadn’t been wrong.)

Rubbery fingers suddenly clutch at her free hand and when she turns her head, she can barely see because– she’s crying, so, so hard and she can only just make out the silhouette of a boy in a straw hat, linking their fingers together.

“We didn’t mean to keep it from you, Nami,” says Luffy, stroking his thumb over the knuckles of her hand. “And the others just sort of ended up finding out about it on their own. I swear we didn’t keep it from you on purpose. I just don’t– I don’t like thinking about before.”

Big, fat tears dribble down his cheeks, converging at his chin and then he is hiccuping a sob of his own. Nami lets go of Vivi and pulls her captain into the tightest hug she has ever given him. Her captain, who walked through time to find them again.

“I know,” says Nami, and feels the steady rhythm of his heart beating in tune with her own. Then she lets go and gives his cheek a brief kiss. “I need some time to think, okay?”

Luffy sniffles, wiping his nose and nodding his head fiercely enough that droplets splash onto the marble floor. “Okay.”

And then Nami leaves.

Out the double doors, with Vivi at her heels, while she sobs until she can barely breathe through the knot of feelings in her chest. Pity and anger and grief, all meshed together into a ball of yarn so tightly wound, that she can’t possibly hope to unravel it.

In the morning she will hunt them down and force them to tell her what she did the last time around. What she can do better. How she can help them. But that is tomorrow.

Tonight, Nami needs to hug Vivi and wrap her mind around the fact that time travel is real.

***

There are fingers running through her growing locks of hair, and with every inhale and exhale, something in her chest settles. The window is open, just a smidge, to allow them enough fresh air that they won’t be stifled in the heat of the capital. The rustling of palm trees has become familiar as the one week has turned into two, then three. (Four, five, six–)

Under the cover of an airy duvet, a silk sheet caressing their skin, Nami finds her voice again.

“Is staying here the right choice?” She mumbles and presses a kiss to Vivi’s upper arm, just because she can. At least here, she can. Seas forbid she tries to do that in the streets. “Being here, with you, feels like a fever dream–”

Vivi snorts a giggle into the crook of Nami’s shoulder, and the navigator gives her a gentle slap back. She is trying to be serious here. “I mean, with everything that Luffy and Zoro have shared with us now - all of us, finally - I just wonder whether I would be better off trying to find those old farts that supposedly taught me last time.”

“Ah, the ‘sky island geezers’ as Luffy put it.”

The cicadas outside the window choose that moment to start blaring their ridiculous midnight hymn for the sixth time in a row and Nami defiantly chucks a pillow in their general direction. She ends up with her upper body half out of the bed and one hand on the floor.

Vivi lets out an ugly snort that is undeniably adorable.

Groaning, Nami pulls herself back up, making grabby hands for Vivi’s wonderful warmth once more. She curls up, head on the princess’ chest and sighs once for good measure. “Yes, I mean those ‘sky island geezers’ as he put it.”

There is a mole just under Vivi’s left breast and Nami traces one finger over it, feeling the ridge and bump of the skin. “Maybe I really should go to them again. I went there the first time and apparently became some sort of weather witch, so… While I enjoy cuddling in bed while your kingdom thinks you’re engaged to Koza, I doubt that it helps out my crew in the long run. No offense.” Spending time with Vivi is always amazing, but… “I’m half convinced Luffy ordered us to come to Alabasta just so I could see you. Not that I’m complaining.” She lifts her head up and presses a kiss to the edge of Vivi’s mouth. Just a soft press of lips on lips, and they both smile into it.

In the moonlight, Vivi’s eyes reflect nothing but love.

Nami could drown in them.

(It wouldn’t be a bad way to go out, if she’s being honest.)

Tilting her head, a lock of blue hair falls into the princess’ face, tickling her nose enough to make her frown. “If you want my opinion–” she blows at the strand, only making it fall back down. “Oh for– Screw those old farts!”

She tucks it back with one hand and stares at Nami. “Whatever happened in the past happened. Luffy and Zoro haven’t exactly been forthcoming with information, and that’s probably a good thing, but we know that only those two made it to the end.”

Planting one hand on each of Nami’s cheeks, Vivi squeezes until her lips are puckered and her cheeks feel swollen. “Whatever you put your mind to will be the right choice. So what I’m asking is; do you want to leave?”

The truth is… she doesn’t.

She really, really doesn’t.

Nami loves her boys, flaws and all. Skull jokes and incomprehensible appetite and excessive drinking and overly attached cooks… Even if they are only a fraction of what they are supposed to be, she won’t trade them for the world.

She can’t leave them behind.

She doesn’t want to.

Tears drip down her still squished cheeks and Vivi lets her sob to the sound of cicadas through their window, starting their symphony for the seventh time.

“I don’t want to leave.”

Them. You.

It’s all the same in the end, isn’t it?

Vivi has always been a Straw Hat, whether she is on their ship or not.

“Then stay,” says Vivi, like it is the simplest thing in the world, and maybe it is, because the next words out of her mouth are; “You know, when Mr. 9 and I attempted to kill Laboon, we did it with bazookas. It wasn’t my first time with one.”

It is such a weird change of topic that Nami giggles with her cheeks still wet.

Vivi smiles. That same toothy smile that promised the downfall of a warlord and Nami can’t help the love bubbling in her chest until butterflies are crawling in her throat.

“What if I told you that Igaram has been teaching me how to get better with bazookas?”

Nami’s brain short circuits, because the mental image of Vivi and bazookas is just a little too much for her, on top of the time travel. “B–bazookas?” She splutters, because what else is she supposed to do with that information?

Vivi nods. “Bazookas.”

Outside, the palm trees rustle on and Nami forgets what cicada symphony they are on.

“I can teach you, if you’re up for it. I’m sure Luffy would be happy if you could blow up some marine ships from afar.”

Nami surges forward and claims those familiar, warm lips, her hand cradling Vivi’s cheeks because damn, that’s hot.

***

For the first month, Nami sticks to lessons with Igaram and Vivi. She learns to take a bazooka apart and assemble it just as fast. She learns how to fire when the wind shifts and adds an extra bit of oomph.

A month after that, Zoro asks if she wants to learn armament Haki to make those bazooka shells hit even harder. She says yes, of course, and so she joins the grueling lessons alongside Sanji and Brook.

Maybe Nami can’t control the weather at the moment, but she can shoot down a moving ship while on Karoo’s back, so she’s pretty sure she is doing alright.

Except, another month passes and she still can’t will her Haki to come out. No matter how hard she tries to make the Haki hers, it just won’t listen. And it’s– it’s frustrating as hell.

As a result, Zoro drags her out for a solo training session and promptly attacks her with all three swords. “What are you doing?!” Nami screams, twirling right to dodge a sharp blade edge.

“Stop thinking and start doing,” Zoro grunts right back, words garbled through the sword hilt in his mouth. “That other timeline is gone! It doesn’t matter if you can make it rain or explode a ship, as long as you stay alive.”

Nami jumps back, four steps in quick succession, then she swings the bazooka over her shoulder and fires. She misses. “Dammit!”

“You can keep Luffy in check with a word. You can navigate the Grand Line. You can do so damn much, so stop thinking about sh*t you can’t change! You’re doing your best and that’s all that matters!” He swings again, splitting a rock in two and Nami pants and pants. Another shot, another miss.

(She knows she was a sh*tty first mate - nothing like him at all, and that hurts.)

She yells, throwing her bazooka to the ground and jumps right at Zoro, bowling him over and punching him in the chest. She hisses at him, eyes burning. “How do you never break under the pressure of it? How can you stand it?!”

He lets go of his swords, spitting out Wado, and punches her on the chin. It rattles her so hard she can feel her brain in her skull and blood welling in her mouth. “I did break,” he grunts. “I still do. I wake up and look at my hands and all I see is blood. But then you’re all breathing and laughing and for a short moment, everything is okay again. Trauma like that doesn’t go away, Nami.”

Crying and with snot dribbling down her nose, she feels something dark and malleable and protective click into place inside of her. And then Zoro is sprawled on the ground five feet away, and Nami’s pinky finger is throbbing and dripping with his blood.

It’s not Haki, but it’s something - something she can use to protect her boys. (Because Zoro might be the first mate now, but Nami is here too, and she will support him as much as she can.)

The swordsman props himself up on his elbows, a thick bruise forming on his collarbone and a grin on his face. “Come on,” he says. “Again.”

***

To celebrate, they proceed to drink half a tavern dry and con about half of the regular patrons before Nami and Zoro are kicked out of the establishment, ass over head and giggling like the drunks they are.

It takes them the better part of two hours trying to navigate through the streets of Alubarna and back to the royal palace - a trek that should have been no more than twenty minutes, but is prolonged by the fact that she keeps having to keep Zoro close, and that the landmarks she uses to find her way around seem to have miraculously swapped places.

By the time they find the fountain with marble frogs leading to the back entrance of the palace, it is well into the night.

Not late enough, however, for Luffy and Vivi to be cuddling together on a couch in the library, whispering secrets in each other’s ears.

Zoro falls over a chair and Luffy’s head whips around to his first mate. “Shishishi! Do you want a hand?” The swordsman, firmly on his back and face flushed six ways to Sunday, waves a hand and gives a nah.

It takes him three tries to get standing upright again, and Nami breaks down in a giggle fit when he has to put two hands on the chair he knocked over, just to try and steady himself.

“Alright, gigglebugs, I think it’s time we all turn in for the night,” says Vivi, grabbing Nami by the waist and tugging her along without further protest.

Nami keeps her neck craned towards the opening to the library, seeing Luffy careening at Zoro and sending them both back onto the floor with a startled yell from the swordsman.

Vivi leans in, whispering in her ear. “Did you have fun?”

The thing is, she did have fun, bruised chin and all. She might not be first mate material, but she has come a long way - and she is only going to keep improving.

Nami leans into Vivi’s side and mutters into her hair. “Yeah, I did.”

***

They leave Alabasta after four months, a course set for Sabaody Island to pick up the rest of the crew before they head to Fish-Man Island. With one bazooka, a small staff with seastone at both ends, and a new understanding of their crew, Nami is richer than beli could ever make her. (Besides, she already has a few ideas for improvements - Franky and Usopp will surely enjoy tinkering with her weapons once they see each other again.)

“Excited?” She yells towards the bow of the Sunny, where Luffy sits with his legs crossed and his eyes on the blue sea ahead of them. Zoro is standing next to Nami, shoulder to shoulder, and through the open door, she can hear Sanji muddling about in the kitchen. On the swing, Brook is swinging back and forth with a tune under his breath.

“Always!” Yells Luffy, throwing his hands up in the air.

“You know,” she says, glancing at Zoro. “I still can’t believe I was the last Straw Hat to find out you guys time traveled.”

From the figurehead of the Sunny, Luffy gives a shishishi. “Who says you’re the last one?”

What–

Zoro bumps his shoulder against hers. “Don’t worry about it,” he says with a knowing smirk that is just begging to be punched off his face.

Nami can’t do anything but worry every time the two of them say sh*t like that.

Chapter 8: Luffy - The Forward Stitch

Chapter Text

The crew is shrinking, and Luffy smiles through it all. He cries, too, now and then when it is time for another see you later, but he tries to keep it together.

He isn’t sure he succeeds, but his crew still leaves, so he must be doing something right. (Right?)

They are leaving for his sake, in a way, and that makes it sting less. They aren’t ready for the New World beyond the Red Line, and he can’t fault them for wanting to be prepared. He can’t fault them for wanting to stay alive.

He can’t lose them again.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Brook sidles up to him, leaning against the railing with a steaming cup of tea in his hand. It smells like peppermint and liquorice and that special blend that Sanji refuses to share with anyone else.

It is nice.

Luffy keeps the grip on his fishing pole, but it is loose and his legs dangle over the edge of the ship. He hasn’t had a fish bite in the last half an hour, and fishing has always been more fun with Usopp and Chopper than by himself.

Brook doesn’t pressure him to talk, but something stings in Luffy’s chest, and he wants to talk. It just isn’t always easy to find the right words to do so.

Grumbling, Luffy scratches his scalp and frowns. “Sunny seems a bit lonely, doesn’t she?” I’m lonely.

“Ah, I see.” Brook takes a sip. “This isn’t how it went the last time, correct?”

A statement, but one that doesn’t need elaboration. Clearly, a lot of things are different this time around.

The skeleton hums. “What did you do the last time around, Luffy-san?”

Oh. He never did tell, did he?

“I trained with Rayleigh for two years. It’s a bit weird not doing that, but I don’t think he can teach me anything else. He kind of stopped teaching me the last time, too, near the end.” He misses Rayleigh, in a weird way. If it hadn’t been for him, he would have never made it as far as he did.

It didn’t matter in the end.

“Well,” Brook drains the remains of his cup and grabs a fishing pole from the rack. He jumps up, lithe as ever, and takes a seat next to Luffy. “Is there something different you could train this time around, maybe a bit earlier? You’ve never been one for sitting still, Luffy-san, yohoho!”

Something nibbles at his bait, the tug on the line a gentle thing.

There was something, wasn’t there?

“Preferably something that doesn’t require fighting the World Government, if that’s alright with you, captain.”

Luffy laughs, loud enough to scare away whatever had found his fishing rod interesting for a brief moment. “There is something I could do! It’s a bit weird, though.”

“If you are saying that, then pardon me for being a little scared in advance, Luffy-san!” Something bites at Brook’s bait and the skeleton nearly drops his fishing rod into the ocean. (Unfair! How come the fish took his bait?)

“Reel it in, Brook! Don’t let go!” He calls, grabbing the musician by the waist and tugging him back towards the deck. There is loud, horrified screaming as, with one mighty tug, Brook reels in a giant eel half the size of their ship.

It’ll probably taste great grilled!

(And in the morning, he will wake Zoro up and take him to the nearest Marine base. Much to Nami’s horror, they will wreak havoc and in the confusion, his first mate lifts a pair of seastone cuffs from the holding cells.

It is not a prison camp in Udon with Jaggy, and Luffy is not forced through the same drain on his energy as back then. Yet, little by little he will reach that level of tolerance again - where his fingers no longer feel numb, but merely sluggish. Where his limbs no longer ache to get rid of the seastone cuffs and he can force himself past his limit. Where seastone is nothing but a hindrance, and not a wall he can’t possibly scale.

Luffy has people to protect.

Seastone will not stop him this time around.)

***

“What’s the matter, Luffy?” Sanji grabs a plate, picking out Nami’s favorites on the table and setting them in front of her - but his eyes stay on Luffy. “You aren’t stuffing your face yet. Did I use too much salt or something?”

That’s silly. Sanji knows Luffy doesn’t care about too much or too little salt, because Sanji’s food is always the best and the amount of salt is always just right, but Luffy recognises the words for what they are.

Concern.

And he wants to tell Sanji that everything is fine. The food looks great, and there is more than enough for their small crew, even though the empty chairs around the dining table never fail to make his heart stutter in his chest, if only for a moment.

But everything is not fine.

It should be - it is such a small, stupid, tiny, inconsiquential thing that Luffy himself can barely understand why he didn’t start eating straight away. Barbecue marinated sea king, piping hot buns, salad (ew), and there’s–

There’s even red bean soup.

He can smell it from here. That sweet aroma of rice cakes having simmered in the soup for so long that his mouth should be watering at the mere thought of the texture on his tongue. By all rights, Monkey D. Luffy should be drooling at the veritable feast of a dinner spread, his stomach grumbling and hands grabbing everything within reach like usual.

But his stomach is a bag of lead, and there is a lump in his throat that is making it too tight. He has a glass of water in his hand before he knows it, and he drinks and drinks but it doesn’t help.

“Luffy?” Sanji is asking again, brow furrowed. Nami has put down her cutlery, and Brook, despite having no eyes (Yohoho, skull joke!) is looking at him with something that is a bit too akin to worry for his liking.

They shouldn’t be worried about their captain.

“I’m fine,” he grins. “There’s so much food, Sanji! I don’t know where to start!”

None of them make a move, and maybe that is on him. They know him too well at this point, and while that would normally be a point of pride, Luffy wishes they would look anywhere but at him right now. “Seriously, stop worrying, you guys.”

Zoro, wonderful, amazing, his, gets up from his seat and grabs the bowl of red bean soup from the middle of the table - and plops it down right in front of his captain.

All Luffy can think about is the most wonderful little girl with the brightest laughter and the biggest smile. A girl who deserves the entire world, and enough food to fill her belly and then some.

But not yet.

For now, she lives in a ruined village. She weaves hats and scrapes together all that she can manage, and twice a year, she gets to eat a bowl of rice. The rest of the time, she makes do with barley grass and whatever else that can be scavenged from the forest floor.

“Luffy,” Zoro slides into the seat next to his captain, but he stares at the bowl of soup. He doesn’t try to touch him, and Luffy is glad for it. He isn’t sure he can keep it together if he does. “Don’t let it go to waste. She wouldn’t want you to.”

His face must look weird, caught somewhere between a smile and a frown. Luffy sniffles and nods, lifting the bowl up to his face. It is as sweet - as cloying - as it can possibly get, and the taste of it is enough to make him want to cry.

He doesn’t, though.

And maybe it is another testament to his crew, and yet another reason why he loves them so much, but they don’t ask. They don’t push him to share, and Luffy wouldn’t know what to say either way.

It’s my niece’s favorite, might be an option, but he doesn’t feel like elaborating.

Otama will have to endure it a little longer. No matter how much he wants to rush to her side, he knows he can’t. Soon enough the world will shift and bend beneath his will. A country will fall, only to rise again, stronger than before.

Kaido’s regime will end in due time, once the Akazaya Nine reappear.

Once Momonosuke and Luffy have clasped hands and declared the alliance official.

(Once Torao has been cut from his strings, and Mingo has been beaten into a bloody pulp. Once Dressrosa, too, has been freed from its false ruler.)

But that is a long time away, so Luffy drinks his soup, licks his lips and burps loudly. “Thanks for the food!”

***

With nothing but desert for miles, Alabasta is the perfect training ground for destructive techniques. Vivi has pointed out several locations that are too remote for her people to get to, and where the climate gets too harsh for even the most seasoned travelers.

It means he can spar with Zoro and not be worried about Nami yelling at them for destroying another town in a frenzied (but friendly!) sparring match. They can kick and punch and scream themselves hoarse until they are too tired for fists and swords, merely rolling around in gritty dust that gets under their clothes, grabbing and pulling and biting - fighting so dirty that Sanji had called them inhuman one day.

(He spars with the crew, too, but never in the same way. Sparring with Zoro is always special.)

Alabasta, with all its deserts and desolate mountain ranges, is also perfect, because Luffy can disappear for a day and beat up everything around him until he no longer feels like choking on his own tongue. Can stay away from his crew, when all he can see is their blood in the shifting sand.

Can practice his ryou.

Except… It isn’t going great.

Letting his Haki flow is no longer something that comes easy to Luffy.

His body is young and untrained. Not yet scarred by war and loss.

Worst of all, though, is when he can feel it flowing and he closes his eyes, ready to punch, except–

His head is a mess.

As soon as he closes his eyes, all he can see is blood staining the ground. Three swords having warped into a color of rusty red. Nami’s mouth open in a scream before Zeus had–

The flow of Haki falters, a mere inch from his target on the ground, and it does nothing but put another physical dent in it.

“Argh!”

All this time. All this training and yet he has managed ryou only twice.

Pathetic. What kind of King is he?

He punches the ground over and over and over, and it does nothing to soothe the burning inside of him. It rages, like a volatile fire that can’t spread, and his entire body hurts from his toes to the roots of his hair. “Stupid! Stupid! Just– Urgh!”

He slumps over on the sandy ground, fingers curling and scraping until dirt clumps under his fingernails and his forehead is raw and bleeding from sharp pebbles.

The howling, swirling sand is an ever present companion.

Until there are footsteps.

Ah, Zoro found him.

A knee pops - Zoro squats down, and then both of his hands are on Luffy’s cheeks and forcing his head up to look at him.

“We have time, captain.” The swordsman says and flicks a pebble from his skin. “We’re better prepared this time. We won’t die. Everyone is working hard to prevent it - it’s not just up to you, Luffy.”

And that’s just it, isn’t it?

He isn’t alone.

Luffy gives a wet laugh. The sort of laugh that gets half stuck in his throat, and then he leans back, clenches his fist, and lets his Haki flow again.

A deep breath. One, two, three times.

Behind closed eyes, the ground is still painted in blood and tears and disaster.

But it isn’t the blood of his friends. His family.

It is the blood of those that hurt them. Those that took them from him.

The ground shatters beneath his fist, exploding into tiny shards of grit and dust and sand that settles in his hair and clothing and lungs.

When Luffy looks up and blinks the debris from his eyes, Zoro has jumped far enough away that he has solid ground underneath his feet and a grin on his face, all teeth and pride.

“There’s my King.” Says his first mate, and suddenly the flush on Luffy’s cheeks is not from the glaring sun or the heat of the desert, but from the look in Zoro’s eye.

***

They leave Alabasta in a hurry.

Not so much because they need to get somewhere fast, but rather because Sanji leaves to go grab groceries, and then returns with three overflowing bags in a full sprint. “We got company!” He yells, throwing a bundle of bread onto the deck and scaling the side of their ship. “Smoker’s here, for some damn reason.”

Is it wrong to be a little excited about seeing the grumpy Marine?

Probably.

Luffy grabs Zoro by the waist and propels them off the ship, his other hand firmly on his hat. “We’ll hold them off! Get the Sunny ready to sail!”

There is a chorus of agreement just as the two of them land in a sand dune off the shore, and Zoro dusts himself off like getting thrown across a distance by his captain is just what his life has come to.

“Straw Hat!” Smoker has drawn his jitte, and Tashigi stands shoulder to shoulder with him. There is a distinct lack of other Marines, but Luffy can see a cloud of sand in the distance, and that’s probably the rest of the G5 trying to catch up to their superior.

Smokey has always been impatient.

“Why are you in Alabasta, Straw Hat? I highly doubt it’s for a vacation, and I’d rather not see another monarchy toppled. The paperwork for that kinda’ sh*t is annoying.” Smoker sneers, the kind that is probably meant to be intimidating, but Luffy can’t stop smiling.

“Shishishi! Not toppling anything right now, Smokey!” He doesn’t topple the local government every time, does he? Eh, maybe he does, but who cares. “I just wanted to show Zoro off for a bit.”

Smoker chokes on his cigar. If he hadn’t been made of smoke, it might actually have gotten stuck in his throat, but instead he just dissolves his neck and turns it solid in the next second to blurt out a; “What the f*ck?!”

Did he say show off? Whoops.

“I meant show around! Yeah, that. Totally!”

“Luffy,” Zoro doesn’t spare him a glance from where Wado is wrestling with Tashigi’s sword, clashing together over and over again. “Stop talking.”

So Luffy does, and lets his fists do the rest of the work.

***

He lies in the shade of a mikan tree, listening to the scritch-scratch of Nami’s pencil against a sheet of paper. Broad strokes, small strokes. Slow strokes. Fast strokes.

Luffy wonders what she is drawing, but he keeps his eyes closed, hat over his face.

Overhead, the sun is a glaring disk in the sky for the third day in a row - unrelenting as it drags the temperature up and up until they all drip with sweat. Not even Alabasta felt this sweltering on a hot day. “Nami,” he groans, puffing up his cheeks. “I’m bored.”

“Then sleep, or something,” she says. Scritch-scratch. Scritch-scratch. “I’m sure Zoro wouldn’t say no to a nap.”

“No, Nami, it’s too hot to nap together! I’ll melt! And then the whole ship will smell like burning rubber and then you won’t be able to work and I’ll just be a goopy puddle.”

The scritch-scratch stops abruptly. “That’s– that’s not how that works, Luffy… And besides, I can’t work with you whining in my ear, either!”

She whacks his hat for good measure, the straw bending under her hand, and it flops half off his face. He blinks at the harsh sunlight and groans again. He flips onto his stomach and kicks his legs in the air, folding his arms under his chin.

“What are you drawing? A map?”

Nami heaves a sigh, and Luffy knows he is either two seconds away from getting punted out of the orange grove, or she is going to indulge his curiosity for a little bit. He hopes it’s the latter.

Sue him, he’s bored out of his skull and the heat is getting to him.

Besides, Sanji threw him out of the kitchen an hour ago for trying to crawl into the freezer, and he has nothing better to do than pester Nami until Sanji forgets about the ban just in time for lunch and cold drinks.

“It’s not a map,” she relents, wiping sweat from her brow. It leaves a streak of coal on her forehead, and Luffy manages to hold in a snicker. “It’s blueprints. I have some ideas for upgrades to my staff and the bazooka, too. I might not have as much control of the weather as I apparently did the last time around, but I’m pretty sure Usopp and Franky can do something with these extra dials I picked up.”

Luffy kicks his legs, a breeze tickling his feet. “That sounds cool!”

She cracks a grin. “You bet it is.” Nami boops him on the nose, and Luffy lets out a sneeze.

The scritch-scratch starts again, and Luffy blinks.

It’s almost time, isn’t it?

It’s almost been two years since Robin left.

“Hey, Nami?”

“What now?”

“Can you call everyone on the Den Den and tell them to meet us at Sabaody?” He wrinkles his nose. “Or I guess Fish-Man Island for Franky and Chopper, but you know what I mean.”

Putting down her pencil, Nami looks at him.

“Can I–” She clicks her tongue and averts her eyes back to her drawing. The edges of the paper crinkles under her hands. “Can I ask why now?”

“Because it’s time.” He says, and hopes it is enough for her.

Sighing, Nami folds up her paper and gets to her feet. “Alright, then. I don’t know why I was expecting anything else out of you. Guess I’ll start calling everyone.”

He pretends not to see the fond smile on her lips, so he jumps up and grabs her in a quick hug, nuzzling his cheek against hers. “Thanks!”

Luffy cups his hands around his mouth and yells; “You guys!”

Sanji sticks his head out of the kitchen, Brook right behind him, and Zoro snaps awake from his third nap of the day. “Set sail for Sabaody! Let’s go pick up the others!”

“Yohohoho! Splendid idea, captain!”

“Ah,” Sanji pales. “We should probably do another provision run before that.”

Everything will be fine, Luffy is sure of it.

***

The navy, for all their bad ideology and power hungry fools, give them a good fight.

On their way to Sabaody, the Thousand Sunny docks at an island that just so happens to have a corrupt Marine base, and so of course the Straw Hats can’t leave well enough alone. (As if Luffy would pass up an opportunity to punch some snot nosed marines in the face.)

His crew - wonderful, small, soon-to-be-whole-ish - claw and fight their way through wave after wave while baring breaking a sweat. It is glorious, and Luffy’s grin is bordering on feral - the faces of the Marines nearly sh*tting their pants are enough of an indicator. Half of them fall under the will of his conqueror’s Haki, and his crew toy with the rest.

It is no wonder that Luffy finds himself in the middle of a celebratory banquet again, three hours later, indulging in too much food and the booze flowing freely, much to Zoro’s delight.

His first mate is content leaning against a building at the edge of the dancing crowd, mug in one hand. For all that Zoro looks bored to the regular villager, Luffy sees the smile curled at the edge of his lips as he sips his drink.

“Whoops, sorry!”

Zoro jerks, not from fright, but from the weight of a little girl bumping into his leg. Some of his beer sloshes over the rim, but he merely reaches out a hand to steady the girl before she can tumble to the ground.

“S’alright,” he says. “No harm done.”

And maybe there isn’t any harm done, but Luffy sees the exact moment Zoro’s hand clenches just a tad too tight on the girl’s shoulder. He is moving before he can think better of it, making his way through the crowd, food abandoned.

Because the girl can’t be more than eight, with a wide smile and big eyes and pink hair.

And Luffy knows exactly who Zoro sees.

Zoro jerks back, and the girl does nothing more than blow him a raspberry and take off with a giggle towards a group of kids a bit further away.

She might as well have shot him, for all that he stills and stops breathing.

His chest doesn’t move and his hand stays in the air, where the girl had been.

“Zoro,” says Luffy, grabbing the hem of his robe and dragging him away from the loud crowd of villagers. There is an alley to their right, and Luffy decides it will do for now. “Come on.”

His first mate walks with him, guided by that firm hand on his robe, but his steps are uneven, and Luffy knows.

He knows exactly where Zoro’s head is at.

(Because he is there, too. Sees a little girl, her kimono covered in the blood of her father - drenched in it. There is dirt on her knees, from where she had thrown herself at his still warm body, begging for her father to get up. He sees her laughing, crying, unable to mourn and grieve as her last parent is ripped away, executed, just like Oden had been.

And it isn’t fair.

None of it is.

Too many lost their lives in Wano.

They will not lose them again.)

His first mate, chest finally, finally, dragging in a ragged breath, looks Luffy in the eye and says, “I can’t let him die again.”

You didn’t let him die the first time, he wants to say. Orochi would have killed him one way or another.

It is not what Zoro needs to hear, so Luffy keeps that to himself. Instead, he grabs his hat and puts it on Zoro’s head with a grin. “I know,” he says. “He won’t die this time.” Every syllable is bound together with a golden thread made of promises and hope intertwined.

Zoro leans forward, forehead resting against Luffy’s chest, and the brim of his hat folds upwards in a weird crease against his skin. His first mate nods, each drag of straw on his chest a welcome sting of reality. The fingers curling around his waist say the same - good, promise, safe.

Luffy winds his arms around Zoro and kisses his hair.

***

It is chaos. Utter, uncontrollable chaos, and for once, it isn’t Luffy’s fault.

Well…

It’s probably his fault, considering he is sort of responsible for Robin. And Sabo is his big brother. And both of them have just blown up an auction house.

Nami is screeching, caught halfway between seething and the same odd sensation of pride that Luffy shares. But all he can do is smile and laugh as he grabs Robin and Sabo, tugging them away from the scene of the crime. “Shishishi! It’s good to see you!”

His sandals slap against Sabaody’s mushy ground, and Sabo’s heeled boots are sinking with every step. Robin laughs, the little snort that she always hides behind a hand. “It’s lovely to see you again as well, captain. Although I do apologize for the rather explosive welcome.”

Their first mate, for all that he can barely read the number on the groves, shoots Robin a feral grin, because if Robin and Sabo hadn’t blown up the auction house, Zoro probably would have.

Luffy leads them to Shakky’s bar, weaving through the steady stream of tourists, the scenery, the park rides. The slaves.

He slams the door open, out of breath, and hands above his head as he whoops and yells about winning the race. “It was never a race, Luffy!” Sabo insists as he leans against the doorframe, huffing and puffing in his many layers of clothing. Which is clearly a lie, Sabo is just a sore loser and–

“Luffy!” Usopp leans back on a bar stool, arms on the counter. “Sorry, but Shanks already left. He didn’t want to stick around and risk running into you.”

He looks good. Great. Confident.

(Like the fears in his head no longer scare him. Like he has missed Luffy as much as Luffy has missed him.)

“Usopp!”

He throws himself forward, slingshotting into his sharpshooter and sending them both sprawling to the floor with a groan and a dammit, Luffy, why?!

“I missed you!”

Then there is snot running down his long nose and into Luffy’s shirt and he couldn’t care less because Usopp is here. “I missed you too, you stupid sh*t!” They stay on the floor until Usopp’s sniffles taper off and he wipes his nose and eyes. “Huh? Where’s the rest of the crew?”

Zoro is the one who answers, because Luffy is still working on stifling his sniffles. “Franky and Chopper are meeting us at Fish-Man Island.” The first mate is already sitting at the bar, head resting in the palm of one hand as he gazes at them.

One might mistake him for being half asleep, but Luffy knows him too well.

The swordsman’s eye linger on a small, round scar on Usopp’s arm. On the thin line of blemished skin on Robin’s ankle. On the way Usopp keeps one arm slung over Luffy’s shoulder as they struggle to stand up without letting go of each other.

They spend the night at Shakky’s bar, waiting for Rayleigh to coat the Thousand Sunny.

Luffy sits, blanket thrown over his legs, nestled on a couch between Robin and Sabo while Usopp tells one grand tale after the other to a soundtrack composed on the spot by Brook. How he, apparently, single handedly took down a dinosaur with nothing but a string of floss, and it ends up being so ridiculous that Zoro snorts and inhales his sake in a coughing fit. Sanji slaps their first mate on the back, one hand still stirring the pan of fried beans that Shakky ordered him to make while Nami marvels at her new Log Pose, courtesy of the Revolutionary Army.

Fish-Man Island lies ahead, but Luffy isn’t worried. He snuggles further into the soft blanket and leans into the warmth and company of his family.

Chapter 9: Zoro - The Blind Hem Stitch

Chapter Text

“What do you want to do?” Zoro asks one night when Luffy has joined him for his watch. His captain is sitting on the railing, overlooking the grassy deck of the Thousand Sunny, swinging his legs back and forth and getting his foot stuck between the white fencing.

Luffy tilts his head and scrunches his nose.

Zoro really wants to kiss him, but he knows they will just get distracted, and they have been drifting through Paradise for far longer than they should have. Luffy needs to make up his mind, and Zoro has to let him think for a second.

It ends up being closer to half an hour, in which Luffy hums and haws and scratches his head over and over again.

The swordsman manages two full rounds of the ship before a rubbery hand stretches to grab onto his robe and guide him back up to the railing.

“So?”

Luffy hums. He swings his right leg with a particular sharp motion and his sandal tumbles down below. “Whoops.”

He flings his remaining sandal off and instead settles with his feet tucked under himself. He looks like a kid, and Zoro can almost forget that this is a man who will burn countries and governments for his people.

“I don’t want us to split up again. I don’t think I can handle that.”

Well, at least he is being honest.

Zoro won’t say the same, not out loud at least, but he shares the sentiment. They aren’t complete yet, and even Jimbei’s absence is starting to cut deeper every time he sees Franky or Brook at the helm instead of their helmsman.

The sea has been unbelievably calm for the past two days, and Nami is predicting a storm tomorrow. “So, we drift and continue teaching them whatever Haki they can pick up for two years?”

“Yeah,” says Luffy, only to start chewing on his lip a second later. “Unless they figure they want to go, I guess. I think Robin might know about us.”

“Luffy,” he says. “I’m pretty sure the whole ship knows about us. Except maybe the sh*tty cook.”

“Shishishi! Silly Zoro! Not that part. The whole us being from the future part.”

“Oh…”

Yeah, okay, that’s a bit problematic.

But hey, if it’s just Robin figuring it out, then they will probably be fine, right?

***

As it turns out, it is not just Robin.

And they aren’t fine either.

Robin finds out first, and Luffy sort of just spills the beans. He can’t even be mad, because Robin would have confronted them either way, and it is easier to talk about everything that happened when it is just the three of them.

Everything isn’t fine, but it does get better.

With every person finding out – or getting told – it gets just a tad bit easier for his captain to breathe. (Himself? Not so much.)

From time to time, Luffy still wakes with a scream in his throat and his hands scratching at his chest until it bleeds into the fabric of their hammock. Zoro stays awake more nights than not, and when he does sleep, the rest is fretful and disjointed at best.

Being around the crew helps, though.

Even when they leave. Even when they wave goodbye to Robin and Usopp and Franky and Chopper–

Recovery is a slow thing, and Zoro isn’t certain their coping methods are the healthiest. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because both him and Luffy get better with every passing day.

Maybe one day they will sleep and wake without tasting ash on their tongues, and hear their friends’ dying screams ringing in their ears. Maybe showering won’t always feel like he is trying to wash off the blood of his nakama, until his skin is scrubbed raw and the scarlet drops dripping down the drain are his own. One day, food will taste like food again, and the people of Wano won’t be starving.

It’s a long way off, Zoro knows this.

But they are getting there, slowly but surely.

***

Days pass. Then weeks. Months. A year.

Soon, it’ll have been two, and their little crew of five will expand again.

Zoro can’t wait.

“I’m excited, too!” Says Luffy, with his cold nose smashed against Zoro’s collarbone. The weather outside is too hot – the kind of heat that makes sweat run down their skin until they are soaked in tiny, dripping pearls and none of them have the patience for it. Luffy ordered them to drop anchor and gather inside the aquarium bar an hour ago.

Nami, for all that she really should be relaxing, looks far too busy with a calculator and the monthly expense report. The frown on her face is telling, and Zoro won’t even be surprised when their allowance is going to be cut again.

Not that it matters all that much. At least he doesn’t have the debt from his first life.

Standing on a ladder, with Brook holding onto the bottom of it, Sanji is feeding the fish in the tank – some special mix that he has conjured up to make them thrive a bit more in captivity. Brook is tapping out a few notes and humming, and it is only a matter of time before the skeleton abandons his task to fetch a notebook for whatever he is composing.

The quiet lull of the Sunny and the crew puttering about is the best thing Zoro has ever heard.

“Zoro,” grumbles Luffy, wiggling about in his lap – the seat he has claimed since they got there, even when the swordsman insisted on cleaning his swords. (Well, not like he hasn’t done it with Luffy in his lap before, it just makes it a lot harder, balancing three swords and a rubbery, impatient mess.) “I’m bored…”

“Then pester the sh*tty cook or something,” he says. “Stop moving or I might nick you.”

“Nah, Zoro would never,” huffs Luffy, and he is still wiggling.

“Oi, cut it out, you idiot!”

Sanji’s polished shoes hit the hardwood floor, and the glare he shoots to the back of Zoro’s head would kill a lesser man. “Moss-head probably needs you to stop wriggling around before it gets awkward, captain.”

Tilting his head, Luffy puffs out his cheeks and hooks his chin over Zoro’s shoulder to look at the chef. “Whaddya’ mean?”

Sanji chokes, and if Zoro turns his head, he is certain the man’s face will be splotchy and red – so the swordsman turns his head, because this is far too amusing a conversation to pass up. Brook is giggling and Nami’s pen has stopped moving.

“Yeah,” Zoro grins, making sure he hooks one arm around Luffy’s waist. “Whatever do you mean?”

Reaching into his bag, Sanji rustles around and grabs a handful of fish feed before chucking it in their direction. Joke is on him, though, as Luffy merely stretches his neck and chomps it down before it can land in Zoro’s hair.

“Can it, lovebirds! Some of us are all by our lonesome… What if I never find someone to spend the rest of my life with?”

Luffy laughs. “But you’ll be with us for your entire life, right?”

The exasperation filling the room is downright hilarious, but the swordsman is also aware that Sanji’s bullsh*t meter is getting filled up pretty fast, judging by the slant of his visible eyebrow. If they start fighting in here, Nami will punch all of them.

He pats Luffy’s side. “Not quite what he meant, Luffy.”

“What else would he mean?” It isn’t even that Zoro is surprised by the question. Luffy probably doesn’t quite get what Sanji is trying to say here. That what he is aiming for is less nakama and more of a love-of-my-life kind of thing.

Granted, Luffy is also the type of person who hunted Zoro down straight after Wano and smacked him with a wet kiss on the cheek that might have been sweat, saliva or blood. Or a mix of all three. (It was definitely a mix of all three, who was he trying to kid?)

Zoro kissed him back and that had been that.

Luffy’s view on relationships is a bit skewed, Zoro knows, so he does his best to rectify it and give him an example that will make sense to his captain’s brain. So Zoro looks at Luffy and leans in just a bit. “Like Pudding,” he says and draws back, watching Luffy’s eyes grow wide.

“Oh!”

Sanji frowns. “What’s food got to do with this conversation? Actually, I don’t even want to know what sort of kinky stuff the two of you get up to. Just don’t do it in my kitchen.”

Oh, if they’re getting up to something, it won’t be in the kitchen. But just to be a dick, he smirks and waggles his eyebrows.

Crawling out of Zoro’s lap and elbowing him in the process, Luffy bounds over to Sanji and pulls him into a quick hug. “No, it’s not food! Although I am a bit hungry… But no! Pudding is Pudding!”

Zoro grins. “I should clarify that Pudding is a person, not food.” Luffy is hanging off of Sanji like he is a junglegym, and the surly chef can’t seem to decide whether to throw him off or indulge his captain a bit longer.

Nami puts down her pen. “What kind of name is Pudding?”

Giving a jolly little laugh, Brook draws the attention of his captain, who abandons Sanji, just to jump at the skeleton and climb up to sit on his shoulders.

Then Luffy draws in a large gasp of air and swivels around so fast that Brook has to grab their captain’s legs so he doesn’t fall from his high perch. “I have an idea!”

Zoro knows that look. He knows that look, and while it has been a while since he has last seen Luffy this excited about something; there is also a gnawing pit of worry in his stomach that springs forth at the sight. Zoro has known him for a long time now. He knows how Luffy’s brain works.

It’s easy enough to imagine Luffy’s thought process… Sanji is sad, but Pudding makes him happy. Sanji hasn’t met Pudding yet, and likely won’t given that Sanji has already shrugged off the shackles of his former last name. So if Big Mom isn’t there to set everything in motion, then–

“I want chocolate. Pudding’s chocolate.” Luffy licks his lips and Zoro hates everything.

Frowning, Sanji grabs a bar of chocolate from his inner pocket and shakes it in his captain’s general direction, but Luffy only spares him a brief glance. “Not that chocolate! It has to be Pudding’s!”

This is a terrible idea. “I know I don’t tell you no often, because that’s Nami’s job,” the swordsman says.

“Hey!”

“So I won’t. But I think it’s a bad idea.”

Half bending over and half trying not to let Luffy drop to the floor, Brook gives another little hum. “What is so bad about Pudding’s chocolate, Zoro-san?”

There are so many things he can say to that. He doesn’t have to appease Brook first, though; no the important part is trying to appeal to Luffy’s sense of adventure and act as a stop button before they create a problem that they can avoid this time around.

“Do I need to remind you that you made the self-imposed rule that we can’t go ahead of the rest of the crew? I’m pretty sure going there would count as going ahead.”

Luffy frowns, slumping into Brook’s afro. “Hm, I guess…” Then he perks up, and Zoro already dreads what comes out of his mouth next. “Oh, but what if we go by ourselves? We wouldn’t be taking Sunny or the rest of the crew, but we could drop off Sanji so he can go meet Pudding! And there’s that really fast way of getting there if we can find the Twig lady!”

It–

It isn’t a terrible idea.

And it technically won’t count as going ahead…

They need to get a copy of the Road Poneglyph anyway, and if they can get Pudding as an ally through Sanji, then–

Dammit, he shouldn’t allow this.

He really shouldn’t, but… He has always followed his captain’s orders.

Zoro sighs and shakes his head. At least Wado, Shisui and Kitetsu are clean and rearing for a fight. The metal is practically vibrating in his lap, and who is he to deny them some extra bloodshed? “Huh, I guess you do make a good argument, captain.” When have I ever been able to say no to you anyway?

Nami frowns at her table, and then she shoots quick glances between Zoro, Luffy and a very confused Sanji. “Whatever you just decided to do, I don’t ever want to know about - got it?”

***

Between their contacts at the Revolutionary Army, a direct line to the Whitebeards’ spy network - courtesy of Haruta - it doesn’t take them long to track down a smaller delegation of Big Mom’s children. More specifically; Brûlée.

For once, Luffy’s idea of wearing disguises to get in and out without causing too much of a fuss isn’t actually a bad idea. (Zoro is tempted to wear the Heart Pirate’s boilersuit, but Luffy won’t let him, dammit.)

So they dress themselves up in weirdly colorful outfits that should have been offensive to fashion itself, but Zoro is also fully aware that these outfits belong to Bon Clay – and to disrespect the garments is to disrespect him.

Zoro holds his tongue, but the bright pink suit grates on his nerves.

Even more so when Sanji points at the swordsman and starts laughing his head off until he can’t breathe. Only to stop and chance another look at Zoro before going off again. “You look like a guava!”

Brook and Nami aren’t faring any better, all bundled together on the grassy deck while the swordsman wills his cheeks to stop burning.

“Keep laughing, you damn hyenas, and see what happens!” Zoro isn’t pouting, but it is a near thing.

For what it is worth, Luffy has somehow managed to find a mint green dress and squeezed himself into it. His hat is nowhere to be found, and Zoro has no doubt that it is perched delicately on the dresser next to their hammock.

No need to announce to Big Mom just who is going to break into her territory.

“Sanji,” Luffy waves his hand and the cook comes closer with tentative steps and a raised eyebrow. “You gotta wear a disguise, too!”

The sh*tty cook abruptly chokes, leading Brook and Nami to dissolve into snorts at the look on his face. Eyes scrunched and his chin as far back into his body as physically possible.

Frankly, it looks like he has gotten a whiff of milk that has gone off by two years. Zoro laughs at him, because he deserves a bit of revenge. Hopefully the cook ends up in a neon green tutu skirt.

The swordsman laughs until he doesn’t, because the outfit Luffy digs out of the treasure chest actually looks normal. A plain, white suit that probably belongs at a wedding and– oh, it does belong at a wedding.

Sanji’s wedding.

“Huh?” Sanji’s hands are already clutching at the fabric, stroking it and assessing the thread count. “This actually ain’t half bad - where did you get it, Luffy?”

“Put it on, hurry, hurry!”

Perhaps it is telling of how much this crew loves their captain, but Sanji merely chuckles and heads inside to try it on while they let Luffy ignore the question and keep his secrets. Zoro isn’t sure when Luffy could have gotten his hands on something like this, because isn’t this the exact suit that Sanji wore at his first, somewhat disastrous wedding?

Throwing open the doors and exiting with a long stride, Sanji twirls and takes a bow. “How do I look, Nami-swan? Captain?”

Clapping his hands, Luffy lets out a whoop while Nami wolf whistles. “Not bad!”

Without his input, Zoro’s lips jerk up into a smirk and he quirks an eyebrow at the chef. “You look like you could crash a party.” He says, and Sanji blanches.

Laughing, Luffy grabs his first mate and his chef, hurtling them off the Thousand Sunny and onto the island they have docked at. They run through the forest, pushing each other into the dirt like children. Somehow, Sanji manages to keep his suit infuriatingly clean.

On the other side of the Paradise island, a small delegation of Big Mom pirates are currently getting drunk and celebrating their recent spoils of war, failing to recognize an additional three presences in their midst.

Instead, they share their booze with a green haired man, and offer a leg of lamb to the person in a green dress, currently licking meat juice off their fingers while devouring half of their buffet selection. At the edge of the circle of dancing, drunk pirates, stands a man clad in white.

His fingers shake around the cigarette he raises to his mouth, and he tries to keep up casual conversation with the sh*tfaced pirate patting his back like they have known each other for years.

They haven’t.

In the morning, the crew wakes up hungover, some still partially wasted, and missing their captain. Charlotte Linlin’s daughter Brûlée is nowhere to be found, and the crew only have vague memories of three faces that none can remember having ever seen on their ship before.

(Big Mom is going to absolutely murder them when they get back to Whole Cake Island, isn’t she?)

***

Dropping Sanji off at Chocolate Town is a bit like dropping off a kid for a play date.

“Pudding makes this really yummy chocolate, so bring some back for me. Have fun!” Luffy shoves Sanji through a mirror located across from Pudding’s shop. “We’ll come pick you up when we’re done!”

The sh*tty cook’s face is burning and it’s amazing and Zoro really shouldn’t laugh at him, but Zoro is also a dick and there is no point in holding back. Before Sanji can retaliate, or smash the mirror, Luffy is pulling his first mate along by the arm and deeper into the Mirror Dimension.

Brûlée is slung over his shoulder, bound and gagged and desperately screaming for anyone to come help her with the two maniacs lugging her around like an old suitcase.

“Where to first?” Asks Zoro, because it is not like they had a plan beyond ‘get in, get a copy, get out’ and only now does he realize that planning more steps is probably what keeps people from dying in an Emperor’s territory.

Humming, Luffy’s sandal clad feet slap against the flooring of the strange topsy-turvy tiles as they run past a mirror of a guy shaving his–

Zoro looks away and keeps his eye firmly on his captain.

“Just up ahead! We’ll break in through the library, shishishi!”

Brûlée climbs half out of the bag they have managed to stuff her inside, and the swordsman nudges her back inside with a press of his blade against her throat.

“Eeep!” The cloth doesn’t allow for much complaining, but the Charlotte daughter sure does her best to make a racket.

Then his captain shoots him a look that Zoro can’t quite decipher, tongue poking out and brows furrowed. “Hey, do you think we’ll run into the donut man?”

One of these days, Zoro is going to strangle him. “Let’s hope not.”

***

Luffy is going to get diabetes if they don’t hurry up and get off this weird island made of cake and frosting and is that candy floss?

As soon as they step foot outside of the mirror, Zoro’s boots start sinking into the flooring made of marshmallow with a biscuit border. The whole house is ridiculous; swaddled in white and pink, with the furniture made from too many types of food that Zoro can’t name.

His captain stuffs Brûlée into a wardrobe made of crackers and slams the door shut. Then he pauses for a moment before opening it again, much to Brûlée’s silent, screaming horror. With tears in her eyes, Brûlée weeps as Luffy’s hand reaches for her and–

Promptly grabs a spare clothes hanger made of liquorice.

“Sorry - just wanted a snack for the road.” Then he shuts the door in her face and drags Zoro outside before he has a conniption. His captain tears off the handle of the house too, and shoves the chocolate doorknob into his mouth alongside the liquorice.

“Yum!” Luffy nearly chokes on the hook, but he smashes a fist against his chest until he burps. Loudly.

Seas, why did Zoro have to fall in love with this absolute wonderful dork of a man?

“Alright, enough stuffing your face. How do we get to the Poneglyph?”

He hadn’t been here the last time, and the uncharted territory doesn’t sit well with the swordsman. At least their cook hasn’t been taken hostage, but the whole situation isn’t exactly ideal either. Two people infiltrating an Emperor’s home… that shouldn’t be as exciting as it is.

Luffy shoots him a feral grin, reaching a hand up to adjust a straw hat that isn’t there. “We’ll be sneaky,” he says, and Zoro’s own face twists into an answering smirk that promises just as much danger and excitement as Luffy’s. “Or as sneaky as we can be, shishishi.”

But here’s the thing.

Zoro and Luffy aren’t sneaky.

The swordsman remembers all too vividly that banquet at Onigashima in which Luffy and him ended up being the opposite of sneaky, and he isn’t keen on repeating the incident. If they do, Nami might commit mutiny and murder them in their sleep if they come back with an Emperor on their tail.

So they are sneaky.

They make their way through a castle made of cake and children named after drinks and tea and food, and they only have to knock out a few of them. (They stuff them in closets, just like Brûlée, and Zoro wonders whether Luffy just wants to see how many he can fit in there, or if he genuinely thinks it is a good idea that totally isn’t going to backfire on them later.)

Because it does backfire. Spectacularly.

Zoro is drenched in ink and Luffy is pressing a sheet of paper over the Poneglyph in Big Mom’s vault when the alarm starts blaring, a loud wailing capable of waking even the deepest sleeper. Oh well, at least it didn’t go off until they were leaving anyway.

The swordsman gives the two of them a mental pat on their backs as they pelt through the island and trip over a spray can of cheese, because hey, at least it’s progress, right?

Grabbing Brûlée from the wardrobe in that silly house made of candy, Luffy casts one last, mournful look at the liquorice clothes hangers until Zoro drags him through the mirror by the front of his dress. “I’ll buy you liquorice later! Let’s go!”

“But I didn’t get to fight the donut man…” Luffy pouts when the door gets kicked in by General Cracker and Zoro shatters the mirror behind them. They disappear into a topsy-turvy world, one Poneglyph copy richer and a confused Emperor none the wiser.

***

There is a smear of ink on Luffy’s cheek and Brûlée is a snotty, quivering mess on his shoulder, but the smile he gives Sanji is blinding, when their chef gets dragged back into the Mirror Dimension. “Did you see her? Did you have a good time?”

This is the point where Zoro pokes fun at Sanji for the way his ears instantly turn a bright, luminescent red, but…

The smile on his face is wide and there is not a cigarette in sight. The cook swipes a piece of hair away and turns his gaze upwards, and Zoro finds himself falling silent.

Because Sanji looks genuinely happy, and that is a rare occurrence that should be allowed to linger.

“It was… It was really fun, captain. She’s such a great chocolatier - her tempering skills are amazing and her sculptures are gorgeous and, and, and–” his face splits in a grin and his hands shake just a bit when he unbuttons his suit jacket. “She gave me her Den Den number. She wants to trade recipes.”

Luffy laughs so hard that it jostles Brûlée. She gives another muffled shriek that goes largely ignored except for the punch that Luffy throws at her side. “That’s great, but did you bring me some chocolates?”

Shaking his head with a fond sigh, Sanji produces a bag of chocolate truffles which are instantly devoured by their captain. Then Luffy takes off, leaving both Zoro and Sanji to scramble after him with matching shouts of dammit, wait up!

A rubbery arm grabs them and hurls them through a mirror. They barely manage to land on their feet, whirling around just in time to watch their captain lean back and put his entire weight into throwing Brûlée back through the mirror they just came out of.

Huh, they’re back on the Thousand Sunny.

Zoro and Sanji glance at each other, but neither of them stop their captain from smashing the mirror in the men’s quarters. (Nami will bill them for it later, no doubt about it.)

Dusting off the hem of his torn dress and stepping between the pile of shattered glass, Luffy’s stomach gurgles. “So what’s for dinner?”

***

The crew is in a tizzy after their arrival in the New World.

The Den Den Mushi rings and Zoro jerks awake. This particular call has been a long time coming, and the swordsman does nothing to curb his ensuing, slightly psychotic grin.

Sanji exhales a ring of smoke and raises a curly brow at him. “Oi, what’s with the scary face?”

There is talk about the emergency signal being a trap, just like Thriller Bark, but Luffy only gives a shishishi and answers the ringing snail. “I’m Monkey D. Luffy and I’m going to be the Pirate King!”

Nami and Usopp screech in tandem, attempting to drag Luffy off the snail. “You idiot, now they know we’re here!”

Bumping his shoulder against Zoro’s, Sanji takes a deep drag of his cigarette. “Nothing to worry about, I take it?”

He is fishing, and Zoro is not going to take the bait. His grin persists even as he shrugs. “I wouldn’t say it’s nothing,” He stresses. “But it’s something we’d rather not go without.”

The crew bends to Luffy’s whim to explore, and the Thousand Sunny is reluctantly steered as close to the island of Punk Hazard as possible. They draw lots, just like the last time, and a small party consisting of Zoro, Luffy, Usopp and Robin set foot on land that is no longer scorching, but tropical.

Usopp’s knees are quivering, and he clutches Kabuto close while Zoro shrugs his shoulders and lets the top of his robe slip down. He doesn’t miss the way Luffy’s eyes linger on the sweat dripping down the column of his neck.

Drenched in sweat, a sword in his mouth and a dragon ahead of them, Zoro’s veins are buzzing with excitement. His skin is clammy to the touch when Luffy folds his hand into his and gives it a squeeze.

A shiver runs down his spine when they finally spot the towering facility on the other side of Punk Hazard in the distance. It’s anticipation and anxiety and hey, Torao is right on the other side.

Throwing an arm around Zoro’s shoulder, Luffy puts a warm hand on his cheek. “Ready?” He asks, and Zoro nods.

“Lead the way.” He says, drawing Luffy into a kiss full of teeth and swollen lips. It is anything but graceful. It’s rough and desperate and Luffy gives as good as he gets until Robin clears her throat and they pull apart.

“Whoops, sorry!” His captain laughs.

Neither of them are sorry, and Robin knows it.

It’s fine, though. They have an ally to find and a sea to conquer.

Chapter 10: Jimbei - The Backstitch

Chapter Text

Fish-Man Island, with all of its problems and bigotry and cultivated fear, is nevertheless the place that Jimbei comes home to. It is the place he has stayed for the past two months - a short break for him and his crew before they disappear out into the world once more.

He smiles and nods and waves when he passes by the children, the adults, the workers and the guards who call out to him. Those who slap his back and greet him with warm voices. The children, most of all, are eager for his tales of the world Up Above, and Jimbei wishes he could tell them that the world is a good place.

But he has seen too many things.

Has killed too many from above, to think of the world as an inherently good place. Jimbei wishes, not for the first time, that Fisher Tiger was still here to guide the Sun Pirates instead of him.

(What good has he done, really? Apart from being the Government’s dog?)

So he strays from the palace, then the city, until he finds himself in the sea forest.

It is quiet there. A peaceful place, between the trees and the fish, and Jimbei can just be Jimbei. Well, until his nap is interrupted by the thunk-thunk-thunk of a hammer on wood.

“Like this, uncle Den?” A voice, grating like metal on wood, yells out loud.

Although, Jimbei supposes, it might not have been a yell at all, and it is merely the way the owner’s voice usually is. He blinks one eye open, gets up from his spot in the sunny, seaweed grass, and glances at a clearing in the sea forest that should have been devoid of most Fish-Men at this time of day.

It is not deserted.

A man, if he can be called that - with hulking shoulders painted a vivid red, blue hair and metal knees clicking together, is sitting with a small contraption in his hand and hammering away at it. A human, or so Jimbei presumes.

Next to him is Den, the bering wolffish merman; local shipwright, and part time sea forest researcher. He clasps the metal man on the shoulder. “Not so hard, Franky! You’ll smash it to pieces-don!”

Both of them laugh, and it is an uncommon sight these days.

Rarely do they have human visitors.

Rarely do they stay for as long as this one has.

Rarely do they call a merman uncle.

It is the first time Jimbei has seen Cyborg Franky in person, although he has not been ignorant of the whispers in the corner of his home. A member of the Straw Hat pirates; a human raised by a Fish-Man, and a pirate who went on his knees before the Three Princes and begged to learn. Culture, fighting styles, whatever they were willing to share.

Jimbei walks away, unable to remove the image from his mind and his chest stings. His tattoo, the sun on his blue skin is a reminder that not all humans are good. That most are not to be trusted, but… isn’t this what Otohime had yearned for? (Is this what could have been, had she not died? If he had done his job properly?)

***

Whitebeard is coming.

Now these humans, at least, are welcome on Fish-Man Island at any time, and it has been far too long since Jimbei has seen the Good Old Man. The entrance is already crowded by the time he gets there, and Neptune stands proud at the head of it all, backed by his three sons.

Careful to not topple over anyone or shove an elbow into an elderly mermaid, Jimbei makes his way through the gathered crowd, his eyes on the incoming ship slowly descending the sea. Pulling free from a clump of giggly mermaids, he goes to stand next to his King.

“Ah, Jimbei! Here to greet Whitebeard-jamon?” Asks Neptune, golden trident in hand and Hoe lounging by his side.

Jimbei nods, doing nothing to hide the persistent smile on his face. “Yes. It’s been far too long since we have crossed paths!” He laughs, because if he doesn’t, he might cry. (The last time he had seen the Whitebeards had been for both a celebration and a funeral. Thatch’s wake, followed by Teach’s decapitated head on the deck of the Moby, staring at him with dull eyes of hate, hate, hate.)

The Moby Dick docks to cheers and cries of joy, and Whitebeard greets Neptune with a clasped hand and a gurarara! that shakes the very ground on which they stand. It reverberates in Jimbei’s chest, and the warmth in his body can’t be attributed to sunlight alone.

“Ace-kun!” He calls as his friend steps out of the ship, as shirtless as the last time they had crossed paths.

“Oh, Jimbei!” His face goes wide with a grin, and then Fire Fist is throwing himself at Jimbei for a hug. Ace-kun jumps off half a second later and flicks his hat up with a flaming finger, calling back to his ship, “Chopper, come on already! It’s not cheating if Luffy’ll be here soon!”

Chopper? Did Pops get a new son or–

A reindeer with a blue nose, of all things, steps out of the Moby Dick on unsteady legs, head cast down as it trots over to Ace-kun. Its ears flick back and forth, as though attempting to find him by voice alone.

Then it talks. “Idiot! I’m not sca–scared or anything! But it feels like cheating, so I’m not going to look up until Luffy gets here!”

Ace-kun just laughs, as though getting scolded by a reindeer is something that happens to him these days. Of course, they are technically in the New World, so Jimbei really shouldn’t be surprised, should he? (He is. That’s a walking, talking reindeer.)

“It’s totally not cheating! Besides, how are you gonna’ get around with your eyes on the ground?” Ace-kun smacks the reindeer’s flank hard, but the animal barely moves from the force of it.

From the corner of his eyes, Jimbei sees Den and his nephew approaching. The cyborg clicks with every step he takes, like his robotic knees still aren’t used to the damp and unforgiving atmosphere of Fish-Man Island.

The man stops, whips up his sunglasses, and then he grins so wide that Jimbei has to take a step back. “Chopper-bro!” Yells Franky, covering the distance between them in a noteworthy sprint.

The reindeer, Chopper - for all that he had his head to the ground a second ago - jerks up and gives an equally excited yell; “Franky!” There are stars in his eyes as he stomps his hooves, smoke practically blowing from his nostrils as he gushes over whatever upgrades the cyborg has done since he saw him last.

Jimbei stares.

Ace-kun smacks his shoulder and Jimbei blinks moisture back into his eyes. “He changed his mind real quick, didn’t he? Hahaha!”

Then another ship - entirely too colorful and with a sunflower figurehead, (or is that a lion?) descends from above, and the reindeer gives a happy squeal. He kicks his legs in a little prance, with tears in his eyes. “Luffy!”

Cyborg Franky, too, strikes a pose. “Super!” He grins at the incoming ship and–

And Jimbei feels something in the air. Something as sticky as the pearls of dewy water clinging to his skin, and whatever it is feels charged. A current buzzing just beneath his skin. Swirling, mixing danger and apprehension with adventure and anticipation. A shift in the current of his world.

It is a whirlwind from that moment on.

Prince f*ckaboshi greets the newcomers with courtesy, and only then does it register that he is looking at the Straw Hat pirates. At Ace-kun’s little brother Luffy, and the first mate Zoro-kun, who brought them Blackbeard’s head in a dripping, bloody bag and demanded no payment for his actions.

There are people hugging and crying left and right, as though they haven’t seen each other in years. The reindeer introduces Stefan to Straw Hat Luffy, as though the dog is more important than the befuddled Emperor standing four feet away. (If Jimbei didn’t know better, he’d go as far as to say the Good Old Man might be jealous.)

“Guarara! Neptune! I think a banquet is in order, don’t you?”

***

The party is well on its way by the time Jimbei manages to wriggle away from the Whitebeards and have a moment to himself. He has missed them, but he needs a refill of his drink, and Zoro-kun is standing next to the open bar, nursing a glass.

“Long time no see, Zoro-kun,” he says, waving his hand for another drink. There is a mug of something in his hand three seconds later, but Jimbei can’t make out what it is.

“Jimbei,” Zoro-kun’s eye is on the row of bottles stacked behind the bar, his fingers twitching. He should probably say something before the swordsman launches himself over the bardesk to try and top off his drink himself.

“I take it you made it to Thriller Bark in time?” Jimbei gestures to the entire room - the… skeleton is jamming out rather violently on an electric guitar in the shape of a shark, and he has been joined by at least half of the Straw Hats and a good handful of Pops’ people too.

Is that Marco with breadsticks up his nose?

“Yeah. Thanks for the ride, by the way.” Zoro-kun, thankfully, doesn’t vault over the bar and remains standing next to it, sipping his drink. “Definitely wouldn’t have made it in time without you.”

Considering Jimbei managed to stop Zoro from wandering off their tiny vessel a total of three times on their short trip together, he is inclined to believe him.

A panting guard slams the doors open, the force of it so fierce that the seashell door knob shatters against the coral wall, and the banquet hall falls silent.

“Intruder in the Princess’ tower!”

Zoro looks at his cup, swirling the liquid around just once before he downs the drink and slams it on the table. “Dammit, Luffy!”

The entire hall erupts into chaos.

***

Only Jimbei, Ace-kun, Zoro-kun and Neptune make their way to the Princess’ tower. The Straw Hats, strange as they are, had been halfway out the door before Zoro-kun waved them off. They had promptly resumed the festivities alongside the rest of the Whitebeards. (What a show of trust, Jimbei thinks, cowed in the face of a man shy of twenty two and already his presence is that of a seasoned pirate.)

Neptune shoulders the doors open, as only someone of his stature can do, and inside the tower they find one pet shark, a princess, and a rubber man.

“What do you think you’re doing-jamon?!”

Luffy-kun squints and tilts his head, arms crossed. “What am I doing? What are you doing?”

The Princess, for what it is worth, appears unharmed. Her eyes, though, are red and irritated, and the back of her hands glitter like fish scales with drops of spattered tears.

“The Princess must stay in the tower for her own safety!” A guard brandishes his spear, helmet falling into his eyes. Neptune is practically frothing at the mouth.

“Eh? That’s stupid! She wants to go out, so she should go out.”

Jimbei can’t quite follow that train of logic, but Ace-kun sighs and shakes his head. “Luffy, it’s not that simple. There’s someone with a devil fruit after her, so if she steps outside there might be an ax flying in her direction. She’s safer here.”

Zoro-kun’s jaw tightens, and his hand rests on his swords, still ever present at his side.

He does not draw them.

Luffy-kun looks Ace-kun in the eye, a vein in his forehead popping and his eyes so dark that Jimbei might have mistaken them for the depths of the seafloor below them. The man points one finger towards the Princess, and growls out, “She isn’t living! Don’t you dare say that it’s safer for her to stay inside her entire life! Don’t you dare say she doesn’t deserve to be free!”

Something passes between the brothers, because Ace-kun gives off a flinch that twists his whole body, and Straw Hat Luffy’s Haki is brimming with so much anger that it is a miracle the water around the castle hasn’t evaporated.

It is a blistering, simmering fury that boils the very air.

All Jimbei can make out is Fire Fist’s Haki reaching out to his brother’s, echoing a sorry, sorry, sorry. For what, he can’t say. Ace-kun has nothing to do with this situation. It is not his fault that the Princess can’t leave her tower.

Luffy-kun’s yelling, however, is enough to make the Princess burst out in another round of big, shiny tears.

“I’m sorry!” She wails. “Please don’t fight!”

“We’re not fighting.” Ace-kun grabs the brim of his gaudy cowboy hat, tucking it further down and hiding his face. Jimbei - maybe because he is standing next to him, maybe because he has known Ace-kun for so many years now - spots the tremble in his shoulder when Fire Fist bites his lower lip so hard that it cracks and bleeds. “I’d just forgotten something important, that’s all.”

“My daughter’s living arrangement is not up for discussion-jamon! The tower is–”

Jimbei feels it before he sees it. Frustration, helplessness, infatuation - that familiar whistling sound of something large and metal cutting through both air and water.

An ax heads straight for Princess Shirahoshi, but before Jimbei can even move, Luffy-kun jumps to meet it head on. He rears back a fist, snarling, and shatters the thing before it can get within ten feet of the crying Princess.

A shower of glinting metal falls around them - a cascade of sharp, silver droplets - and Luffy-kun lands on sandal clad feet. He turns on his heel, jumping up to jab a finger straight in Neptune’s chest.

“If she’s in trouble, then let us deal with it!” He throws out a hand and gestures to their strange gathering, standing at the gate of Princess Shirahoshi’s tower. A Whitebeard Commander, a Warlord, and the pirate captain’s own first mate. “Ask us for help!”

Neptune, shaking fiercely, cracks his mouth and not a peep comes out.

Jimbei’s legs feel unsteady despite having both feet on the ground.

“Ask us!” Luffy-kun yells again, never once shying from Neptune’s angry gaze. The one who averts his eyes first is the King of Fish-Man Island.

“Please,” he bites out through gritted teeth. “Save my daughter.”

***

Whitebeard sits this one out.

(“The four of you will be enough,” he says, as if he knows something they don’t. Or at least, something neither he or Ace-kun knows, as Luffy-kun and Zoro-kun merely give twin feral grins in response.)

Jimbei, at the behest of King Neptune, takes them in the direction of the ax that Vander Decken had thrown, and much to his own surprise, finds himself in the Noah District.

(What will they think of him? Bringing three humans to an area already so fraught with tension and hate that the children can barely breathe through the stench of it. It clings to all of them, and it is Jimbei’s second-greatest failure. The first will always be his inability to protect Otohime.)

The trail takes them deeper, deeper, deeper still, and Jimbei ignores the eyes on him. Ignores the way the whispers sting and the children’s hungry, hateful eyes cut into his skin. “Here,” he says, when the current shifts again and the trail goes cold.

The building standing in front of them is tall but dilapidated, much like the rest of the district. Ace-kun simply nods, but Luffy-kun looks at his swordsman and co*cks his head. “Ready?” He asks, and it has an undercurrent of something more to it.

Zoro-kun slides a sword in his mouth and draws two more.

“Ready when you are, captain.”

Jimbei blinks and they are gone, but the screaming inside is a cacophany of confusion and terror and unbrindled anger. One moment, Jimbei is ready to take Vander Decken into custody as they should have done so long ago, and the next he is facing Hody Jones (Arlong fan, human hater, old guard–)

And then… and then Jimbei’s entire worldview is changing in ways he couldn’t have begun to predict. Zoro-kun kills Vander Decken where he stands next to Hody, throat slashed and then the man falls silent.

Hody, though– Hody pumps himself full of pills, words spilling from his mouth like he can no longer hope to contain any of them, and Jimbei… Jimbei is swallowed by a fury so blinding that he can’t feel himself breathing.

Otohime.

Otohime.

His greatest failure. Their biggest hope– taken from this world by Hody!

The conspiracy comes apart under the flaming fists of Portgas D. Ace, the swords of Pirate Hunter Zoro, and one Monkey D. Luffy.

Jimbei takes down pirate after pirate, relishing in the blood on his hands as he kicks and throws and works through his emotions. Above the chaos of it all, Hody fixates on Straw Hat Luffy, and although Jimbei would give anything to be the one to wring Hody’s neck, his hands are too busy dealing with cannon fodder that seems to have no end.

Monkey D. Luffy, a rookie from East Blue, punches and bites and tears away at Hody like a cat playing with a broken toy. The Fish-Man stands no chance as his bones crack and break and is ground to dust beneath the coming storm and a flurry of fists.

Panting, soaked in blood and guts, Ace-kun smiles at his brother. Zoro-kun cuts the limbs off the last remaining stragglers. Jimbei should be horrified - should be considering how to get rid of these monsters that have washed up on the shore of his homeland, and yet–

He has seen enough. He doesn’t need a prophecy to tell him of what is to come and who stands before him. Jimbei looks at the man standing over the crumbled form of Hody Jones, a blood dripping fist raised to the air and a grin on his lips. He looks at a King in the making.

One already crowned.

***

Straw Hat insists on another banquet once he has ripped apart the truth behind the assassination of Queen Otohime, and ensured that the Princess can comfortably swim outside of her tower without fear of wayward axes. As if every part of this adventure is just a regular day for him.

Too confused, and perhaps a bit awed, Neptune agrees without much protest.

Before Jimbei can blink, he finds himself seated between Ace-kun and Zoro-kun at a table brimming with food and drink enmasse. The Whitebeard Commander devours an entire rack of grilled eel in two seconds flat, inhaling it as though it might be his last meal.

Zoro-kun, for what it is worth, appears to still be adverse to drinking anything that doesn’t have a semblance of alcohol in it, and is steadily guzzling down his fourth mug of the relatively early night.

A little over two years ago, on the Moby Dick and with Blackbeard’s decapitated head crushed beneath Pops’ boot, that same swordsman had looked Jimbei in the eye and told him of a captain that would burst into your life like a burning star - that once he claimed you as his, there would be no escape.

Watching Luffy-kun across the table, one hand scarfing down food and another stealing from his crewmates left and right, Jimbei can’t help but agree.

It is a bit like looking at a god clad in human skin. Sunlight teeming just beneath his flesh, and every crack of a smile lets out a trickle of it. Like everything Jimbei has ever needed is this one human, wrapped around a crew so amalgamated and strange that surely, surely, they have room for one more?

And isn’t that a strange thought?

He is a captain. A Warlord. A friend of Whitebeard - the greatest man on these Seas. He has never had the urge to join Pops’ crew. Ally himself with them, yes, but never join them. He is a Fish-Man, proud of his heritage and culture, and Whitebeard is an honorable man, but he is human. (Seas, what would Fisher Tiger think of him?)

And that is the catch, isn’t it?

Monkey D. Luffy, the future Pirate King, takes one look at Jimbei blatantly staring at him, and with a blinding smile says, “Join my crew!” like it has already been decided.

This human, this god, has deemed him worthy, and Jimbei can’t breathe.

What does one say, when a god offers you a place by their side?

There is only one answer, and looking into those eyes made of stars and sparks and adventure, he can think of nothing else to say but, “Alright.”

Next to him, Ace chokes on a fishbone. He coughs and hacks, and once he finally beats his chest into submission - can breathe through the tears in his eyes and the flush in his cheeks - he rounds on Jimbei. “What?!”

His new captain laughs, the sound loud and clear like golden bells. Reaching up to pat Jimbei’s shoulder, Zoro-kun raises a mug, nose wrinkling as the foam from his beer tickles his nose.

“Glad to have you,” he says, and downs his fifth mug with a sharp grin. Predator. Demon. King’s Guard.

Jimbei can’t help but smile back.

(Shyarly finds him in the crowd a little later, tugging at his sleeve like she is still a soft child with her first crystal ball and eerily accurate predictions. “That one,” she says without pointing, but Jimbei doesn’t need her to clarify who she is talking about. “Is favored by the sea and bells alike. By past and present and future.”

Jimbei cannot give out prophecies like Shyarly, but he does not need to. With Monkey D. Luffy as his captain, Jimbei knows that he is finally in the right place. That red sun has marked his skin for years - is it really such a wonder that he would end up following a man that shines just as bright?)

***

The press of the floor against his forehead is both cool and calming. He rests, as much as one can in a kowtow, in front of what was once his crew.

(His people, shattered and confused as he bows and pleads for them to understand. He knows they want to, but can’t - not the way Jimbei does. They don’t look at Straw Hat Luffy and see what is beyond the veil. They don’t hear the whispers of the Ocean herself in his ears, proclaiming him a King before his time. They don’t feel his Haki, so tender and bright, meeting Jimbei’s own with a welcome back, ours, finally.)

“Jimbei,” Aladine says, a hand clutching at his trident. “Are you sure?”

And he can hear the unasked question in there. Why not Whitebeard? Why this boy?

He wishes he could answer in a way they could understand and say; It is only right. The Ocean and her King beckons me. But he can’t, and so he only says; “I am sure.”

Jimbei raises his head. He looks each of them in the eye, holds the gazes of his friends, his family, as he sits and knows that what he is doing is far from a mistake. One day, they will see that this was a fork in the road in which their paths were always destined to split.

Aladine heaves a sigh. “Nothing we say will change your mind, will it?”

He shakes his head. “I have been a captain for a long time, Aladine. I think it is time for me to step back - not from the world, but from this. I believe Otohime would have approved of my choice.”

It is a low blow, and one he knows he doesn’t necessarily need. His crew knows him - knows that he never does anything without weighing all his options and about four hundred different outcomes.

Swimming forward, Aladine tugs Jimbei up on his feet. “Stop,” his former first mate says. “You don’t have to convince us of anything, captain. Seas knows you could do with a bit more selfishness.”

It sets the crew snickering, and Jimbei should probably have felt something other than affection at their blatant disregard of his authority. Still, there is something that weighs him down, and he needs to get it off his chest. “Once I leave with the Straw Hats, my position as–”

“We don’t need you as a Warlord, Jimbei. Whitebeard has claimed our home as his territory for years now, and I pity any marines who dare step foot on our shores. You leaving your position will hardly change anything. It’ll be a joyous day once you’re no longer their lapdog.”

Aladine is right. The Old Man will take good care of his home on his behalf, just as he has done all these years prior. Jimbei can tell himself that his Warlord status has kept the marines and the World Nobles at bay, but every fiber of his body knows that Pops’ Jolly Roger has done a much better job at it than he ever could.

“Thank you,” he says, and Jimbei bows down low again. Drops into a kowtow again with a smile so wide his tusks threaten to split his lips.

“Captain, stop that already!”

***

Reverence is a dangerous thing, Jimbei knows, but standing at the helm of the Thousand Sunny, the wood beneath his finger smooth and well cared for, well… perhaps reverence is not an inherently bad thing at all. The Straw Hats, Jimbei’s crew, look at Luffy-kun like he hung the stars and the moon and the sky itself.

Reverence is a dangerous thing, and the way Zoro-kun looks at their captain goes beyond that. For a moment, Jimbei can’t help but wonder if the swordsman sees it, too. His one eye remains trained on his captain, who is hugging his brother goodbye on the shore of Fish-Man Island, and there is a tilt in the man’s shoulders.

By his side, his swords - all three of them - hang as an extension of himself, and it hits Jimbei, then. Zoro-kun, with his one eye, does indeed see the storm brewing beneath Luffy-kun’s skin, and he welcomes it. This force of nature compressed into a living, breathing being, and the man is devoted.

Such devotion is equally as dangerous as reverence.

“Ah, I nearly forgot!” Luffy-kun rummages through his back pocket and sticks out his tongue. He whips out a piece of dark fabric and throws it at King Neptune with a laugh. “Just in case,” he says, as the grumbling King removes the cloth from his face and unfolds it.

A skull wearing a straw hat glances at all of them - the Straw Hat Jolly Roger, in the palm of Neptune’s hand.

“I couldn’t possibly-jamon.” Neptune’s voice rumbles and his eyes glance over at Pops standing just next to him. The giant of a man throws his head back and laughs, like a rookie hasn’t just claimed ownership of a territory that already belongs to an Emperor.

“I know. But just in case.” Luffy repeats, one hand reaching up to fiddle with his hat.

(Just in case, he says, like he knows by the way that Whitebeard’s laugh turns into a cough that the Good Old Man’s protection won’t extend to them forever. Just in case, he says, like the Jolly Roger of a rookie crew will one day deter marines and plundering pirates alike.

Jimbei is inclined to believe him.)

“Everyone!” Calls Luffy, bouncing away from his brother and wrapping a rubbery arm around the mast of the Sunny. “Set sail!”

“Aye, aye, captain!” They yell back, and suddenly the ship comes to life under the hands of a crew that, despite their separation for a few years, falls right back into routine. The sails are rigged, cargo tied down - each and every one of them has a purpose, and Jimbei stands at the helm of it all, watching it unfold.

They emerge from the depths of Fish-Man Island and into the New World. From one storm to the next, as it should be.

Like any good helmsman, Jimbei turns to Straw Hat Luffy, standing ahead on the bow. “Where to, captain?” He expects a few different responses. Adventure. Treasure. Anywhere.

What he gets is a laugh. “It’s a mystery!”

Jimbei’s face twitches, because that is not any sort of an answer he can actually use.

But then his new crewmates - captain, swordsman, navigator, sniper, cook, doctor, archeologist, shipwright and musician start laughing too, as though Luffy’s words make perfect sense to them.

A mystery, huh?

Jimbei can live with that.