Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part V

As July shutters to a close, Usopp becomes a presence in their lives. It’s not unexpected—Zoro can’t imagine anyone meeting Luffy and not wanting to reorient their whole world around him. Even so, he and Nami let Usopp make his own excuses. Their hauling gear is more complicated to repair than he thought, and as soon as that project ends he just-so-happens to notice the stock of damaged nets and crab traps still in need of work, too.

He doesn’t charge, just lashes his dinghy next to theirs and sits on the deck, twisting metal with pliers as Nami pours over tidal maps in the wheelhouse and Zoro runs through his training routine in the hot late-summer sun.

And the company is… nice.

For all of his quivering and quaking, Usopp has a determination about him that he and Nami have muddled over the years—worn down by time and circumstance. He shows up between jobs with an inconsistent consistency, ready to chatter away about the boats he’s repairing, or how preparations for the boardwalk festival are coming along, or anything—local history, town gossip, and a healthy dose of highly-entertaining bullshit.

And when—finally—there’s nothing left to fix, he arrives with a bolt of red fabric twisted in the bottom of his pack—then another, then another—as the weather shifts and work ashore turns from rebuilding the docks to building stalls for the boardwalk festival.

Like it’s the most natural thing in the world, Usopp constructs costumes and decorations right there on deck, despite the salt water and the stinging breeze and the sea monster always seconds from dragging any of them into the ocean without warning. And despite the fact that he has his own workshop on dry land, shared with the Vegetables and full of tools, too.

The biggest surprise, though, is the kind of unexpected bravery that lurks beneath the surface of his skittish exterior. While he works, he does the one thing neither Zoro or Nami have been entirely willing to do, perhaps out of some unspoken fear that they’ll break the spell of the summer—

Usopp asks.

Mixed in with the endless chatter about his own life, he peppers Luffy with a hundred-thousand questions—and Luffy answers what he feels like answering, always amused (and always the nothing questions, like whether he poops or if he can eat rocks, not the big questions) until he calls Usopp boring and demands to know more about the human world instead.

And then—in the blink of an eye—the shore starts to flicker on at night, paper lanterns illuminating the water’s edge in the distance. As summer turns to fall, the coast comes alive.

The boardwalk, normally a strip of shame between Arlong Park and Mariejois, blossoms with sound and color—and soon Nami is packing her bags, marking each day with a new kind of buzz, watching the weather like a hawk as she readies for home. The seasonal changeover is always the most unpredictable—which is half the reason why (so Usopp says) it’s the most important time to celebrate, to offer up the best of what they have to the gods of the sea.

One night, half in jest, Nami asks Luffy if he wants anything—because it is a holiday for him, for them, after all. They learn very quickly that Luffy has a long memory when it comes to food.

So, like every year before, Zoro stays behind.

And yet—unlike every year before, he isn’t left alone.

- - -

The first night of the festival proper, Usopp stomps down the dock in full costume—red-cloaked and sun-masked—with a cloth bag slung over his shoulder and a scowl on his face. Zoro is waiting at the edge, arms crossed as he leans against the piling. Next to him, Nami’s loose-tied dinghy bobs in the waves, ready for the world’s laziest getaway.

At his approach, Zoro raises an eyebrow, but before he can say anything Usopp just hisses, “I can’t believe she made me do this. I feel like a criminal!” and shoves the bundle into Zoro’s arms without stopping.

In response, Zoro just rolls his eyes. “You are,” he says, slinging the bag over his shoulder.

If possible, Usopp’s scowl deepens. “I work for a criminal organization—I’m not a criminal,” he says, already backing away. “There’s a difference.”

Just to see how high he can spike Usopp’s blood pressure, Zoro drawls, “Is there?” entirely for fun, and not because he’s been waiting (impatiently, because Luffy is over there he doesn’t know what to do with himself).

“Yes, in my heart,” Usopp hisses back, “Now would you please just go so I can get back before anyone notices?” Usopp waves toward the dinghy—and then out at the harbor proper, where Nami’s boat is still anchored.

The marina is utterly quiet, nearly deserted as even the fishermen who live on their boats have descended on the town to run stalls and man booths. There is almost no one around to see their exchange, and there won’t be for hours. Still, Usopp glowers and for a moment, Zoro wonders if he’s going to shove Zoro into the water himself.

Far slower than is strictly necessary, Zoro lowers the bundle into the dinghy and does his level-best to keep a straight face while Usopp seethes, “Zoro!” and bounces on the balls of his feet, seconds from fleeing.

“Are you really telling me you’ve never stolen anything from those yachts up in Mariejois before?” Zoro asks, trying desperately not to laugh.

That brings Usopp up short, anxiety (momentarily) forgotten. “Well—no,” he replies, “but—but this is a fundraiser!”

“He caught the guy,” Zoro retorts, climbing down from the dock. “They owe him a reward, at least.”

“There’s a whole thing at the end—the memorial, the offerings,” Usopp hisses. “He’ll get plenty of food!”

“Yeah, well—this is what he wanted. Apparently it’s the principle of the thing,” Zoro replies. “It’s your own fault, anyway. You gave him the idea.” With one hand, he unties the knots holding him tethered to the wood, then pulls out one of the oars.

Usopp throws his hands up in aggravation. “You’ve been encouraging him! And I don’t see why you couldn’t have done this yourself if you weren’t going to pay!” (As if he hadn’t been the one to volunteer anyway, claiming Zoro would spend half the evening wandering through town, rendering the whole thing pointless.) Then Usopp yanks his yellow costume mask down, and (tone frustrated, but not seriously angry—not really) says, “Just tell him I said hi, okay?” before he turns on his heel and stomps away, huddling into his cloak as he goes.

With a lazy wave, Zoro snorts, “You got it,” and pushes off into the water—

—just as Luffy surfaces next to him and yells, “Thanks, Usopp!” all the way down the dock, his voice echoing across the marina.

Usopp jumps, nearly tripping over the edge of his cloak as he yelps a horrified, “T-That’s not my name! I don’t even know the guy!” that cracks halfway through—before scampering off.

As Luffy laughs alongside him, Zoro begins rowing, unable to help the snickers bubbling up out of his own throat, too.

“I thought you were going to stay back at the boat?” he nods toward the harbor as he heaves the oars back and forth, cutting through the water with a practiced ease. Luffy giggles again, wet and half-submerged, and when Zoro glances over he sees the eyes of a sea monster watching him over the surface, following the curve of his arms as he rows—an unreadable expression on his face.

Zoro blinks at him, momentarily faltering.

When he catches Zoro’s gaze, Luffy floats onto this back, pouting indignantly—and melodramatically.

“No way,” he says, as though Zoro might have really asked him to starve on his own—all trace of severity gone. “That’s so boring.”

Zoro snorts again, maneuvering one oar just enough to jab Luffy in the side before returning to his stride—and Luffy smacks the little rowboat with this tail, rocking it enough to splash water over the side. Zoro curses as he nearly loses his grip on the oars and glares.

“Oi! You really are going to get us seen at this rate,” he grumbles, not entirely serious—and Luffy just rocks the dinghy again. “Hey!”

“Zoro!”

“If you keep doing that, half this shit won’t even be edible anymore. Human food’s not supposed to be wet,” he gripes back, locking one of the oars to lift Usopp’s bag out of the water already starting to pool in the hull. When they’re back on dry land, he’ll have to tip the boat—if Luffy doesn’t sink the whole thing first. As if on cue, Luffy’s face twists into a grin that Zoro knows means trouble—so Zoro holds the backpack out over the ocean. “I’ll do it,” he says, shaking it a little. “Your loss.”

Luffy sticks his tongue out at him but retreats, giving the oars a wide berth too as Zoro settles back down to begin rowing again. “I’d still eat it,” he pouts. Zoro rolls his eyes. Of course he would.

By the time he ties off to the stern, Luffy has started swimming back and forth below the dinghy like something out of a horror story—rocking the boat just enough to be annoying, but not enough to do any real damage. Utterly incapable of behaving for more than five fucking minutes.

He surfaces again as Zoro hauls the bag up on deck, already chanting, “Snacks! Snacks! Snacks!” in barely-contained glee before Zoro has even fully boarded. For a moment, Zoro wonders if he’ll be dragged down by the leg before he can step over the rail—instead, Luffy splashes him.

It’s only marginally better.

“You’re such a pain,” Zoro gripes, and Luffy just snickers—so in retaliation, Zoro steps into the middle of the deck and tips the backpack upside down, emptying the whole thing directly onto the wood in a shower of cardboard and wax paper and aluminum wrapping. He blinks, almost surprised despite knowing what to expect.

Usopp has outdone himself to such a degree that Zoro might actually question his claims about petty theft—because he’s managed to steal half a snack stand’s worth of shitty supermarket junk food. Breakfast cereal, potato chips, candy bars, taffy, dried fruit, jerky, preserved pastries, and half-a-dozen things Zoro doesn’t even recognize. It is a veritable feast.

Immediately, Luffy splashes up, lifting his torso over the side of the boat as he whines, “No fair, Zoro!” in something close to genuine despair.

Grinning, smug, Zoro replies, “That’s what you get,” already moving toward the hatch in search of his own provisions for the night. Behind him, Luffy lets out a kind of incomprehensible grumbling noise, and then there’s the sound of a flailing behemoth as he hauls himself on deck.

When Zoro returns with a wooden caddy of beer (just moments later, really, because there’s a strange kind of energy in the air, a vibration in the moonlight he can feel under his skin and he doesn’t want to be away too long) Luffy is already tearing at the packaging, gnawing at the edge of a cardboard box with his sharp teeth.

Under the bright night sky, his massive tail is a beautiful thing, its wet iridescence reflecting back the orange supermoon with something like an otherworldly glow—half red-invisible in the darkness, half bright—one to match the gleam of his eyes, alert and mirror-like in the darkness. Fully out of the water, the translucent fins on his arms look soft, almost. Deceptively so, because Zoro has touched them (briefly, fleetingly) whilst swimming and he knows just how dangerous they really are.

Luffy is fully out in the open, now—something horrific and dangerous for them both on any other night—but the hush over the harbor feels like a safety blanket. A shield. Around them, the ocean seems half-alive, as though holding its breath waiting for something. Waiting for them.

As he sits, settling down on crossed legs in front of Luffy, three feet and a pile of supermarket junk between them, Zoro pulls a beer from the caddy and laughs.

Luffy is a body of lean muscle and predatory grace, the closest thing to a god Zoro’s ever believed in, and he’s chewing on a wad of wet paper.

“I can’t vouch for the packaging, so don’t blame me if it sucks,” Zoro says, uncapping his drink while Luffy frowns almost thoughtfully at the taste. Then, as Zoro takes a swig of his beer, Luffy spits out the cardboard and peers inside the box. Grins. Practically crows with delight.

The next however-long is carnage as Luffy demolishes everything he’s brought, each mediocre-to-disgusting thing a new and exciting marvel. As Zoro drinks he haltingly explains what each is to the best of his ability, but Luffy is only half listening, anyway—not that Zoro minds, really. Luffy is happy. And Luffy’s joy is contagious.

- - -

When Luffy finally sprawls out, having torn his way through enough food to make a lesser man gag, they’re surrounded by a blast radius of convenience store debris and the distance between them has shrunk. All limbs and spikes, he takes up half the deck (an exaggeration, maybe, but Zoro feels like he does—his presence a kind of all-consuming thing) and sighs happily into the cooling night air.

Zoro is on his third (maybe fourth, maybe fifth) drink, pleasantly buzzed—and later, maybe, that will be his excuse.

Without thinking, marveling in a way he rarely can, Zoro traces a finger down the length of Luffy’s tail, following the flow of his strange, half-visible scales. It feels unnatural, cold on the surface with a definable, radiating heat underneath that gives the illusion of wetness even out of the water. Muscular, firm but pliable, necessarily powerful.

Under his touch, Zoro feels Luffy still—and then he almost freezes, too, realizing what he’s done. But he doesn’t, because Luffy doesn’t seem to mind. He’s just looking at Zoro. Watching him. Licking his lips around shark-sharp teeth.

Drunk and stupid, Zoro takes a long pull of his beer and wonders if Luffy is still hungry.

And he wonders how different chips and seawater taste when there’s only salt left.

And instead, what actually comes out of his mouth is a completely separate third thing, because never once has he claimed to be a decent conversationalist.

“You were more fucked up when we met,” he says, and somewhere in the back of his brain alarm bells scream. Because this feels like deja vu, a parallel conversation to something from a lifetime (three months) ago. And just like before, he wants to bash his head against the hull the moment the words leave his mouth—but he doesn’t, because that might actually make the whole situation that much more embarrassing. So he just sits still. Doubles down, because sure—might as well dig the whole grave while he’s at it. “Y’know. Scary. Like a real monster. With the—scales.”

And Luffy laughs, flopping a little on deck, the spell of whatever that was broken in an instant. “Thanks!” he chirps, like the statement is a genuine compliment, and Zoro blinks with an unabashed sense of unearned triumph. It makes him more of a moron.

“Can you do it again?”

“Well, duh.”

“No, I mean—it’s not like an… adrenaline thing? Like people lifting cars in a crisis.”

Luffy tilts his head, intrigued. “Can you lift a car?”

And Zoro blinks back at him, momentarily distracted. “What? Maybe—I haven’t tried.”

“You should try, it might be cool,” Luffy replies, matter-of-fact.

Zoro scowls. “Stop derailing the conversation every time I try to ask about you.”

Luffy concedes, frowning vaguely—pouting more at the fact that Zoro can’t lift a car, maybe, than at the comment itself. (Distantly, Zoro wonders if he should add lifting cars to his training regimine, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this—at all.)

“Fine,” Luffy says, rolling his eyes as he props himself up on his elbows—giving Zoro something like his full attention, now.

Zoro swallows. Channels everything he’s learned about how to have a conversation from Usopp. Opens his mouth and— “Is that normal?”

(Because asking someone if they’re normal is an excellent start.)

Luffy tilts his head as if seriously considering the question. “Lifting cars?”

“Luffy.”

“Well, yes, it’s normal for me—”

“That’s not what I meant and you fucking know it—”

“—but no, I guess not.”

Zoro hums, bewildered. “Not even your brother?”

“Neither of them,” he replies. “Just me, I guess.”

Zoro frowns. “You don’t seem too concerned.”

“Should I be?”

“How would I know?” Zoro asks, incredulous, refusing to admit that he’d walked right into that one—really.

“Well, then you shouldn’t have brought it up,” Luffy snorts, and Zoro literally cannot argue with that. Before he can salvage what’s left of their conversation, though, Luffy plows ahead. “What, do you like me better that way? All—hunting and scary. You were pretty disappointed—”

“I was not disappointed. I wasn’t anything! You look fine now—not that you didn’t look fine then—better than fine—” Before he can finish the sentence and just die, Zoro snaps his jaw shut, forcibly cutting off his own words. Luffy blinks at him. Zoro clears his throat. “So are you just like… a different species or what?” he says, and mentally pats himself on the back for smoothing that over—

And Luffy snickers, “Zoro, you can’t just ask someone that!”

“Oh, fuck off,” Zoro replies, just at the edge of despair, and pinches the bridge of his nose to avoid looking at Luffy as he laughs. This is why he hates talking to people. He sucks at it. He wonders if by walking back on land he could leave this conversation and never speak again. Ever.

When he looks up, there’s a teasing glint in Luffy’s eyes and he’s grinning, the asshole, and Zoro—with a groan, exasperated—just tilts backwards and sprawls on his back, beer bottle balanced on his chest, throwing one arm over his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at him anymore.

Luffy reaches over to pat his leg, giggling.

“I hate you,” Zoro grunts.

“You really don’t,” Luffy snickers back.

And Zoro sighs, because, “No, I guess not,” and Luffy laughs again.

They lay in silence for a while, then, and Zoro stares up at the black expanse above them in wonder. With the lights from the boardwalk glistening in the distance, the night is almost devoid of stars—but the moon, full and glowing, is a great red thing in the sky, twice its normal size. A sturgeon supermoon, it adds to the strange atmosphere, something like a sun hanging above them in the middle of the dark.

He wishes he could freeze them both there, suspended in time.

It’s a strange thought. For years all he’s wished for is change—and now that things have changed, he wants it to stop. To stay. But he knows, now, that it can’t.

Soon, the weather will turn. There’s a humming on the horizon that even he’s aware of—Kaido’s tentative resurgence, notes passed to Nami under drinks with requests to meet because there’s something new to unveil, ready to deal; and the bounty, still looming large like a guillotine over all of their heads.

The summer—Luffy—has been a kind of respite. Months in limbo.

It cannot last forever.

And yet—god, god he wants it to be forever.

He scrubs a hand down his face and turns—only to find Luffy watching him in the darkness, that same indecipherable expression on his face.

Then Zoro asks the one thing they’ve all avoided—only joked about, really—because to broach the topic would be a kind of sin, maybe.

“Are you really gods?” he says, “Is all of that—about good fortune and prosperity and shit—is it real?”

And Luffy—he just shrugs. And grins.

“I dunno!” he replies, giggling almost. “Do you feel lucky?”

And more than anything, in this moment, he wants to answer yes, yes, look at you—god, yes—

But he doesn’t, because of course he doesn’t.

Instead, Zoro snorts. Rolls his eyes. Says, “I’d feel luckier if life weren’t so fucking complicated,” like some kind of pessimist, and wishes they lived in a world where his best friend didn’t owe a life-debt to a sadist and he could breathe underwater. “What about you? Whatever the stories here say.”

Luffy hums in response as though seriously considering, and then (after a moment) he shrugs again. “I’ve never thought about being lucky or not,” he replies. “I’ve never lost a fight, but that’s probably just ‘cause I’m strong.”

At that, Zoro props himself back on his side, up on one elbow, and takes another sip of his beer. Intrigued. “I’ll give you that—if you’re more of a monster than the average sea monster. Not once?”

Luffy sticks his tongue out at him, then, and his tail flops against the deck—amused and thinking. “Not since I was little, I guess. I’ve never met anything stronger.” He makes a face, then, like he’s remembering something fond. “’cept my brothers, maybe. But we haven’t fought in a long, long time.”

Zoro hums—and he thinks of his own sister, then, and he understands. “Sabo? Or the one who—”

“Ace. His name was Ace.”

Zoro nods. “Ace, then.”

Luffy just shrugs, matter-of-fact. “I’ll never know, I guess.”

And Zoro can’t argue with that, because it’s true. True for both of them, really. So he pivots back to teasing because he is curious—Luffy would demolish him in the water, but on land? He’s seen how powerful he could be, but Zoro is his own kind of predator. So he smirks. “What about humans, though?”

And that does bring Luffy up short, even just for a moment. He goes quiet, still full of idle motion but no longer laughing—and Zoro wonders if (realizes belatedly that) he’s said the wrong thing. He thinks of the poison, and of the bounty, and of the rumors.

But before he can take it back, Luffy scowls—and he lifts a hand to the rippled scar on his chest. The one to match Sabo’s eye—the one they’ve never brought up, because they all have their own scars, too.

“Humans are greedy,” Luffy says. “Ace died ‘cause you want power that isn’t yours.” Zoro wants to reach out and touch him, but Luffy’s fingers curl, claw-like, against his own skin—lost in memory, maybe. Angered but not angry. “You think you’re the biggest predator in the world, when all you’ve got is fire.”

“Fire?”

“Fire. Big and terrible and violent,” Luffy says, voice devoid of anything. “Guns and bombs and poison. It’s not power. And it’s not yours.”

Unsure what to do with himself, Zoro takes another sip of his beer. Watching, waiting. When Luffy doesn’t say anything else, he finally asks, “What, then? Whose power is it?” because he’s genuinely curious—and his voice comes out a little rough, because they’re in uncharted territory, now.

Luffy’s eyes snap to his, then—

“Mine.”

—and Zoro feels like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs, sucked out of the world. He’s grateful he’s already half-laying down, because the statement feels as monumental as it is incomprehensible, the kind of thing that could sweep a person off his feet with the weight of it; an admission or an acknowledgement that Zoro doesn’t have the full context to understand, just like half of what Luffy says, anyway.

The boat rocks, gentle in the night, and Luffy just stares at him.

Zoro licks his lips. Wants to know, suddenly, just how much power is power—and how much he’s really seen of what Luffy can do. Because the ocean is vast and deep and terrible, and there are giants with sharp claws and sharper teeth than he will ever truly know. And if Luffy is above them—

Then what is he, really?

(Even though he knows he can’t, he swears—somehow—that he can see Luffy’s scales shifting in the night, the changing invisible-iridescence of them a trick of the darkness, a swirling smoke of black-and-red.)

Unsure how to respond (because what he wants to say he can’t say) Zoro clears his throat. “I’m sorry about your brother,” he grunts, and it does not sound like enough.

“Me too,” Luffy replies. And then, after a pause, he nods. “But I’ve decided—when this is all over, I’m going to go out and see the world like Ace did. An adventure,” he says, spreading his arms wide above them—like he’s going to take the whole night sky and hold it to his chest. “I’m going to be free.”

The certainty in his voice knocks the wind out of Zoro’s lungs. The conviction, like there’s no way the world would deny him. It’s a statement of fact, not a statement of desire—not a wish, but a promise.

All his life, Zoro has wanted. He’s only ever been certain of one thing—his own ability to endure. He thinks of his sister, of the late night conversations stolen under blankets after lights out. Of a plan to leave and be a pair of someones other than who their father expected. And of the rest, too—of everything that came after.

(And he tries not to think of how heavy the slipped-in confession feels—when this is all over—his own deep and enduring fear, so obvious to Luffy and yet something Zoro refuses to acknowledge. Because this will end, eventually. It has to.)

“My sister wanted that,” he says, and it comes out breathy—like his mouth won’t form the word sister, not quite. Luffy turns his head to look at him, arms still held aloft, and his gaze is curious, surprised, but steady. Zoro clears his throat. He can’t put what he wants to say in the right order, so he just says nothing.

After a moment, Luffy hums, “I didn’t know you had a sister,” something just to the left of an observation. A prompt if he wants it, the opportunity to back out if he doesn’t.

Zoro huffs, an aggravated sound—frustrated with himself more than Luffy. As if he has any right to be, after what Luffy’s been through. Instead of answering immediately, he breaks eye contact and sighs again as he rolls onto his back. He folds one hand behind his head and balances the beer bottle on his chest again, gazing up at the night sky.

Luffy lets him stall—or maybe he’s just easily distracted, tail slapping idly against the deck as he fiddles with the crinkles of torn cardboard still littered around them.

Through gritted teeth, Zoro says, “She died,” and as both words come out just fine, he marvels at Luffy’s own ability to just. Admit it.

In his peripheral vision, Luffy turns to look at him again. “Like Ace,” he says, but Zoro just shakes his head—glaring up at the moon, still so angry for reasons he doesn’t understand. Because Zoro doesn’t understand it, not really—not even after so many years.

It’s like unlocking a box he’s kept sealed, thinking about all of the death and violence around them. Thinking about the implications of Luffy’s scars, of Ace’s death, of Tama’s poisoning—of the slaughter on the docks, the fire in the marina; the chunks of meat on the concrete and the burned bodies in the harbor. An endless parade of swords and fists and bullets—of chains around ankles and only one week home a year, because they can’t set down roots here lest any one of them fuck up too badly to deserve a single good thing.

“Not like Ace,” he almost spits. “She should’ve died like Ace—” Luffy sucks in a breath through his teeth, but Zoro plows ahead, the words pouring out of his throat like vomit. “She should’ve burned up in a blaze of blood and guns and—I don’t know—glory. We’re supposed to die violent deaths. We’re supposed to die doing something.”

Suddenly, he sits up—startling himself, like his body is sick with a need for motion and he can’t quite contain it. The disruption spills his drink, warm and terrible, sticky foam coating his hands and arms as he curses—and hurls it over the side of the boat. His chest heaves, but he can’t stop.

Luffy says nothing.

“The way we live—the things we’re raised to do; the way we’re raised to survive—she was meant to go out horrible, just like I’m meant to go out horrible,” he seethes, and Luffy lets him. “But she died at home. In our basement.” Not knowing what else to do with the inertia in his bones, he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, ignoring the sting and smell of the god-awful beer. “She died at home in our basement. Alone. And it was an accident.”

Luffy looks at him, then—Luffy with the great burn scar on his chest, a constant reminder of his own tragedy for all to see. And he says, “Why does it matter how she died?”

And all Zoro can respond is, “Because she deserved better,” and it’s the truth. Of anyone—of any of them, Kuina deserved better.

“A better death?”

“I just wanted her death to mean something,” he says, and his voice doesn’t break. “Didn’t Ace’s?”

Luffy scoffs, then, and it’s a mean kind of sound—like Zoro is stupid, and like he’s not pouring his drunken guts across the deck and throwing up his heart, too.

“Death doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “It’s just death. If Ace’s death meant anything, it’s that I should’ve been stronger then—stronger like I am now.”

Zoro barks out a laugh that feels like a sneer and turns to look down at Luffy, pissed. Pissed because he doesn’t know what to think. Luffy just gazes back, steady—

“Is that your official stance, god?”

—and scowls.

“It doesn’t matter,” Luffy shoots back. “They’re dead. We’re not. Living matters.”

“How can you say it doesn’t matter when you’re—what fucking was it—going to go out on an adventure? Following in his footsteps or his dreams or whatever.”

Luffy glares. “Ace wanted family. And he got that—he got Tama and Deuce and the rest of them, so many more. Marco and Izou and Thatch and Haruta and—” he cuts himself off, then, and clicks his tongue in frustration. “He left because he wanted something and he found it,” Luffy continues, staring up at the great moon looming above them both. “I want something, too, but it’s not that.”

He looks out into the distance, then, and for the first time Zoro sees the embrace of the harbor for what it is—something cloying, smothering. The worst kind of cage compared to the whole of the sea.

And Zoro realizes (again, again, again) that there is so much he will never know; an entire history roiling like leviathan below the waves. So many somethings out there bigger than the islands and his uncle and his life. And he will never know any of it, because how much can the world really open up when the here and now is terrible enough?

And yet—

“I’m going to be free,” Luffy says, then he turns back to stare at Zoro, eyes piercing and bright in the dark. And in that moment, Zoro thinks he could believe it—believe in some kind of god. Because only a god could declare anything so assured, as though his will were some kind of inevitability.

And then Luffy asks, “What are you going to be?”

(And like a drowned man grasping for something, anything in open water, Zoro wants to say, With you—unbidden—so he clamps his jaw shut to keep the words from tumbling out. And he looks at Luffy’s silhouette, framed dark against the darker ocean around them, and wonders if he is doomed to want. To endure. If that’s all he’ll ever have.)

But instead, Zoro just scoffs again, low and dismissive, “I’m going to get the fuck out of here and be someone. Someone on my own terms,” he says, and it’s as good as parroting the question back at Luffy—but it’s something. Luffy’s expression doesn’t change—not really—but there’s a steel in his eyes. A certainty.

Then he grins.

“Come with me!” he says, as if it’s the most natural thing—and it’s not even a question. It’s a statement, maybe, or some declaration just to the left of a command. Like Zoro could say no, but he won’t, because it’s Luffy.

And yet—

“No way,” Zoro shakes his head, huffing as if a way out hasn’t just been handed to him. And maybe that’s part of his problem, some distant voice that sounds too much like Kuina thinks. Stubborn pride.

(But he thinks of Nami, can picture her sitting in Nojiko’s kitchen, laughing with her sister—peeling tangerines with bare, juice-stained hands, surrounded by sandbags for storm season, safe from the outside for one small, peaceful moment. And he knows if he were going to leave, she would have to come too—and she wouldn’t. Not yet.)

Luffy tilts his head to the side and laughs, unhurt, like he’d expected the answer anyway. Like he’s humoring Zoro, and Zoro can’t help it—after a moment, he chuckles, too.

The angry roar in the back of his brain starts to fade in that way all emotions do with time and alcohol, and as Luffy flicks the wad of wrapper in his general direction (missing by a mile and giggling harder) Zoro regrets chucking the last of his beer overboard.

“You will,” Luffy says, utterly certain, and Zoro just rolls his eyes.

Spell broken, Zoro leans back and reaches for the basket, fumbling for another drink—only to find it nearly empty, one bottle left. He clicks his tongue and, half-distracted, half-drunk, smacks the top of the bottle against the lip of the deck—only for the cap to CRACK! against the wood, peeling up at the edge without opening.

He makes a wordless noise of frustration and lifts it to his face, squinting in the darkness. He has enough sense not to pry it up with his fingers, but it’ll still be twice as hard to open without the right leverage—and it’s the last one.

Snickering at his failure, Luffy reaches for the bottle in his hands and swipes it before Zoro can protest—then he bites the cap, metal edge and all, and Zoro barely has time for a half-shouted, “That’s sharp, you idio—” before Luffy gags, shaken beer foaming up into his mouth as he pries it open.

Only Zoro’s reflexes save the glass from smashing as Luffy nearly drops it in surprise, lunging forward, but he’s not fast enough to avoid Luffy’s forehead as he jerks away from the shower of bitter alcohol.

Pain explodes in Zoro’s face—and Luffy yowls, recoiling. Only years of discipline in the ring keeps Zoro from crumpling at the feel of what might be a broken nose. Instead, he freezes, grip white-knuckled on the bottle as something warm and wet immediately pools down his chin, and through gritted teeth he hisses, “Fuck.”

“That hurt!” Luffy wails, clutching his forehead, and then he opens his eyes and scowls like Zoro isn’t bleeding on the deck right next to him. Indignant and offended, Luffy picks the ruined bottle cap out of his mouth, punctured on one of his bottom teeth—then bites it in half and spits it back out.

Choosing to ignore that completely, Zoro glares right back as he prods at the bridge of his nose—then winces. Not broken, but close. “Shut up,” he grunts, nasal and belated, tilting his head back. “Ugh.” Then he stands, fumbling down the beer and probably (definitely) spilling it.

Blinking up at him, Luffy has the decency to look mildly remorseful. “I’m sorry,” he whines, but the apology loses impact when a burble of laughter immediately bubbles out of his mouth.

“Asshole,” Zoro grumbles back, flipping the middle finger over his shoulder as he weaves his way below deck, still looking upward, trying to slow the bleeding. He makes it down the ladder on muscle memory alone as the boat rocks, compounding unsteadiness in his brain.

He doesn’t bother turning on any lights, just maneuvers by the orange moonlight coming through the hatches and portholes as he gropes for a towel or something in the entryway. His hand seizes the first soft thing he touches, and only when it’s pressed against his face, sopping up his bloody nose does he really flinch—because he's definitely just ruined one of Nami’s shirts.

(For a moment, he just stands there, bleeding into threadbare cotton, sobered by the pain but still reeling from their conversation enough to wonder how small the nameless boat must seem to someone capable of roaming the entire ocean without walls. And he wonders, suddenly, what Luffy meant so long ago about Zoro feeling like home; whether it was the blood and violence itself, or the feeling of familiar prying desperation—a kindred yearning for more.)

Then he shakes his head and curses again, turning back into the galley to rummage for the half-decent rum he knows Nami has started to procure from the bar.

After a moment—or longer, maybe, as the blood from his nose has finally stopped—a shadow falls over the galley and he looks up to see Luffy peering through the hatch from above, chin resting on his hands as he holds himself up.

“Anything else to eat?” he asks, and Zoro chucks the ruined shirt up at him without comment—and a glare. Luffy just bats it away, snickering. “I said I was sorry!”

“Is food seriously all you ever think about?” Zoro gripes back, reaching farther into the cabinet and trying to ignore the strange tumult of emotions in his chest. Just as Luffy starts to say something else, Zoro’s fingers clip the edge of his prize and he grins, triumphant—and pulls a clouded glass bottle from behind the ship-stove with a muffled, “Heh!”

From above, Luffy whines, “No,” almost offended. “I think about other stuff! Zoro!”

Zoro snorts and the motion sends a spasm of pain across his face—then another as he scowls. With a muffled curse, he yanks the stopper from the rum and drinks. His black eye (because he’s absolutely sure he’ll have one of those, too) will be tomorrow’s problem.

When he turns to make his way back up the ladder, Luffy pouts down at him—then, as if in protest, he doesn’t move when Zoro starts to climb. Instead, he just sags, dangling his arms through the raised entryway, completely blocking Zoro’s path.

Zoro resists the urge to sigh again and stops halfway up the ladder, one eyebrow raised. “Oh yeah? Like what?” He asks, resigning himself to a lengthy game of chicken. Luffy will get bored eventually and move, he knows—so he just takes another drink directly from the bottle and waits.

As if seriously considering the question, Luffy hums, “Like swimming, and fighting, and my friends, and where to find the most interesting treasure, and a bunch of stuff that’s not really important, and you—”

Mid-sip, Zoro chokes, nearly losing his grip on the bottle as Luffy giggles. The hardier alcohol burns in his nearly-empty stomach, saving him the embarrassment of awareness, and then he really does roll his eyes—and snorts, “I’m not one of your friends?”

Luffy shakes his head, eyes indecipherable even as his expression stays open. Carefree. Watching Zoro wipe at the spilled rum around his mouth, probably still covered in dried blood too.

“Nope!” he says, grinning wide and happy. “Zoro is Zoro. You’re mine.”

Somehow, it feels like the shitty little boat lights up with the force of his smile, and it takes a moment of suffocation for Zoro to realize he’s stopped breathing. Because even through the returning haze of drunkenness there’s a weight to the frankly ridiculous declaration that Zoro can’t quite figure out—something that sits in the back of his throat all the same.

He swallows down his heart and takes another step up the ladder, and another, and another until they’re face to face.

“You’ve said that before. What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, half a joke—half genuinely curious—and a third half to fill the silence.

Without warning, Luffy just leans forward and—kisses him.

It’s soft but not tentative—certain, like everything else that Luffy is—and for the second time Zoro nearly loses his balance, only catching himself because his whole body locks up, startled. Frozen. It feels natural, Luffy’s lips brushing against his in something more forceful than a caress.

Deliberate, like Zoro should have been expecting it the entire time.

And before he can think, before he can even process whether or not this is something he wants, whether or not he should be kissing back, it’s over and Luffy is already pulling away.

They stare at each other for a moment, Zoro blinking at Luffy framed against the moonlight while Luffy just giggles back, licking blood and rum off his lips. “Mine,” he repeats, full of joy. Then he turns around and slides out of the way, back to the main deck, leaving room for Zoro to pass and Zoro himself staring out into the night after him.

As if on autopilot, Zoro hauls himself back on deck, bottle of rum still in hand, and only when he’s standing dumbfounded and stupid on the deck does he let out a strangled kind of, “Oh,” voice thick and rough. “Oh.”

Mine.

Then, suddenly, a thought occurs to him and he blinks again—turns to Luffy, who’s now poking at the boxes and wax paper that they’ve left behind, hunting once again for something to eat. As if the kiss was just a kiss, and nothing more.

And maybe, to Luffy, it is.

Because, surely—

He doesn’t know shit about sea monsters and their—that—

(Because does he—? And does he—? And what does that mean?)

(Because—oh, oh, oh.)

Zoro shoves the whirl of emotions back down into a box at the pit of his stomach and washes it down with a healthy swig of alcohol. It feels like trying not to puke—in a good way and a terrible way all at once.

Wanting to do something, anything, he decides that if he’s going to regret the evening anyway, he might as well fuck up harder.

So drunk and dazed and wanting so, so bad for Luffy to just look at him again, he asks, “What else was on Usopp’s list?” And Luffy turns back with a gleam in his eye, like he’s already one step ahead. “I bet there’s even worse food at the festival.”

- - -

By the time he drags the dinghy back up onto the shore, Zoro has decided to stop thinking altogether, and it doesn’t take long to find a wheelbarrow strewn amid the chaos of construction debris still left behind.

When he returns to the water’s edge, Luffy is splashing impatiently in the shallows, tail smacking against the surface so loud it’s a miracle that someone from up at the boathouse hasn’t come to investigate. He drags the barrow as far out as he can, and Luffy half-clambors in as soon as Zoro is close enough, flailing around with a manic, chaos-promising giggle. He brings enough water with him to fill a puddle in the base of the whole thing, and the metal creaks under his weight—but holds.

And then, just like that, they’re off—Zoro snickering just as loud as he hauls Luffy up the shore, across the lot, and out onto the main road toward town. Toward humans. Toward a local population currently frothing at the mouth to skewer Luffy for two hundred-thousand dollars—or worship at his feet (tail? tail), depending on the day or the person.

Zoro feels like he’s left half of his brain back on the ladder, because there’s absolutely no way they’ll be able to pull this off unscathed. And yet—he absolutely, absolutely cannot bring himself to care.

They see the crowd before they see the festival itself, red and blue and gold lining the boardwalk rail as streams of colorful fabric glow in the streetlights. Here, the already-bright night is day, lanterns and lamps and the glow from food vendors lighting up the edge of the beach as far as the eye can see.

Around them, hundreds of bodies move through the open street in a cacophony of laughter and shouting—more than half in costume. Everywhere he turns, Zoro sees sun masks and sea creatures—face paint, paper mache headdresses, homemade costumes. Some look purchased directly from nearby stalls, but others look real—intricately designed and expertly crafted—and Zoro vaguely recalls Usopp’s mention of performances.

Before they pass through the entryway to the festival proper, more than one person turns to stare—and for one terrible, heart-stopping moment Zoro worries that they’ll die before they even make it to the food trucks—before someone tall and graceful in a golden kimono and pasteboard horned-eel mask lets go of her companion’s hand, bends over Luffy, and gushes. “Your costume is amazing! Oh my god, it looks so real!”

Luffy laughs and opens his mouth to reply, but Zoro cuts him off—sober enough, at least, to recognize how much of a bad idea it would be to let him answer. “Thanks—trade secret,” he grunts. Luffy peers back to stick his tongue out at Zoro, and Zoro just ignores him.

“Fair enough,” she says, but there’s a smile in her voice. The crowd undulates around them in waves, but the longer they stand still the more people start to turn—to gawk and ooh and ahh at Luffy in the wheelbarrow, tail flapping idly off the side as he grins up at the tall horned-eel-woman. “You should enter the costume contest, at the very least.”

Luffy lights up, crowing, “Contest—?”

—at the same time Zoro grunts, “Absolutely not—”

“Zoro!”

—and the woman just giggles in response.

“Alright, alright,” she coos, turning her head toward Zoro, mask and all. “At least think about it!” And then she waves and takes her partner’s hand again—and they’re gone, disappearing into the crowd.

Luffy leans into the wheelbarrow, tilting his head back to look at Zoro, and Zoro just raises both eyebrows—shakes his head. And Luffy laughs again, eyes dazzling in the brilliant lights.

It’s contagious, just like always—and as Zoro starts forward again he snorts, unable to help himself. “C’mon, you overgrown salmon. Stay on task.”

Luffy cheers, “Food!” and more heads turn (then turn again to whisper at their friends) as they cross under the massive, lantern-and-cloth draped archway and enter the main fairgrounds.

It’s like entering a different world. The beach, the boardwalk, and the waterfront street have been blocked off—with a row of vendors selling lovingly-crafted everything from trucks along the edge of the road and an array of stands set up on the sidewalk itself.

The air is thick with the smell of fry oil and sugar, of seaweed and salt. The sound of stall owners hawking their wares, of music from nowhere, of a thousand joyful conversations. Out toward the beach, children in costume scream, chasing ghost crabs on the sand, shrieking with laughter when the cold ocean rolls up over their toes.

The crowd isn’t limited to fishermen from the marina—it’s everyone, a cacophony from every corner of town, and for once (for once!) Zoro feels the strange comfort of anonymity.

Although the swords at his hip (because he is never without them, not even now) earn curious glances, Luffy is far more interesting. The glow of the evening is like a costume in and of itself, everyone gleeful and willing to see the easiest version of reality.

When he does end up in a mask—some white, horned thing shoved into his hands by an overeager merchant shouting Just advertise for me, okay, kid? after one glance at Luffy—he just shrugs, and it doesn’t feel like hiding. As he slips it over his head, Luffy beams, showing off all of his sharp teeth.

Zoro hauls him up to the first food stall they see, something greasy and sweet sold by a group of burly men in tank tops, dockworkers raising funds for their own. Unlike the merchants, the vendor barely spares them a glance throughout the entire exchange, so focused on moving through his massive line as quickly as possible. The only indication he recognizes Zoro at all is a raised eyebrow and a pause before he hollers, “Thank you for supporting the Galley-La recovery fund!” as he passes their paper cartons over the counter—then just as quickly he’s turned, already talking to the next person in line.

Luffy downs his deep-fried something in an instant, and the minute he turns back to Zoro—who’s barely taken a bite of his own—with stars in his eyes, Zoro knows there will be more petty theft before the night’s end. His own strategic appropriation of Nami’s personal cash (not her fund, never her fund) will not be enough to cover Luffy’s curiosity. With a roll of his eyes, Zoro takes one last bite of the terrible, cloying thing and tosses the rest of his food to Luffy, who cackles with delight.

They find something hearty next, spiced meat roasted and sliced into sandwiches, and as soon as he scarfs his own down Luffy whines—so they find another. And another. And by the time the street expands, vendors and merchants giving way to festival entertainment, Zoro has long-since eaten his fill—even after giving away half of everything he’s tried.

Soon, they begin to pass an array of wider stalls and raised wooden platforms filled with acts, musical and theatrical; then contests, auctions, and games.

Eyes wide, Luffy’s head swivels as he takes in the lights and sounds, grinning wide even as the crowd shifts to something rowdier, more bustling. Screaming cheers and good-natured cursing around carnival competitions clashes with music from the stands, a hometown band crooning out over a throng of people shoving for a closer look. Farther down the way, smaller productions line the streets—children's puppet shows, dancers, acrobats, street performers; strong men and fire-breathers, jugglers and portrait artists.

All around them, clothing bursts with color and detail—like a school of tropical fish. From street clothes and masks to elaborate costumes, the crowd is full of sharks and jellyfish, eels and crabs, suns and moons and sea monsters.

A little girl, dressed in a scaly skirt and clinging to her father’s back, points to Luffy and shrieks in delight, giggling as they move through the crowd—and Luffy just grins right back. Someone in a sun mask claps Zoro on the back and he turns, ready to glare—only for the man to give him a double thumbs up before gesturing from his mask to his swords. “So cool,” he says, “Everyone always forgets that,” and then he’s waving, moving back into the masses, Zoro already forgotten too.

Zoro blinks after him and from the wheelbarrow, Luffy giggles—then raucous applause rises up from somewhere to their left and Luffy thumps his tail against the edge hard, unable to sit still as he leans toward the noise. “Zoro! Zoro! Go there—”

And so he does.

They make their way to a standing-only crowd pressed around a stage of performers already halfway through their play, intricate and glittering against a foaming ocean backdrop as a singer to the right of the stage ends her narration.

Separated by a wall of blue fabric, one actor stands wreathed in gossamer gold and white, a row of sharp teeth painted up each cheek; the other, dressed in elaborate green and black—faceless aside from a stark-white, horned mask—sits frozen with a sword in his hands. A stage attendant crosses in front of them, announcing the beginning of the final act—and the crowd cheers again.

Unable to see the stage through the crowd, Luffy reaches back to yank at Zoro’s sleeve—and Zoro, drunk and stupid and a little bit happy, just shrugs—and reaches down to grasp Luffy’s back, then under the curve of his tail, hauling him up in his arms like a bride until Luffy is eye-level with the throng around them.

Cold water from the basin drenches Zoro’s front and he shivers as Luffy giggles in his ear, pressing his face close to Zoro’s as he cranes his neck to see the stage. His hot breath pools in the curve of Zoro’s ear, and the contrast does strange things to his already-muddled brain.

“God, you’re heavy,” Zoro grunts, and Luffy just shushes him. “You don’t even know what this is!”

“So? I want to see it!” Luffy laughs back, and then he leans forward—nearly pulling Zoro over as he shifts his weight—when the figures on stage start to move.

The performance itself is a dance, something caught between an opera and ballet, with shifting fabrics and wide, smooth movements. While the figure in black stays crouched, the figure in gold dances on his toes—miming laughter on his side of the undulating blue curtain. And as the singer begins again, Zoro realizes what they’re watching—a continuation of Usopp’s myth, of the sun god trapped under the sea.

“—playing his trick, the Sun, childish and silly, waited under the surface of the ocean for the Moon to reappear, unaware that his friend had settled down for a nap in the earth’s shadow—plunging the world into darkness, the first lunar eclipse.”

A black sheet slides down over the blue, turning the barrier between the two figures dark—and the gold actor’s movements shift from frenzied to solemn until he’s sitting across from the white-masked actor, still and unseen.

“For hours, he waited, until at last the Moon reappeared—” the black curtain lifts and the moon stands, dancing stiff and purposeful, and the gold figure starts to rouse, excited—

“But the Sun, too caught up in his game, had forgotten how to escape from the ocean. Too stubborn to ask for help, he refused to cry out for the Moon. He beat his fists against the surface of the water until, starving, he sank to the bottom of the sea—down to the Trench where no light touches, a lawless land inhabited by the gods of the sea.”

Stage-hands dressed as fish pull the gold figure away from the center and wreathe him in black as he mimes a struggle—and on the opposite side of the stage, the white-masked actor begins to pace.

“Distraught to wake and find his closest friend gone, the Moon searched across the sky—east to west, from new to full and back again, pulling the tides as he went—until he came across the land.” Suddenly, a second group of stage-hands emerges—dressed in exaggerated fisherman costumes, their faces streaked with paint. They wait at the edge of the stage, miming whispers, pointing at the Moon.

“Determined, the Moon thought to himself, This is the only place I haven’t looked, so the Sun must be here, among men, and he called upon the stars—” another group of actors gather, this time dressed in silver, “—and he said, I will return after I have searched the earth. Watch the sky in my stead, and the stars lashed themselves together, mimicking their master’s path through the night.”

As the silver dancers undulate, the moon throws off his robe to reveal a simple black tunic, identical to the fishermen. Then, he disappears into the crowd, ducking down as the dancers expertly cover him in props and stage makeup. Within moments, he looks the same as the rest.

“—after the Moon descended to the world of men, he did not return. The stars, unsure what to do, continued to follow his trail through the sky, but he never reappeared. The Moon, just as silly as the Sun in his own way, always looked to the Sun to chart his direction in the sky, and without him he was easily lost.

“Now well and truly stuck, the Sun—” the figure in gold mimes wrestling out of the tangle of blue, but as he does so his costume sheds, too, to reveal a glittering robe of white scales, “—resigned himself to life underwater, only his tiny reflection left to light the day. Too hungry to move, he bribed the wild gods of the sea with light in their Trench and luck in their long lives, and promised—”

Luffy huffs against his neck, restless, and Zoro looks down to see him peering back over his shoulder, out from the crowd to the other stalls. Zoro snorts, and Luffy—curious, distracted—looks up again, stars in his eyes.

“Bored?” Zoro drawls—and Luffy just pouts shamelessly in response.

“This isn’t the only thing,” he whines, “Let’s go somewhere else—let’s find a musician!”

“Alright, alright. For the record, you wanted to see this.” Zoro rolls his eyes and adjusts Luffy in his arms but doesn’t let go—not yet—until Luffy squishes his face against Zoro’s neck and makes a muffled, aggravated noise against his jugular. The sound vibrates against the back of his throat (all the way up to his injured nose) and he almost drops Luffy in surprise—and Luffy just laughs, a mean, snickering little sound that tells Zoro he’s done it entirely on purpose. “I’ll dump you in the road and leave you here,” Zoro grumbles, and Luffy just keeps giggling.

“No, you won’t,” he hums, and in response Zoro half-tosses him back into the wheelbarrow—ignoring Luffy’s yelp of surprise.

“Try me,” he bites out. He’s almost glad for the bruising surely around his eyes and the mask on his head, because his face feels hot—and he knows he’s red.

(He does not, does not, does not think of their kiss on the ladder. He does not.)

The minute he catches his breath, though, Luffy just laughs again—and points out into the crowd, toward the endless row of glistening entertainment—and they’re off again.

Just as before, they don’t stay in one place long, consistently distracted by something new at every turn. A tall, thin man serenades one corner with dulcet tunes from an old, worn violin; a woman and her pink-haired apprentice perform a shamisen duet; and further still, a young woman in red and white dances—all sequins and glitter—on the largest stage.

On and on they walk, passing games with massive prizes, too—more than half of which Luffy ropes him into playing with begging eyes alone. Luffy nearly gets them both thrown out of the goldfish-catching booth when the little things scatter, clumping at the opposite end of the pool; and they barely last a round in the shooting gallery, Zoro never well-suited to guns—but when they come across a high striker with its height record not yet broken (and a stall owner smarmy enough to think he can con them both) Zoro can’t resist the urge to show off just a little.

They’re ushered out of the crowd the moment Zoro locks eyes with the grinning, greasy man and he yells, “Step right up, step right up—you, sir—you’ve got ridiculous muscles, I can see it. A dockworker? A fisherman? No, no—don’t try to walk away—can you beat Foxy Silver Fox’s strongest? I bet you can’t!” a mile a minute.

Immediately, Luffy’s reeled in by the swindle, gazing starry-eyed up at Zoro with his head tilted back against the edge of the wheelbarrow. “Zoro—Zoro,” he says, practically rocking the entire thing in his excitement, “I bet you could,” and—well.

Of course he could.

The stall owner lights up as Zoro turns, already pivoting to the next part of his pitch. “Big fella, aren’t you? I’m sure this’ll be a cakewalk for you, kid!” he gestures to a giant hammer popped up against the massive, glowing number board, all smiles. “You know the rules—swing the mallet, ring the bell, win a prize—”

Suddenly, a petite, blue-haired woman sidles up to Zoro, pretending to be from the crowd as she sizes him up. “Well, well; standards must be getting lower if they let weaklings like you try games like this—” she starts, and Zoro snorts, wishing Nami could see him now.

“Save it,” he says, flicking a coin to the stall owner, utterly ignoring his sidekick as she blinks at him—script derailed—and Luffy giggles. “You were giving hand signals to each other across the entire sidewalk. Just give me the—thing.”

Called out, the two con artists exchange a look of bewilderment (forgetting they’re supposed to be strangers, maybe). Then the stallowner steps aside, smug expression already plastered back on his face. “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir!” he says as he gestures toward the hammer. “Now, you’ve paid—your turn, please.”

Rolling his eyes, Zoro leaves Luffy bouncing in place as he hefts the massive thing, a pile driver’s sledgehammer painted in carnival colors, then points to the numbered board.

“Watch—” he calls over his shoulder. “There’s something along the track to slow the puck, and he,” he gestures to the stall owner, “has a lever somewhere he can pull. He was going to make it easy for her so I’d get hooked, then harder for me so I’d get riled up.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the man sweating as his voice carries, attracting the attention of passersby, but Zoro just turns back and grins at Luffy, the hefty mallet slung over one shoulder. “But I can win even with it rigged.”

“N-now, now,” the man stutters, placating, gesturing to no one as more people stop to watch, “I promise this is an honest establishment. I would never—”

Zoro drops the mallet on the pressure platform, no added force but enough gravity to do something, and the puck barely moves. The stall-owner pales, glancing around.

“Must be defective,” Zoro deadpans, and behind him Luffy snickers—along with a few of the onlookers.

Then Zoro picks up the mallet with both hands, swings in back and smashes it down, arms flexed, with so much force that the bell (barely secured, because the game is shoddily-made and it’s probably never been rung in the first place) spins off the top, echoing out onto the beach as it flies, lands, and rolls.

“A-And… we have a winner!” the stallowner cries, voice cracking, already backing away.

Around them the crowd gawks, but the only thing that matters to him is Luffy’s elated, “You’re so cool, Zoro!” that sets him to grinning.

They don’t even bother to collect his prize, both cackling like the devil as Zoro hauls the wheelbarrow back into the street, leaving a gaggle of irritated (and highly amused) festival-goers to deal swift and immediate justice in his wake.

Then, just before they’re completely out of sight, a familiar, nasally voice pipes up from the crowd—

“Zoro? Ohmygod, it is you—”

—and Zoro feels instantly sober.

Instinctually, he glances over his shoulder, but he already knows what to expect—a flash of pink out in the throng as Perona, squinting and glaring, waves at him through the crowd beside a bewildered-looking teenage girl. “I thought that was you. What are you—Hey, don’t ignore me—”

He glances down at Luffy, still giggling but looking at him curiously, now—and still out of sight, but not for much longer. And oh, god is she going to have questions. So, so many questions.

Without entirely thinking his plan through, Zoro grips the handles of the wheelbarrow with force and, in a rush of air, says (laughing), “Hang on tight—” and then he’s running, ignoring Perona’s half-yelled, You’re so rude, what the hell! as they push through the crowd.

It’s not that he thinks Perona is a danger to Luffy, really—because for all of her whining, she is family—but he’s not prepared to face the conclusions she will inevitably draw (because she’s family) when he’s not entirely sure of the answers himself.

Under the swinging, colorful, miraculous chaos of the festival, those problems (the kiss, Luffy, kissing Luffy) seem so much bigger, so much more important than the question of who (and what) Luffy is. And that, too, is something he wants to hold on to, at least for a moment.

They race through the street, howling with laughter as they nearly mow down festival goers, Luffy hollering at everything they pass. It’s not the most effective getaway, drawing more attention than they’ve fled, probably—but it’s fun. And by the time Zoro pulls them both to a stop in an alleyway blocks from the festival proper, he’s out of breath more from his own uncontrollable, wheezy giggling than the run itself.

“Who was that?” Luffy laughs, utterly delighted.

“My, uh, cousin—” Zoro snorts, hands on his knees as he leans back against the alleyway wall, “kinda. Don’t worry about it.”

Luffy eyes him, amused—but before he can say anything else, a new voice rises up from the darkness, menacing and assured.

Not Perona.

Someone new. Someone worse.

“You’re a long way from hell, Roronoa,” the man says, stepping out into the alleyway mouth. Away from the festival proper, the street is filled with more shadow than light, half-obscured as Zoro squints into the darkness. He’s vaguely familiar, sandy blond hair and two swords at his hip, but Zoro doesn’t immediately place him. He doesn’t look friendly, though—even if Zoro were the type to have friends.

“Hell of a way to greet a stranger. Did you practice that?” Zoro calls back as he stands, glares, rests one forearm on the hilts of the swords at his own hip. “Am I supposed to know you?”

The man clicks his tongue, clearly offended, then Zoro feels Luffy still behind him as three more shadows step into the night. The image of four figures in black, lined up in a row, triggers something in the back of Zoro’s mind (a podium, a newspaper van, thirty-six hours without sleep), and he blinks—then in an instant, he has Kitetsu drawn and pointed at the first, who draws both of his swords at once.

“You’re Akainu’s,” Zoro grits out, and Luffy makes a horrible kind of noise—

But he doesn’t have time to deal with that, because the swordsman spits, “Oh, you’ll remember that but not—” just as one of the other figures steps forward, his long black hair an inky nothingness in the alley shadows.

“Shut it, Kaku,” he says, already screwing the silencer on an equally black pistol. “We wouldn’t even be here if he’d had an accident in the ring like he was supposed to.”

The swordsman, Kaku, bares his teeth and curses, “Fuck off, Lucci,” and only then does Zoro place him.

As Lucci levels his pistol somewhere in the air between he and Luffy, not giving away his target yet, Zoro bites, “Sorry, Mountain Wind—I don’t remember every loser I crush,” and draws Enma, too, rotating his wrist (and the sword itself) to loosen the tendons still tense from gripping the wheelbarrow.

Behind him, Luffy’s rumbling growl builds, and Zoro’s still buzzed enough to think, they have no idea what they’re fucking with, alongside a quieter concern for why Luffy seems so pissed.

Kaku starts to respond, but Lucci cuts him off—voice decisive, clipped as it cuts through the night. “It’s nothing personal, Roronoa—just business,” and he fires.

The gun moves faster than Zoro can track, and with a flick of his wrist Lucci unloads two rounds in quick succession just as Luffy lunges, shoving Zoro down in time for both to whizz over their heads (knocking his costume mask off in the process). Using the momentum to his advantage, Zoro powers upward again from his crouch, both swords slicing through the air directly toward—

Kaku cuts him off, blocking Kitetsu and Enma with his own blades, but Zoro just presses forward, bearing down on his opponent with all of his strength. Kaku glares, pushes back—and then his left foot slips a fraction of a fraction of an inch on the uneven ground, and that’s all the opening Zoro needs.

Without warning, he ducks, further throwing Kaku off balance as he overcompensates for his slip—and then Zoro twists Enma and rams its blade through his gut. Kaku freezes, a wet kind of gurgle bubbling up around his curse, and he starts to crumple—just as one of the other members of Akainu’s security detail (grinning, mustachioed, in sunglasses of all things) levels a pistol in the empty space left behind as Kaku hits the ground.

Zoro barely has time to react before there’s a CRASH!—followed by four more consecutive gunshots—and then the dark blur of Lucci’s body practically flies through the air from behind him as Luffy snarls.

The third man, Zoro’s opponent, fires wide—too wide to be unintentional, creating a distraction to his own advantage so that Zoro almost misses the massive, silver hunting knife tucked backwards in his other hand, swinging wide from the side. With Kitetsu against his wrist, Zoro stops the blade just inches from his left eye—only after it scrapes up his side—and they freeze, a moment of deadlock in the chaos.

The man doesn’t seem the least bit phased that Kaku is collapsed on the ground and bleeding out between them, just keeps grinning as he says, “Wonder if I’ll get promoted,” then lifts his leg and jams it into Zoro’s chest, nearly knocking the wind out of his lungs.

Stunned, Zoro stumbles back a step, nearly tripping over Kaku’s body—but this isn’t roughhousing on deck or swimming in the ocean.

This is a fight.

And oh, Zoro is so, so good at fights.

With practiced ease, he bends forward, holding his breath for a fractional second until the spasm in his diaphragm contracts—even as he draws Wado and slips its hilt between his teeth. Then, hissing around his third sword, he moves.

His opponent is ready, already twisting the knife in his left hand outward even as he levels his pistol directly at Zoro. He’s fast, pivoting right for Zoro’s neck even as a gunshot fires—but Zoro is faster. He twists, rotating his whole body with everything he has, all packed muscle and discipline, and the man screams as both of his arms hit the ground—independently. Without hesitation, Zoro rams Kitetsu’s hilt into his neck, cutting off his air and in a choked gasp—then Zoro ends his misery directly through the heart.

Chest heaving, Zoro turns, ready to take on the remaining two—but with one last snarl, it’s over—Luffy’s massive, feral, angry weight crushing a muddle of blood and viscera across the alleyway cobblestones.

They freeze there—Luffy’s black, monstrous form a suffocating thing in the cramped space between buildings—and then he heaves a massive, angry sigh and that’s it. He slumps a little, face contorted into a scowl as black leeches into red, patterned swirls disappearing back under his skin and scales, and his spines retract to soft, translucent nothingness.

At the same time, already wincing at the thought of cleaning them later, Zoro sheathes his swords—then he kicks the crumpled corpse of one of their (dead) opponents and curses.

No matter how common gunshots and violence are in this part of town, realistically they have minutes before someone comes running toward the commotion. They need to get the fuck out and somehow, somehow make it back to the marina, but they’re both covered in blood and there’s still no way to guarantee they (or he, at least, because no one knows Luffy, even those who may have recognized Zoro throughout the evening) can’t be connected to the deaths. Luffy shifts, expression unreadable—

And then again—because Zoro can never know a moment’s peace—a new voice pipes up from the alleyway entrance, exhaled in a puff of cigarette smoke.

“God, how the fuck are you going to clean all this shit up?”

- - -

Baratie Guy does, apparently, have a name—Sanji—and he’s just as aggravating outside the restaurant as in. Things nearly devolve into a second fight then and there, until he explains—extremely poorly, Zoro thinks—that he’s not entirely unaware of what’s going on in a broad, vague sense. He promises to clarify as soon as they’re somewhere with more cover, but Zoro’s unconvinced—

Until Luffy, utterly unconcerned, declares that he’s hungry.

Zoro blinks at him, and Luffy shrugs—and Zoro decides to trust him, even as Sanji does a double, triple take, perhaps finally realizing that no, it’s not a costume. He barely bats an eye at the gore around them, which might be a more impressive apathy, Zoro thinks, if Luffy weren’t the reason.

Even quadruple homicide pales in comparison to the realization that mythical creatures walk (or swim) across the earth.

Clock ticking, they decide to leave the bodies where they are. It’s a gamble, but they finally reason that the more evidence in Zoro’s favor, the better—almost counterintuitively—because Akainu might be less inclined to publicize or even investigate a death that could connect him back to the Cross Guild.

Zoro dumps Luffy back in the wheelbarrow for lack of any better transportation, and then they’re off, Sanji leading them through the winding maze of alleys toward the heart of town—away from the festival and away from the ocean.

It takes an inordinate amount of time, Zoro thinks, because he (Sanji) keeps veering off course (losing them both)—but eventually they skid to a breathless halt outside the Baratie’s back door. By the time Sanji bustles him inside like a lost child, Zoro is ready to start killing (more) people—because he has the audacity to call him slow when Zoro’s been the one hauling a whole-ass sea monster halfway across the city. Except—the moment the three of them enter the rear room, wheelbarrow and all, Zoro stops dead in his tracks.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Ah, Perona-chwan! Pudding-swan! You’re back!” Sanji chirps, pushing around him toward the two women perched on the empty kitchen's countertop, sitting side-by-side and sharing an industrial-sized tub of ice cream. Because why not, Zoro thinks—his night can’t get any fucking weirder.

As Sanji buzzes around them, asking if they’d like a pastry with their dessert—they should be ready any minute now—Perona brandishes her spoon as Zoro and says, “Ew, is that blood?” with a look of abject disgust.

She’s still dressed up for the festival, black dress all costume and lace like a flowing fish, but even then he can’t imagine her willingly setting foot here in her usual getup, either. And yet there’s an ease with which she lounges in the space that speaks of extensive time spent in the restaurant’s kitchen, nonetheless.

The girl beside her (Pudding, he assumes) peers around to stare at him with wide, doe-like eyes, attention waffling from Sanji to the rest of the room. Zoro has never seen her before, but she can’t be much older than her teens—and he realizes she’s the girl he’d spotted in the crowd, brown pigtails and all.

Without missing a beat, Pudding says, “It’s definitely blood,” shockingly unfazed as she tilts her head. “That had to be from an artery. Leg, neck, or ar—!”

Perona flicks her forehead and Pudding whines, puffing out her cheeks—and Perona just clicks her tongue. “Not cute. Be normal,” she scolds, ignoring Pudding’s pout.

And Zoro feels like he’s stepped into an alternate dimension, because in what world has Perona ever been qualified to tell someone what’s—

When Luffy giggles, “He cut off a guy’s arms!” from the wheelbarrow in front of him, drawing their attention fully for the first time. Perona and Pudding stare at him, half-dumbfounded, and Luffy just grins back, all teeth, the gorier of them both and decidedly the least normal person in the room.

Pudding scowls, opens her mouth to reply, but Perona snorts and beats her to it with a roll of her eyes. “And what did you do? Bathe in it? You’re both disgustin—” then stops herself and blinks. Squints. Blinks again (while Luffy plows ahead, utterly oblivious as he says, Well, no—) and asks, “Who the hell are you, anyway?” with a tone somewhere between disdain and skepticism.

“I’m Luffy!” he replies, still beaming.

She frowns and leans forward. “Not your name—I don’t give a shit. Who are you?” she presses, but she doesn’t wait for him to answer, just turns her disappointed glare on Zoro and continues, “Mihawk is not going to be happy if you’ve dragged some civilian into this no matter how badly you want to get lai—”

“Sanji, you promised food!” Luffy crows, smacking his tail against the edge of the wheelbarrow as he flops over the side, saving Zoro the effort of hara-kiri.

Three heads swivel toward Luffy at the racket, but Zoro (used to it by now, and perhaps starting to feel the effects of an early hangover after so much adrenaline), just snaps, “And what about you? Is this where you’ve been sneaking out to—” he gestures to Sanji, “And who the hell is that guy? Does Nami know he’s part of—”

“Oi, mosshe—”

“Both of you, shut up. He’s not part of anything,” Perona snaps, and Sanji clamps his jaw shut, glaring at Zoro over his shoulder before retreating into the kitchen proper through a swinging saloon door. Zoro glares right back, but he doesn’t respond—only because he can’t think of anything to add. Not because he’s listening to his cousin. At all.

After a beat to stare him down, Perona points after Sanji and says (slowly, like she’s talking to a very stupid child), “Raised by Germa,” then she points to Pudding, “Raised by Big Mom,” then points to herself, “Raised by Moria.”

Zoro blinks.

“You’re in a support group,” he says, bewildered.

“No,” Perona scowls, “I’m learning how to bake.”

Zoro squints. “From the butcher?”

And as if on cue, Sanji reappears, two delicate plates of swirling, sugar-dusted dough held in his hands as he kicks open the swinging door. With a flourish, he presents one to each of them (Pudding and Perona) and says, “Fresh palmier au chocolat for the ladies,” just as Pudding squeals with delight and Luffy immediately whines—

“Sanji!”

Sanji scowls right back, already turning toward the door again as he snaps, “Hang on, I don’t even fucking know if you can eat chocolate—” and then disappears again.

In his wake, Zoro starts to put the pieces together, however slowly he manages it. “You recommended the restaurant,” he grunts, and Perona shrugs, prim and unbothered as she dips her pastry directly into the giant container of ice cream.

“I didn’t think Nami would send you,” she sniffs, “and by the time she did come around it seemed like she was doing better—at least a little bit. Not that I care.”

Next to her, Pudding swings her legs off the countertop, humming to herself as she eats; without looking away from Zoro and Luffy, Perona affectionately yanks one of her pigtails, and Pudding sticks her tongue out at the back of Perona’s head in response. In front of him, Luffy giggles at the exchange.

Perona glares at Luffy, then, turning her nose up at them both. “I’m saying all of this with the expectation that you are smart enough to keep your fucking mouth shut—not that it matters, because you’re both standing here covered in—” she squints, eyeing the wheelbarrow. “And why are you even still in there, anyway? Freak—”

Just as Sanji comes through the door again, this time with a wooden tray absolutely laden with an array of sliced, cured meats in intricate piles (char-cuter-something, Zoro’s brain supplies unhelpfully).

He doesn’t even look up as he enters, staring intently down at the board in his hand and already halfway through a sentence like he’s talking more to himself than anyone else in the room, “—ssume this is fine, since I guess all the meat Nami-swan was picking up was for you—I don’t know why I thought she’d gotten a dog or something, but I guess that’s not too—Ah!” He looks up, then, melting under Perona’s icy gaze. “Pardon me for interrupting, Perona-chwan!”

She just rolls her eyes.

And Zoro, still reeling a little (and possibly focusing on the wrong thing), says, “I’ve seen him gnaw off a guy’s leg, so he’ll probably eat anything,” which brings everyone in the room to a screeching halt—

As Luffy turns back to glare up at him, whining, “Stop saying I eat people!”

And Pudding, spoon still in her mouth, pipes up (innocently), “Gee, so is your mutual interest in removing limbs, like, a sex thing or—?”

“Pudding!”

- - -

As Luffy demolishes his fancy meat board, Zoro explains (haltingly, with the fewest number of words possible) the broad strokes of their situation—and of Luffy himself.

To her credit, Pudding doesn’t even bat an eye and looks more curious than anything, still swinging her legs and eating her desserts while she takes it all in stride. Absently, Zoro wonders what kind of childhood she’s had if earth-shattering, worldview-shifting revelations about the nature of god and humanity barely give her pause. Or, he thinks—she could just be sixteen. (With what he knows of Big Mom’s gang, it might be a combination of both.)

Sanji, already aware, just leans back against the far counter and lights a cigarette with a hand that only barely shakes—staring and perhaps only now just realizing the full implications of what he’s seen.

And Perona just listens, scowling—more and more displeased with each passing word. When he finally finishes, she just gets up and grabs him, dragging him behind her as she pushes through to the restaurant’s dining room without a word. Zoro curses at her, yanked away from Luffy now watching them with wide eyes, but she doesn’t stop—and Luffy isn’t much help either, because Zoro hears Sanji ask, “I’ve heard humans taste like pork. ‘S that—?” as the door swings shut behind them.

Perona releases him as soon as they enter the main dining area and crosses the room in two strides to duck behind the wooden concierge stand. Then she reappears a moment later, already yanking the stopper from a bottle of imported, fancy fancy rum and a crystal glass. She takes a swig, hisses, pours—and holds the rest of the bottle out to Zoro without a word. It is both vaguely endearing and vaguely ominous.

Already too sober to deal with everything that has happened, Zoro grabs it from her and drinks.

The mess on his clothes and swords has started to dry, and the strange, cloying feeling only makes the whole evening that much more surreal. And then he winces, bending, the sticky-dried blood pulling at what he now realizes isn’t just his shirt but a wound, too—a slice, shallow but aggravating, where the be-knifed guard nicked his side. Half dazed, he wonders if the cops have found the bodies yet.

Then, without preamble, Perona says, “We funded the bounty. You should know that.”

And Zoro nearly chokes. “Akainu’s—Fucking. Mihawk?”

His cousin gestures noncommittally at nothing and sips from her glass, a pensive look on her face. “All three,” she says, “Akainu made a deal with them—took out a loan—and it looked like a safe bet because there was no way he’d ever pay out—because fucking. Mermaids, right? And we’d get interest on the return. But now as far as anyone can tell the money’s gone and no one can figure out where it went.”

Zoro stares at her, barely comprehending—struggling to catch up after the emotional whiplash of the entire evening. “What do you mean gone? How do you lose two hundred-thousand dollars?”

“You spend it,” she says, prim but serious, “and you spend it like you’re not going to pay it back.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Perona drinks again, staring into the dark liquid. Thinking. “There’s a possibility Akainu’s anticipating loose ends. If he knows he’s not going to repay the loan, he’ll end up on your list sooner rather than later. That could be why his security detail was after you.”

Zoro frowns, processing. “Why me, though? That seems stupid. Short-sighted. Croc’s got a whole roster of people. If it’s not me it’ll be someone else—Robin, probably.”

“You’ve got the highest profile,” Perona replies with a vague, almost habitual shrug. “If nothing else, killing you would make a statement—don’t fuck with me, that kind of thing.” She holds her drink to her temple and presses it there like a cold compress despite the fact that everything’s room temperature—like she’s got a headache coming on and it’s all Zoro’s fault. “And now, you’ve not only killed his bodyguards, you’re also protecting the fish.”

“Luffy can take care of himself,” Zoro snorts back, his instinct always to contradict her first, agree with her second.

Perona is not amused. She drains her glass and sets it back on the hostess’s podium, then sighs.

“Look, I’ve got my own problems to deal with here, so you’re going to have to fix this on your own,” she says, glancing back toward the closed kitchen entryway—like taking care of a maladapted teenager is more important than putting god back in the ocean. (Which, fair.)

Still, he scowls out of habit. “I never asked for your help,” he grunts, and she just rolls her eyes—

Then (for less than a blink) she fixes him with a look that’s so close to genuine concern Zoro thinks he might’ve imagined it. In that moment, she looks like a sister—a real one, not a dead one—and not just someone he’s ghosted through the same house alongside for years.

(And if they were normal, maybe, she would say something sentimental like, You don’t have to ask or I’ll always be here if you need me or I love you, we’re family, but they’re not—because he’s just killed four-ish people in an alleyway and that’s hardly anything; there’s a sea monster he may or may not want to kiss eating gourmet prosciutto fifteen feet away; and they’re only in each other’s lives because once upon a time his uncle decided to start adopting strays.)

Then, she gripes “Just—don’t die, okay? Then I’d actually have to work for once,” and turns on her heel, already walking away.

(But for the first time, Zoro takes it for what it is: almost exactly the same thing.)

- - -

After an inordinate and unnecessary amount of arguing, Sanji practically tosses Luffy into the bed of his shitty yellow Model 50 pickup and throws a canvas tarp over his head, just so Zoro will get in the damn car, already. Luffy is absolutely no help, laughing all the while, perfectly content to be manhandled by a near-stranger and already attached to Sanji just for the simple fact that he’d offered him food.

Zoro tries not to examine his own feelings about this and—glaring, deeply adamant that he could’ve gotten them both back to the marina just fine—climbs in after.

He spends the next fifteen minutes half-crushed in the pickup bed while he and Luffy sit crammed together under cover, physically holding Luffy back from the edge as Sanji weaves them through a twisting back route Zoro barely recognizes. Through the gaps between buildings, they can still see the festival lights bright and glistening in full swing—and Zoro wonders just how much time has really passed.

It feels like a year.

It has likely only been a few hours.

The blood on Luffy’s scales and skin has dried just as gummy as his own and Luffy’s fins dig into the wound on his side. Pressed up against his too-warm body, Zoro feels like he’s suffocating in the humid early-August night—and by the time they finally pull into Arlong Park, Zoro’s drenched in sweat and hot. But Luffy doesn’t seem to mind—just stays draped across him, giggling right up until the moment Sanji slams his car door and yanks the tarp off them both.

“We’re here. Now, get the fuck out of my car already,” he snaps, and even though Zoro can’t tell how much is real annoyance and how much is just posturing he’s still backed the car as close to the lot’s edge as he can. And, after a beat of hesitation, he still reaches over the side of the truck bed for Luffy—because they’ve abandoned their wheelbarrow for lack of space and they’re far enough from the docks to need it.

Only half-aware of what he’s doing, Zoro practically leaps out on his own—then grabs Luffy under the back and tail, bridal again—before Sanji can even finish closing his mouth. Luffy laughs in curve of his ear, pressing his head against Zoro’s neck while Zoro leans back to counterbalance—and Zoro physically fights the urge to stick his tongue out in triumph (like a fucking five year old) as Sanji stands, bewildered and a little bit irritated (despite having absolutely no right to, only a few hours acquainted with Luffy).

Zoro doesn’t even thank him for the ride—just glares as Sanji glares right back, then turns on his heel and heads back down to the beach as Sanji turns back to his car.

He barely makes in ten steps, however, before Luffy twists in his arms, wriggling to look over his shoulder as he yells, “Bring me food again soon, Sanji!” loud enough to echo across the lot.

Zoro physically winces, cursing just as Sanji curses back at them both. Even so, the chef throws his hands up and bites, “What are you—a fucking bottomless pit? Fine!” in a way that makes Zoro wonder, suddenly, just how many people they can really fit on Nami’s nameless little boat.

Because there was never a chance he’d say no—to Luffy, who could?

Luffy wriggles, laughs again, and Zoro wants to drop him because it’s like holding the world’s heaviest bonfire—but he doesn’t. Instead, he braces his legs and hauls them both toward the docks at something less than a run, because no matter how deserted the marina is they’re still out in the open.

As soon as he crests the hill toward the beach however, he nearly stumbles—having forgotten over the course of everything that the wooden dinghy is still dragged ashore and tipped upside down to drain. And as Luffy laughs softly in his ear while his scales slip against Zoro’s skin, Zoro decides (in one moment of utterly stupid clarity) two things: he does not want to let go, not now—not yet. And Luffy needs to know about the bounty, about Mihawk and his own role in it—about everything.

So instead of throwing him into the sea and righting the boat himself, he just—he keeps going, walking straight along the dock (Zoro? Zoro!)—and right off the edge.

When he hits the water, the night-cold ocean burns worse than Luffy himself, jolting every inch of his body alive as he sinks. He doesn’t try to swim, just clenches his muscles and squeezes his eyes shut, holds his breath in as he plummets—swords weighing him down.

For one fractional moment, everything is cold and dark and still and silent and he savors it.

Then Luffy squirms free and Zoro doesn’t have to hear clearly under the water to know that Luffy is laughing.

When Zoro opens his eyes, everything is black and orange—the dark water illuminated only by the massive August supermoon still hanging dim overhead. In the haze, he can see Luffy’s silhouette outlined against a distorted sky, no longer crammed in a shitty wheelbarrow but where he belongs—and then Zoro needs to breathe, so he kicks hard until he breaks through the surface and gasps.

Luffy is right on his heels, coming up inches from his face—doing that thing again as he swims too close, disrupts Zoro’s treading, holds him steady. And Zoro doesn’t waste any time, because he’s tired of thinking so fucking hard—tired of trying to figure everything out all at once, a puzzle he doesn’t even have all the pieces to solve.

So he sputters the seawater out of his mouth and tells Luffy what he knows—and Luffy just listens, floating with him as they drift through the dark harbor, away from the docks. And then Luffy nods, shrugs, and says, “He killed my brother, that’s why. Akainu,” so bluntly Zoro forgets to even pretend he’s swimming.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting but it’s not that; and yet, it’s not not that, either, because the connection makes a strange kind of sense. He’s heard stories about Akainu, about his accident at sea—and what are the odds? How many sea monsters, sea gods, mermaids, whatever can there be so close to the islands?

The rest of the story slots into place, and Luffy spins them around and around in lazy circles, unable to stay still, winding toward Nami’s boat out of habit, maybe—until they’re close enough to bump against its side. Bobbing there in the shadows cast by the moonlight overhead, all that comes out of Zoro’s mouth is a sincere, all-encompasing, “Fuck.”

(And he wants to say, I’m sorry, I get it; but that’s four words too many—and a hundred words too few.)

Luffy only shrugs again and says, “Yeah,” like there’s nothing else to say, and Zoro thinks of his words from earlier, a few hours and a lifetime ago—Death doesn’t mean anything. It’s just death.

Then his hand brushes against Zoro’s side, no longer sticky with blood but saltwater, and as his gentle (because they are gentle—here, now) fins graze against his wound Zoro winces, too swept up in the conversation and caught off guard. And Luffy frowns—and the spell is broken.

Out of concern or just to annoy him, maybe, Luffy pokes the wound again and Zoro smacks a palm against his face—and pushes away, back against the boat.

“What’s wrong with you?” he gripes, not particularly annoyed by the pain so much as the prodding itself, because he’s gotten enough of that from Nami and Chopper over the years. With his other hand, he grabs on to the edge of the rail and hauls himself up out of the sea as Luffy whines. The motion pulls at his side and he ignores it, because he’s not about to ask for help.

Once on deck, he squelches, utterly waterlogged through to the soles of his boots—and he realizes stepping into the ocean fully-clothed (and fully-armed—he’ll need to deal with the seawater on his blades sooner rather than later) might not have been the smartest idea.

He’s never claimed intelligence, though—and (tired, dead sober, apathetic to clothing on the best of days) he starts stripping right there on deck. His swords go first, unhooked from his belt and set inside in the wheelhouse. As he peels his sopping shirt over his head, he hears the tell-tale splash! of Luffy and his mischief—and when he opens his eyes, Luffy is sprawled out on deck in front of him, out of the ocean and watching him with his head resting on propped-up elbows.

And maybe it’s the evening as a whole or maybe it’s the dark turn to their conversation, but there’s something in Luffy’s unreadable gaze pinging off the part of his brain that warns, Predator! Predator!

Even though he knows (rationally) that Luffy is a monster in the realest, truest sense, Zoro has always been the most monstrous thing in any room. A death-omen with three swords and a long leash, every bit of him a lethal kind of man. So this—it’s a strange feeling. Something like the messy, shapeless awe on the concrete warehouse docks a lifetime ago—but different, too. Heavier.

They stare at each other for a long moment, before Zoro (breaks first) rolls his eyes and sits to deal with his shoes.

“What?” he says, not even sure why he feels the need to justify anything. “Nami would kill us both if I tracked a bunch of water below deck.”

Luffy hums absently, unbothered. Then he says, “You really do get hurt a lot,” half a laugh—as his eyes track the movements of Zoro’s torso, his arms; the curve of his muscles as he bends forward to unlace his boots. “You’re bleeding again.”

Zoro clicks his tongue and does his best to ignore him, unable to pinpoint exactly why he feels like he wants to pace around in circles and sleep for a hundred years at the same time. Muddled. Vibrating.

“That’s what happens when you get stabbed,” he says, yanking off one soaked shoe with more force than necessary. “You bleed. Are you gonna give me more moss or somethi—”

And then Luffy’s on top of him, pressing his back into the deck—and Zoro feels the sharp scrape of Luffy’s teeth against his side, gentle but there on the hollow just below his ribs as he presses the flat of his tongue against the wound on Zoro’s side—and Zoro gasps, back arching involuntarily—

And Luffy freezes, tongue half-out, staring up at him with wide eyes.

Zoro blinks back.

He wonders, stupidly, if Luffy is just as caught off guard by his own actions as Zoro is his. And he’s hit with a wave of deja vu, then—as he thinks of their first meeting, Luffy’s tongue on his bleeding hand in the middle of the night.

There is a possibility this is a misunderstanding. And he does not, does not want to fuck this up.

(And yet—Mine.)

“Zoro?” Luffy prompts, staring at him, and Zoro isn’t sure what to say—isn’t sure if he even can form words, crushed against the hard wooden deck while Luffy looms over him. Intentionally or not, he’s all lean muscle and raw power holding him down, jaw and teeth strong enough to rip off a grown man’s leg (and okay, okay—maybe it is a sex thing—) and wet with his own blood.

Zoro swallows and does not move.

Then something seems to click and Luffy’s expression shifts—gaze suddenly sharp and dangerous as he grins. “Ah,” he says, half a hum.

It’s a dangerous kind of sound, one that promises something more than the mischief of Luffy’s laughter, and Zoro starts to speak—

But Luffy dips his head and opens his mouth—then presses the flat of his tongue against his wound again and licks, utterly deliberate, trailing a stripe of spit and blood all the way up Zoro’s side and Zoro can’t help it. He moans—one hand grasping for the back of Luffy’s hair as he jerks once involuntarily, trying to escape the feeling but wanting more.

There’s a huff of air against his damp skin as Luffy laughs. Then he just lifts his head like Zoro isn’t trying with all his strength to keep Luffy’s hot mouth pressed into his skin (and failing, because Luffy is so, so much stronger than him, he realizes; oh, he realizes) and Zoro knows with stunning, sudden clarity that he’s well and truly fucked.

Because maybe. Maybe he does want to kiss the fish.

Maybe quite a lot, actually.

“Lu—” he starts, but Luffy is already moving, gripping one hand around his bicep, holding Zoro down as he drags his body up until he’s pressed fully against Zoro’s flank—bare chest sticky against Zoro’s own as his massive tail half-pins one of Zoro’s legs against the deck.

Then, without warning, Luffy leans down and opens his mouth against Zoro’s neck, against his jugular, and Zoro lets out a cracked, low, groaning noise—nothing he’s ever heard from his own throat. He wants to grasp, to scramble for purchase like he’s falling, but Luffy’s weight is keeping him utterly trapped. All he can do is buck, and the motion presses his own skin against Luffy’s teeth—and—

Oh.

He can’t tell if Luffy’s bitten him on purpose, but it doesn’t matter—like it’s instinct (and maybe it is) Luffy’s tongue laps against the blood and Zoro feels him suck—and he nearly blacks out.

“That’s why you were so weird earlier,” Luffy giggles, muffled against his neck. “Sabo said humans kiss soft, but you don’t.”

And without even trying, Luffy smashes Zoro’s wrists back against the deck, pinning them together above his head with his right hand. His left stays pressed next to Zoro’s head, holding his upper body up as he looms over Zoro (eyes dark and laughing) and then, in one fluid motion, he dips his head and mouths at the underside of Zoro’s neck again—just above the shallow bite marks Zoro can already feel.

“Luffy—” he hisses, half a gasp.

And there must be something in his tone, because Luffy looks up again, lifting his head to peer down at Zoro as he releases his arms. “Yeah?” he asks, a vague frown on face. Not disappointed, just waiting.

(In the dark, Zoro can almost see the shadows of his monstrous form at the edge of his skin, something lurking just below the surface—and the corners of his lips are stained red, red, red.)

Zoro doesn’t give himself time to think before he reaches up with both hands and grips the back of Luffy’s head, tangling his fingers through Luffy’s dark hair, and yanks his face down to meet his own. Luffy doesn’t resist—just lets Zoro smash their mouths together with a kind of desperate, keening ferocity that Zoro would find embarrassing if he were willing to admit his own sobriety.

It’s more violence than kiss, Luffy half-crushing him, and all sharp teeth and soft lips—and then Luffy laughs into him and it’s everything. It’s everything.

(It’s a chance. It’s a purpose. It’s a beacon in the dark. It’s god holding him in the palm of his hand and saying this one, this one, this one in a way he’s never thought mattered—not until now, not until this; not until the summer, the sea, the sun—like a piece he’s been missing for a thousand years slotting into place.)

“I’ll go with you,” Zoro rasps against his mouth, and the sounds are barely words so he repeats, “Luffy, when this is over—I’ll go with you. Out to sea. Anywhere—fucking. Wherever you want to go.”

Luffy lifts his head to beam down at him, eyes dancing. “Of course you will!” he declares. His chest is heaving but his voice carries strong. “I already decided it.”

And Zoro can’t help but grin back, breathless with heat and wonder—because of course. Of course.

(And tomorrow, Usopp will show up wide-eyed and awed, telling them how the shore’s edge lit up after midnight, glowing like the sky itself as the fishermen tossed their offerings into the waves—a thousand bioluminescent stars curling from the sea across sand.)

Interlude IV: Hadal; 6000-10924

“Are you insane?” Koala shrieks, gripping him by the shoulders hard enough to bruise—if he weren’t already a little worse for wear. Not that he minds, really. It’s a good kind of pain! (Not Koala’s—Zoro’s. Koala’s pain is scary.)

They’re not far from the islands, still near the reef and practically out in the open—because Luffy hadn’t made it very far at all before being absolutely, thoroughly caught. The coral itself is almost utterly deserted, everything nearby fleeing at the force of the sea gods’ argument.

Luffy glances at Sabo, who just stares placidly back. Still, his brother doesn’t seem too angry. Or he didn’t, not at first—not until he’d seen the scratch marks Luffy can feel stinging on his back. Then Sabo’s face had gone a little red and he’d gotten kind of quiet.

Luffy gets the feeling Sabo might like Zoro a little less, now, which is unfortunate—because Luffy likes Zoro a lot.

Then, turning away, he mumbles, “I dunno what you’re talking about,” and Koala just shakes him again.

“Don’t pull that shit with me,” she says, “We know you were up there! We’re not stupid! This is going way too far—you can’t just go to the surface where there are humans!”

“But Koala,” he whines back, giving up on subterfuge almost immediately. He’s never been very good at it, anyway. “It was fun! And Zoro was there, so it was fine.”

“You killed two people!”

Luffy snorts, rolling his eyes. “So? They were Akainu’s people.”

And that brings them both up short. For a moment, they all just look at each other. Then, finally, Sabo speaks up. “You have to be more careful,” he says, and Luffy scowls in response.

“I’m not a baby. I can take care of myself,” he shoots back. “You’ve always trusted me with stuff before. Why not this?”

Sabo shakes his head, swimming closer. “It’s not about trust. I know you can. You’re my brother. It’s my job to worry, especially if you’re going after some human whose idea of affection includes casual murder.”

Koala lets go, then, and they both look at him in that way he absolutely hates. Like they’re seeing him but seeing Ace, too. Or Ace’s body, maybe—only a body at all because he’d protected Luffy in the first place. They never talk about it because there’s nothing to talk about.

So Luffy just grins, because it’s Sabo and Koala and he gets it even if he doesn’t always understand, and he says, “Really, guys! It’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen. Zoro’s weird, and it’s good. And you already like everyone else! Stop worrying so much about this,” with a laugh.

Sabo and Koala exchange a look, and then they both sigh, and Sabo flicks his forehead—which is honestly so mean—before he concedes. “Fine, fine. It’s not like we could stop you anyway. Just keep your priorities straight, okay?”

“Seriously—you guys worry way too much!”

Part VI

Days later, when Nami returns and he rows out to pick her up at the edge of the dock, she takes one look at the bite marks and the bruises and says, “Please, please tell me my boat is still intact.”

By coincidence or design, both Sanji and Usopp are there, too—waiting for a ride out into harbor—and Zoro can see their eyes scan the water, looking for Luffy. Still, Usopp just blandly raises his eyebrows, because he’s already seen and tactfully said nothing; Sanji refuses to look him in the eye. Zoro only lets him into the dinghy because he’s hauling a cooler, making good on his promise.

And that is that.

Somehow, in the course of a few months, their lives have become so bustling and vibrant that everything before feels like a lonely, hazy dream. In May, there were two. In June, three. In July, four—and by the end of August, five. Nami’s boat feels lived-in and loved, Usopp and Nami taking to Sanji like a fish to water—and Luffy (the fish in question) is delighted, because Sanji always brings food. Good food, better than anything any of them have ever eaten that didn’t already come from the Baratie itself.

No one seems to mind that Zoro fights for a living, because they’ve all been touched by it in their own terrible ways. Sanji never talks about his own past, but Zoro knows enough about Germa through professional curiosity (and Nami) to understand why. Instead, he waxes poetic about the restaurant the same way Usopp rambles about his work on the docks, a welcome kind of normalcy that feels oddly grounding to two people still waist-deep in the mire and a sea monster hanging off (Zoro himself and) the side of the boat.

Then August turns to September and finally—inevitably—the summer ends.

They’re gathered in the cove, sprawled out across the deck while Usopp sits half-in, half-out of the wheelhouse with the disassembled radio spread out around him, a cluster of wire and metal anemically spitting out weather warnings, buzzing about an incoming warm front.

They’ve dragged out the beach chairs again, two no longer adequate really—but it doesn’t matter, because Nami is sunning (or attempting to) in one, wedged precariously against the rail and reading a book (or attempting to) as she fights the early-fall breeze rolling through. Every now and then, she glares up at the clouds like they’ve personally offended her, scowling out toward the graying horizon.

The other chair sits empty, Zoro dangling his legs over the edge of the deck (he’s almost never not touching the sea, now) with Sanji still down in the galley below, handing trays of lunch up through the hatch. In the water, Luffy floats with Tama (back again, because there’s someone new to meet) as she dives and resurfaces, giggling each time she hands hermit crab shells and glittering coral and sea glass to Luffy—who hands them to Zoro—who watches them with a drink in his hand and an indescribable kind of joy in his chest.

Then Usopp yells—an excited, surprised shout that makes everyone jump—

And music starts to blare, crackled but there through the radio speakers. “Hah! I knew I could do it!” he crows, laughing, fiddling with the dials until the sound clears and the volume is loud enough to carry across the entire cove.

Tama shrieks with glee, splashing around Luffy and reaching for Zoro’s legs in delight, and Nami leans out of her chair, grinning as Luffy laughs.

From the top of the ladder, Sanji grouses, “About damn time,” as he hauls himself up on deck for the last time, and Usopp just flips him off—but Sanji’s already bobbing his head, swaying to the swing jazz as it swells. Cocktail tray in hand, he shuffles toward Nami, and Zoro rolls his eyes—exchanging a commiserating, laughing look with Usopp. Then, as he watches, Usopp screws one last panel into place (haphazard, maybe, with how fast he does it—or he’s just that good) and stands, too, to join the rest of them.

Even as Sanji bends down to offer her a drink, Nami reaches over the side of the boat, gold bangles glinting in the sunlight as Tama—giggling—turns to grab her hand instead. “Nami, it’s music!” she squeals, and Nami laughs back, holding both of her tiny hands in one as Tama dangles off her arm. The weight nearly pulls Nami in, but she doesn’t seem to mind (not really), and Zoro just steadies her with his shoulder as she leans into him, swinging Tama back and forth.

She doesn’t take the drink from Sanji, too preoccupied, so Usopp swipes the fancy, fruity thing instead—and Sanji curses, lashing out to kick him in the shin. There’s no force behind it, though. Usopp easily dances out of the way, sipping through the straw with laughter in his eyes as Sanji lunges after him, threatening to throw him into the ocean—but not really furious, maybe, if the twitched upturn at the corner of his mouth is any indication.

And Zoro can’t help it—he laughs, too, throwing his head back at all of them as Luffy grabs the side of the boat and peers across, beaming at Usopp. “This is awesome!” he shouts, and Usopp grins right back.

“Of course it is! I did it!” he replies around the straw, ducking as Sanji aims for his head and gripes, At least savor it, asshole! Don’t just chug it!

Luffy giggles at them both and leans his head against the side of Zoro’s leg, still halfway in the ocean—so Zoro is squished with he and Nami on either side, Tama swirling through the water between them. And for the first time, Zoro truly, absolutely feels like he belongs.

So apropos of nothing (and over everyone’s laughter and shouting, the blaring music, and the sounds of the sea itself), he turns to Nami and says, “I think we should name the boat.”

Nami turns from Tama, then, still half-laughing—and it speaks to just how happy she is, too, that she says, “Sure, why not?”

Because there is a reason she has never bothered with names—never bothered to claim the boat as anything more than a place to sleep, Zoro knows. It’s as much a tool of her trade as any map or crate or gun. It’s a house, but it’s never been home. And yet—here, like this, maybe it could be. Maybe it is, even just for now.

Immediately, Luffy lights up and declares, “Name it Super Octopus Shark!” and Nami (rolling her eyes, stifling a snort) reaches across Zoro with her free hand to smack him in the side of the head. He just laughs.

(The motion also flops Tama across Zoro’s legs and she lets go of Nami to latch onto him instead—and she beams up at him, giggling from his lap as he grins right back.)

“No way,” Nami says, shaking her head, and—argument derailed, already walking over to the deck edge with Usopp not far behind—Sanji nods sagely in agreement.

“Absolutely not,” Sanji says. “She should be named something beautiful, majestic, powerful—like Nami-swan herself—”

“Oh, here we go—” Usopp snickers as he perches on Nami’s abandoned beach chair, still sipping his drink.

Sanji just leans with his back against the bow’s railing, tucks the tray under one arm, and fishes for the cigarette case in his pocket. “No, shut up, it’s good—Madame Baleine—”

Usopp snorts. “Balei—Whale? Madame Whale, really?”

“You speak French?” Sanji blinks, but before Usopp can answer Nami throws her hands up, scowling at them both.

“No! No, I’m not naming my boat after any fish.”

“But fish are cool,” Zoro says mildly—trying desperately not to laugh again and doing an excellent job of it, he thinks—

As Luffy whines, “Yeah, fish are cool, Nami!”

Nami gives them both a withering glare. “That means absolutely nothing from either of you. You’re the most biased of us all.”

As Tama pats his cheeks with her little hands and Luffy leans against his thigh, Zoro replies, “I’m not biased,” utterly deadpan.

(In the background, Usopp wheezes—and Sanji, mouth still twitching, finally lights his cigarette.)

“I’ve changed my mind!” Nami declares, “We’re not naming the boat.” As she does so, though, she leans over and tickles Tama’s exposed belly and the little girl squeals, squirming in Zoro’s lap—so her statement loses almost all of its weight. The noise distracts them all because Tama’s laughter is contagious, its own distilled form of joy.

Then Usopp snaps his fingers and beams. “Hang on—what about Merry? Y’know, like the kid’s rhyme?”

They all turn to look at him, then—and there’s a beat of silence as Tama’s giggles die down and she pokes at Luffy, who’s still hanging off the side of the boat and Zoro himself.

Sanji furrows his brow. “The what?”

Usopp blinks. “You know, the—good morning, merry sunshine—that one? From kindergarten?” When no one replies, he looks at them all utterly aghast. “What kind of childhoods did you have?” he says, and Zoro snorts—then glances at Nami, who glances at Sanji, who glances back at Zoro. Then the three of them exchange a look that’s half amusement, half commiseration—and Usopp throws his hands up. “Okay, okay; that one’s on me. Know your audience. But still—it’s a good name.”

Finally, Luffy pipes up and says, “I like it! Even though it’s not as good as my idea,” almost a pout, and Tama reaches over to pat the top of his head, even as she giggles.

Finally, Nami sighs—shakes her head. “Sure, why not,” she says, fighting a smile. “Merry it is.”

And that’s that—it’s decided.

With a shrug, Zoro raises his flask in a lazy toast, says, “To Merry, I guess,” and drinks—then Nami snatches it out of his hand, Usopp raises his cocktail, Sanji tilts his cigarette, and Luffy lifts Tama—to Merry!

And as the music plays on, they laugh.

- - -

It’s not long before Tama tires again, drifting to sleep sprawled across Zoro’s chest as he floats on his back—pulled into the sea by Luffy after they’d finished lunch. As she dozes, Zoro wonders if she’ll ever really recover from Kaido’s pollution—and wonders how much of what happened to her is his own fault, in some twisted way.

How much of the poison would have made it into the water anyway, a byproduct of Kaido’s dumping, if there hadn’t been a bounty to incentivize him? Would the shrine offerings—the safer alternative, even with the danger of coming ashore—have been poisoned at all? And would the human children, Usopp’s little assistants, have ever been affected?

Nami and Usopp have disappeared back into the wheelhouse to fiddle with the radio, and Luffy has wandered out into the broader cove for something. More food, maybe, hunted of his own accord.

Sanji is the only one left nearby, legs dangling off the side (one of them now, truly, with his pants rolled up to the knee and his bare feet skimming the ocean’s surface) as he leans back on one palm, smoking out into the afternoon.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zoro sees him watching them—a strange, indecipherable expression on his face—even as neither of them say a word. He knows the full truth of Tama now (and Usopp does, too) and his reaction had been… unexpected. For all of his blustering, Zoro has discovered that Sanji is rarely truly angry. Because that—that had been rage. Rage on Tama’s behalf.

Zoro understands the emotion, even if he doesn’t know the whole story.

He only realizes he’s started scowling (not at Sanji, but at the thoughts roiling in his brain) when Tama raises her head, eyes dropping, and mumbles, “Scary Zoro…” scowling right back in a baby mimic.

Zoro exhales through his nose. “’S cause I am scary,” he grumbles.

Tama just sticks her tongue out at him, already drifting off again, “Nuh-uh,” she says, tone like he’s stupid for even saying so.

(Out of sight, Nami and Usopp laugh at something only they can see. Sanji exhales a stream of smoke through the air. And in the distance, the sunlight glints off the red of Luffy’s scales as he dives and resurfaces.)

“Nah, I am,” he replies, and Tama giggles against his chest as his voice rumbles underneath her. “You’re just not afraid of anything, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” she giggles back softly—and then she’s back asleep, tucked under his chin, and quiet descends once again.

Later, Zoro isn’t particularly surprised—or less surprised than he should be, maybe—when Sanji makes the suggestion.

- - -

“We should blow up the cargo district,” Sanji says casually around an unlit cigarette, entirely focused on flicking the wheel of his lighter.

It’s twilight, now—the sun not quite setting yet but nearly there—and Tama has long-since returned to the depths after Koala and Sabo appeared to collect her.

Nami is back in her beach chair, once again attempting to read—while Usopp lounges in the other, sketchbook in hand. Both of them are sipping fruit-filled monstrosities, now, Usopp having genuinely enjoyed his stolen drink enough to ask for another. And below, Zoro lounges in the bottom of the dinghy lashed to the boat’s side, Luffy crammed in next to him with his tail hanging over the edge as Zoro dozes like a cat in the warm sun—and Luffy’s body heat.

Sanji’s voice isn’t particularly loud, but it’s assured—like he’s been thinking about the statement for long enough to follow through.

Zoro opens his eyes and everyone else seems to stop in the middle of what they’re doing to look at Sanji—who just carries on as though he hasn’t said anything out of the ordinary.

Then, after a moment, Usopp frowns. “Wouldn’t that be—I dunno—bad?” he says, gesturing broadly with one hand, still holding his charcoal and smudged to the wrists. “Big picture bad. Inter-gang war bad.”

“So?” Sanji shrugs, “Fuck ‘em.”

No one can really argue with that.

In the best of silence that follows, Zoro is reminded that (other than Luffy, of course) Sanji is the only one of them who’s technically out, no matter how much he maintains a tenuous connection to the families. Sanji is working for Zeff—a normal civilian now, picked up from the ashes of the underworld’s violence the same way he and Perona were—only Mihawk kept them in.

And yet—here Sanji is, wanting to go back on his own terms, however hypothetically.

Nami leans over to raise her eyebrows at Zoro, who shrugs against Luffy’s side—and Luffy makes a rumbling noise in his chest, not quite a growl but not a happy sound, either. Like he’s thinking, maybe.

And then Nami hums. “It’s doable. Realistically, I mean,” she says, closing her book with a kind of finality that means they’re really talking about this now. Next to her, Usopp sips his drink, pensive.

Zoro frowns and sits up, too—ignoring Luffy’s halfhearted whine of protest. “There’s no way they wouldn’t pin it on us,” he says. “It would be easy enough to blame the Guild and claim retaliation for the fire.” Then he glances back at Luffy, whose expression is unreadable as he listens. (And Zoro is reminded, suddenly, of his own hatred.) “It wouldn’t be like last time.”

Sanji exhales. “Last time you had a cleanup crew,” he says, waving a cigarette toward the dinghy and—ostensibly—Luffy, only aware of their history in the broader sense, the post-massacre massacre. “I’m talking about engineering a situation where you wouldn’t even need one.” His tone stays mild, like they’re discussing the weather. Zoro is almost (almost!) impressed. Not that he would admit it.

Above, Nami hums again. “It could work if we play our cards right. Make it look like an accident—something wrong with their production. The buildings are connected with a sewer system that drains out into the ocean, but that also means the waste is accumulating right underneath them. Mistakes happen.” She pauses, reaches over absently to grab her drink—puzzling it out in her head. Then, glancing around at them all staring at her, she adds. “What? You’re not the only one who thinks they should rot.”

Zoro nods, because she’s not wrong—not by a long shot. Except, “Where the fuck are we going to get explosives?” he says, and both Nami and Sanji frown. Quiet descends. For a bunch of criminals, Zoro thinks, none of them are particularly prone to mass destruction.

After a moment, Usopp pipes up (almost embarrassed), “They’re actually—uh—very easy to make.” And they all turn to stare at him, then, as he fiddles with his straw. When he seems to realize they’re listening, though, he swells a little under the attention, suddenly animated. “I’m not just a pretty face,” he says, proud. “They keep me around for a reason—I’m good at what I do.”

Sanji raises his eyebrows in response, “Alright, so the maintenance guy—”

“Mechanical engineer—”

“—the mechanical engineer can build bombs,” he says, tapping the ash from his cigarette into the ocean with a roll of his eyes. “That solves that problem, then.”

Still lost in thought, Nami nods—and Zoro can almost physically see her working through a plan in her head. He’s known her long enough to recognize the signs. Then she frowns. “If we destroy the district, though, does that really solve the problem? Or would Kaido just build another facility somewhere else—pollute some other part of the waters?”

“So Kaido’s the problem,” Sanji says, nodding. “Excellent point, Nami-swan—”

“Woah, woah—” Usopp interjects, nearly spilling his drink as he whips his head between them. “You’re talking about taking out one of the bosses now. That’s—fuck—that’s different.”

But Nami just shakes her head. “It might be the safer bet—no Kaido means no Kaido to retaliate if we do fuck this up.”

At her response, Usopp withers a little. “Oi, oi—you’re talking like this is really going to happen.” He gestures widely around them, encompassing the boat, the cove, all of them. Then he looks at Nami and says, “What happens to you if Kaido’s gang goes down?”

Zoro feels a weight in the pit of his stomach, then, because he’s right. And yet—

Nami grins. “Jack shit,” she says. “I haven’t done a single run for him in weeks and I haven’t fallen behind on funds. And if we fix the fish problem—” she waves toward the still-unused hauling gear Usopp had repaired a lifetime ago, “I’ll have more money than I know what to do with. My problems shrink if he’s gone.”

And Zoro snorts loud and surprised. Nami catches his eye as he grins right back. “You do like fishing then,” he says, “Fuck, I knew it,” and Nami flips him the middle finger around a laugh.

“I do not!” she shouts back, determined but gleeful, too—already leaning forward. “I’ve decided what I’m going to do—I’m going to draw maps. I’m going to chart the whole island and then I’m going to leave and chart the rest of them, too—the whole archipelago. The whole world!” And as she says it, her whole body comes alive, eyes wide and mouth grinning, and she looks beyond them—beyond them all—out toward the open sea.

Her purpose.

And Zoro wants to yell, to laugh, to pick her up and spin her around because yes, yes—but he doesn’t. Instead, he just nods and says, “Damn right you will,” without a doubt in his mind.

Then, he feels Luffy shift behind him, massive tail curling into the water as he sits up. He’s been quiet up to this point, and the movement captures everyone’s attention because he’s Luffy.

When Zoro glances toward him, his expression is still shuttered, but there’s a ferociousness to him now—a quiet simmering something. “Get Kaido to the water,” he says, “because he’s mine.”

Overhead, the gray clouds rumble—a storm in the distance, far over the ocean.

And then—

“My, what an interesting conversation you’re all having today,” a voice carries across the cove, purring amusement, and in an instant everyone moves. Above, the others scramble, Sanji shooting to his feet and Nami white-knuckled on the railing as she stares out across the water—the rowboat nearly toppling as Zoro stands, because fuck, fuck—his swords are still on the boat (on Merry) and—

Usopp gasps, a breathy, afraid, “Oh my god, is that Demon Child—”

“Now, now—I’ve just come to see our dear Mr. Swordsman,” Robin says, already raising her arms as she crosses the beach toward the water’s edge, and Zoro is hit with the worst kind of deja vu. After so many weeks of silence and peace, the danger of Crocodile’s secretary had faded to the back of his mind; and Robin knew. She knew about the cove, and had some idea (maybe) about the monsters themselves.

Her gaze flicks across them all, and then stops—comes to rest on Luffy, now gripping the edge of the dinghy to hold himself up and watching her. Still, her expression doesn’t change.

Zoro bares his teeth. “What the fuck do you want?” he spits, and Robin just holds her empty palms out, a gesture of surrender as she turns her attention back to him.

“Our mutual employer sends his regards,” she replies. “You’ve been shirking your responsibilities, and I’ve been sent to remind you where your priorities lie.” Then she raises her palms higher as if to prove that she’s unarmed, and reaches into the inside pocket of her blazer with one hand. On deck, Nami curses and there’s the sound of a scuffle, but Zoro doesn’t take his eyes off Robin. Like before, they’d been complacent, sitting ducks out in the middle of the cove. Naive.

Without a word, Robin produces three white squares, nothing more than blobs in the distance as she holds them aloft between two fingers, but Zoro feels them like a hit to the diaphragm all the same.

“Get out of the boat, Luffy,” he bites, low and dangerous—not to run, but to fight if they need to, because Luffy is their best bet in the water. Luffy just looks at him for a beat before narrowing his eyes, scanning the horizon beyond; from the covemouth to the shoreline. Then, silent and vicious, he slips over the side, disappearing into the darkening sea.

Above him, there’s the clink of metal and Nami hisses his name. Zoro doesn’t even have to look up to know what it is, just reaches out as she tosses the bundle of his swords down to him, and then he’s dropping the rope, heading for shore.

Robin stays still, waiting serenely in the sand as he approaches and hauls up onto the beach—and only then does she cross toward him, meeting him halfway in a gesture of courtesy even as she keeps her hands raised. The cards are like a beacon in the overcast light.

Without preamble, she says, “How fascinating,” as her eyes search the water for a split second, looking for Luffy, maybe. Zoro wonders just how much she’d seen—how much she has seen over the weeks they’ve been visiting without worry.

And now—now they’ve been caught seriously discussing the annihilation of a rival family. Which is—in fact—very, very bad.

“Cut the shit,” he says, and Robin just shrugs placidly and holds out the cards: three crisp, pristine squares of folded stationery marked with her own looping script. It’s a kind of posturing, a tactile reminder of his job more serious than a message after a fight. Someone is pissed, then—likely Crocodile. But, then again, he’s always pissed.

“I’m simply passing along the message,” she replies as he snatches them out of her hand, one arm still resting on the hilts of his swords just in case. Before he can turn them over, though, she leans forward and says, “I’m compelled to ask—what is he like?” And Zoro blinks—but she seems only vaguely curious, like she wants to know but doesn’t really care if he responds one way or another.

She just looks at him as he narrows his eyes and grunts, “Dunno what you’re talking about,” but it’s futile; like lying to someone who already knows all the right answers. She’d seen him, after all.

Instead of turning, accepting the dodge for what it is (like she normally would, based on everything he’s ever known about her), she hums, “He doesn’t look nearly as lethal as damage to the cargo docks and Kaido’s ships suggested. I confess, I’m surprised.”

The statement catches him off guard—an open admission of what she knows, but not a question, either. Almost like she’s trying to have a conversation. He narrows his eyes. “Seems unfair. You don’t look lethal, either.”

Robin has the audacity to laugh—a soft, surprised chuckle that seems to startle even herself, if the fractional widening of her eyes is any indication. And then she presses her lips together in a demure smile and shoves her hands in the pockets of her coat. Zoro’s free hand twitches against Kitetsu’s hilt, but she doesn’t move. Just stands there, watching him with a bright kind of amusement.

Then, tilting her head to the side, she asks, “Do you love him?”

And Zoro stares at her, because that’s the last thing he is expecting—the last thing he would ever expect from her. She has been watching, then, and he wonders if it’s a trick, a trap of some kind. Again she waits, patient and still, for his response.

After a moment, he asks, “Who?” although he isn’t entirely sure he wants her answer, because he’s afraid he already knows.

“Your little god.” She nods toward the water behind him. “I’m quite curious. Do you love him?”

And Zoro doesn’t turn, doesn’t want to take his eyes off her, but he has no idea if Luffy has resurfaced again or if the others are okay. He resists the urge to check; they can take care of themselves, he knows that. But still.

It’s an instinct because they’re there—and because it’s the safest way to process her question. Not because he wants to avoid the answer (because god, god is it love? Is it love?) but because the answer itself doesn’t even matter.

If this is love, it’s everything.

It’s burning up from the inside; a searing hole in his guts—up his throat—out through his mouth every time he looks at Luffy, wanting to say things he doesn’t know how to say. It’s restlessness; a crawling through his muscles, like he’s being yanked across some unfathomable distance and yet still standing still every time he wants to touch his skin, run his fingers through his hair, grasp him in the water. It’s crushing his heart in his own bare hands; an offering in and of itself, given to the sea to devour.

If this is love—god, if this is love—

He flips the cards over, and there, in bold cut-glass script she’s written herself, he reads his next three targets.

Robin.

Nami.

Nika.

- - -

In an instant, he has Kitetsu at her neck—and she doesn’t even flinch, just stares him down with an expression somewhere between cold and serene; it’s impossible to tell.

Zoro bares his teeth and snaps, “Explain,” holding out the cards like they’re poison.

Robin just smiles serenely, unbothered by either the sword or her own name—and she wouldn’t be, he thinks. She’s the one who wrote it, whether on Crocodile’s order or some sick game of her own.

Her hands stay in her pockets and she doesn’t even attempt to step away as she shrugs—and Zoro’s sword scrapes against her neck. It’s not enough to draw blood but it’s something and still, she doesn’t move.

“It’s very straightforward, really,” Robin replies. “I am a liability. Your friend is a liability. Your companion is a problem in the first place.”

Zoro feels his jaw flex, tense. “I’ve never bothered to ask shit about my jobs before now, so take that as a courtesy,” he spits. “Tell me what the fuck this means.”

Still, Robin stares him down, almost amused. “I’ve never taken you for someone unintelligent, Mr. Swordsman,” she says.

“Yeah, well—I’ve never taken you for someone with a death wish,” he bites back. Even under overcast skies, his blade gleams.

“I’ve never particularly wished to be alive, either,” she muses in return, and there’s a smile in her voice that he can’t see.

“Then it doesn’t matter if you tell me.”

She nods, conceding, and she glances back behind him, toward the cove and the others still waiting. “I know too much,” she says. “Crocodile has never trusted me, and current circumstances have made that kind of working relationship unsustainable.”

Zoro glares at her, but she just stares him down until he says, “You lied and got caught, I assume.”

“Indeed.” She doesn’t elaborate. Zoro doesn’t care.

“And Nami?”

Robin lifts her hands out of her pockets, still empty, and gestures. “The governor's Naval Patrol has been approved under the table and we’re expecting it to pass legislation soon. The age of smuggling is over, it seems—and she has become too recognizable. Miss Navigator is a living target and a straight line back to the Cross Guild if law enforcement ever bothered to try. As such, your friend’s services are no longer required.”

“Bullshit.”

She pauses, then, and she raises her eyebrows like he’s some kind of misbehaving child. “I’ve lied about many things,” she says, “but today I can assure you I’m telling the truth.”

Zoro glares, tilting the sword against her throat.

“And Nika?”

“Our employer is quite convinced you’re acquainted, although I assume he means your companion in the broader sense.”

Zoro ignores the way she says it, unable to come up with a better qualifier on his own, but seethes all the same. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t keep your word,” he says.

“On the contrary,” she replies mildly, “I did. Arlong, however, was less than discreet.” Something snaps into place, then, and Zoro clicks his tongue—angry without a decent way to direct it. Fucking Sheepshead.

“So you did lie to Croc about us. About Luffy,” he says, and it’s not a question. “You never told him about what happened in the warehouse district.”

Robin just raises her eyebrows, intrigued, the first thing like real emotion he’s seen from her. “Is that his name? Luffy?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Perhaps. But if you’re going to kill me anyway, I’d like to know who I’m dying for.” She tilts her head. “Because I would be dying for him, I think—if keeping his secret brought me here. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

He narrows his eyes, then, because this reeks of a trap. And yet, she doesn’t move. So he ignores the deliberate dig and says, “I haven’t decided whether you’re leaving here alive or not—don’t push your luck. How do I know you’re not going to slit my throat the minute I drop my sword?”

She lifts her hands out of her pockets, still empty and unarmed, and raises them in a slow, deliberate surrender. “It would be pointless of me to try,” she sighs. “If I kill you—” she tilts her head to indicate the cove behind him again, “I’m not sure who will get to me first, your monster or your sniper. They both look quite determined.”

Zoro growls. “You already said you don’t care if you die. That doesn’t mean shit.”

“Then it seems we are at an impasse,” she hums.

“Why does Croc want him dead?”

“Simple,” she replies; her tone like death itself is simply the weather, “no monster, no bounty. The money comes back to us. If nothing else, he’s pragmatic.”

Zoro snorts. “That seems like a leap of faith if the money’s already gone.”

“Yes, well,” Robin smiles and there’s a flicker of something almost real in it, too. “Akainu doesn’t know we know that.”

“It’s a trap for him.”

“It’s a trap for all of us, I’m afraid,” she replies. “Whether Akainu faces the consequences of his mistakes or not, his political policies are still in place, I have still lost my place in the organization, you are still compromised, and your monster is still nothing more than an interesting pelt warm and living—for now.”

“How the fuck am I compromised?” he spits, and in reply her smile solidifies—nothing more than a soft upturn of her lips, but genuine all the same.

“You’re not going to kill your friends,” she states—states—calm and assured. “I would call that compromised.”

Even though it’s true, Zoro still clicks his tongue. “He had to have known that when he gave the order.”

“On the contrary,” there’s almost a laugh in her voice now, “Your reputation precedes you, King of Hell. Everyone is quite convinced you’re a heartless bastard.”

And then, suddenly, he thinks of Mihawk in the club, insisting over the table that he listen, that he pay attention, that he train. He had known, then—known about at least one of the assignments, possibly two, as they accumulated. Nami first, then Luffy, if Robin’s name wasn’t added to his list until after the fire. And he had known, too—that Zoro wouldn’t follow through.

Distraction.

How very like his uncle, Zoro thinks, not to intervene. To let things happen and watch from above, nudging the pieces without ever playing. He wonders if Mihawk would bat an eye if this were a trap and Robin did decide to kill him. Likely not—because it would be Zoro’s fault for disobeying orders in the first place. And yet, he could have easily forced him to fulfill the assignments months ago and hadn’t. As always, only his uncle knows the rules to his own game.

Still, they aren’t done.

“Say I don’t kill you—say I don’t kill anyone on the list. What’s to stop you from turning back around and telling the rest of them we’re planning to kill Kaido to save your own skin?”

“Nothing, really,” she replies. “However, I find myself intrigued by the possibility of bringing a bit of chaos with me before I die. Perhaps it’s time our world saw a bit of change.” She turns her palms out and offers her neck. “The decision is yours—kill me and be done with it, or force me to live and I’ll join you. I don’t particularly care either way.”

They stand there, then, in a frozen moment in time—neither moving as Zoro works out the decision in his head. There are so many things that could go wrong, and he’s still not entirely convinced this isn’t a trap of some kind. And yet, Robin looks as sincere as she ever has, ever can. It could be an act, or she really could have something adjacent to a death wish—a wish to go out in flames, at the very least.

And then, from the shoreline just behind him, Luffy calls, “Hey, dock lady!” and Zoro has to physically resist the urge to turn around, because that would take his eyes off Robin and leave him ope—

Dock lady?

Luffy continues, “You know how it looks now, right? The whole place? On the inside?”

Robin leans to look around Zoro, wholly ignoring the blade at her throat as she replies, “Why, yes—I do,” matter-of-fact and intrigued.

“So it’s fine!” Luffy shouts back, almost dismissive. Like this whole stand-off hasn’t been a scale tipping back and forth between life-or-death for either of them. “Zoro, don’t kill her!” It’s almost a whine.

With a growl of frustration, Zoro lowers his sword.

Immediately, Robin moves—and Zoro jerks, ready to lash out again—but she doesn’t pivot toward him. Instead, she walks right up into the water until she’s shin-deep even in her clothes. Luffy is floating in the shallows, propped up on the edge of Merry’s rowboat, and Zoro wants to yell at him for being so fucking blasé when he doesn’t understand how dangerous she is—

And yet, even as Luffy watches her—open, curious—there’s a hard, assessing lilt to his gaze that stops Zoro from doing so.

Luffy knows something.

(Not for the first time, Zoro wonders what he does when he disappears.)

Behind him, lined up on the boat’s deck, Nami and Sanji stand frozen, watching and waiting as they flank Usopp, who has his eye pressed to the scope of a rifle leveled at them from across the water. (And oh, he thinks—Usopp, the mechanical engineer.)

Then Robin bows to Luffy ever so slightly, a sign of respect that none of them have ever even thought to give, and says, “Hello, little Nika. What a delight to finally meet you.”

Immediately, Luffy frowns. “I’m just Luffy,” he replies. “I’m not anyone’s god.”

“Fair enough,” Robin says, but there’s a smile in her voice that says she doesn’t quite agree. “Then may I join you, little monster?”

And Luffy just grins. “Of course!”

- - -

For a brief period in their childhood, Perona became fascinated with the idea of keeping pet snakes—and though the hobby itself never took (Perona being a woman of many fickle inclinations), Zoro remembers one strange fact from the entire ordeal: not social creatures by nature, some reptiles show affection by sitting perfectly calm and still. Content. Happy to simply exist with the people they like.

Robin, he discovers, is no exception.

She acclimates quickly, not quite meshing with the rest of them so much as perching on the sidelines, observing them—but there’s a softening to her all the same. For the first time in all the years he’s known her, even just in passing, she seems like more of a person. He doesn’t quite trust her—not really—but she’s never struck him as someone who acts so much as hides; he’s not sure she’s capable of conning them the same way Nami might, given the same circumstances.

Now that she’s been sent to deliver the message, though, Zoro knows they’re working on limited time.

The cove becomes their base of operations. After extensive deliberation, it’s decided that Robin and Nami should stay in hiding on the Merry—so Zoro, Usopp, and Sanji leave on foot to hitch a ride back toward the city. With Zoro going about business as usual but Robin and Nami missing, they’ll have a few days before anyone figures out he hasn’t actually killed them.

They take a risk putting Sanji back in the wild, pitting his instinct to keep the two of them safe against the need to answer any question posed by a woman—but it turns out they needn’t worry because Perona is Perona.

Before she even crosses paths with Sanji, she’s waiting at the back door to his uncle’s estate when he pulls up on his bike in the middle of the night, furious that he’d done it—and then even angrier when she learns he hadn’t and hadn’t told her. She refuses to speak to him for days after that (because Perona is Perona), but the next morning he catches a flash of pink through the overgrown foliage—off in the abandoned vegetable garden, toward the black-ribboned tree. (So he knows she will forgive him eventually.)

And yet—no matter how long Mihawk has been stalling for him (because even if he’s done nothing to stop it, Zoro knows there’s a reason this has dragged on for weeks), their reprieve is over. It’s only a matter of time before Crocodile sends someone else to do the jobs for him—with his own name at the top of their list.

Alone on the water, Nami and Robin get to work—the men visit in shifts, and the next time Zoro arrives they’ve covered half the Merry’s interior with notes, maps, and diagrams. Usopp helps where he can, pointing out scale or infrastructure inaccuracies, and together the three of them paint a layered picture of the warehouse district.

Beyond that, though, Usopp is a surprise. A week into planning, he shows up in the back of Sanji’s yellow truck with half his workshop packed into duffles—and half his workshop, too. Because mechanical engineer, Zoro discovers, covers more than yacht motors and fishing gear, and he’s forgotten that Usopp is as much a member of the Cross Guild as the rest of them.

Amid the tools, the chemicals, the parts, Usopp pulls out a rolled canvas tarp; with wide gestures, he unfolds it in an arc across the deck, and there—lined up with a bag of maintenance equipment and ammo—is a collection of three rifles at various ranges. He gets to work on what they’ll need to break in—and prepares to fight his own way, too, if he has to.

(Zoro teases him endlessly about his insistence that he’s not a criminal—and Usopp insists right back that he never denied working for a criminal organization. Not once.)

Luffy circles with them, keeping them company as often as he disappears out into the ocean—but even when he’s gone, he never feels far away.

And then, finally—halfway into September (there are six, now), they’re ready.

While the radio blasts music and sporadic coastal weather warnings, they gather in a circle on deck—drinks in hand, cross-legged, sprawled in beach chairs, splayed across wood.

Then Nami rolls the butcher paper out across an empty tarp between them, revealing an intricately-drawn diagram of the entire warehouse district compound. From the coastline to the interior of each building, every penstroke has the delicacy of a master mapmaker—including a second layer of semi-transparent parchment overlayed with a series of interconnected blue lines.

Usopp whistles, impressed. She grins right back, proud and rightfully so—then she begins.

“Assuming Robin’s information is accurate, this should be the layout of Kaido’s, well, fortress—” she flips the parchment paper up and down, showing the map with and without the extra lines “—and this is the storm sewer system underneath.”

The rest of them lean in, Luffy pressed right up to Zoro’s side looking desperate to touch, but Nami just shoots him a glare—and he pouts in response. Usopp snorts at both of them and Sanji flicks his forehead for interrupting, all while Robin watches with a small almost-smile on her face—until Nami turns her scowl out to the rest of them.

“Focus,” she snaps (and that just makes Luffy pout all the more), “Here, here, and here,” she points out three buildings scribbled over in green with the labels Kibi, Kuri, and Udon, “are the main production facilities for whatever the fuck they’re making over there.” She glances up at Robin, then around at the rest of them and fishes something out of her pocket—then smacks it down on the map in front of them. It’s a crumpled note scrawled in messy handwriting, written in code. “They’re calling it SMILE, but no one will tell me exactly what it is. Apparently someone named Doflamingo is moving up to replace Jack and he keeps trying to arrange a run, but we’re not going to let it get that far. That means they’re ready, though—so if this is going to happen, it has to happen now.”

She hands the note to Robin, who peers at it curiously like a puzzle, then she points to a massive building in the center of the district drawn with an almost comical horned skull. “This is Kaido’s office,” Nami continues, “He’s completely cut off from the outside here, no easy entrance or exit. Everything else is just extra. This is our target. If the main office goes down, we take the whole place with it.”

Moving the parchment map back in place, she stabs a finger down at each end of the blue diagram, right atop two red X’s at the edge of the sewer lines. “These are our entry points. Kaido’s absolutely paranoid about someone fucking up his production—”

“For good reason—” Zoro grumbles, and Nami just reaches over to smack his head without missing a beat.

“—so he has the seaside outfall and land-facing sewer main blocked off with grates. We’ll split into two teams; Sanji, Robin, and Zoro, you’ll be the distraction. Aboveground, there’s an armed guard station, electric gate, snipers—you name it.” She points to the X just inside what looks to be the main entrance to the compound on its land-facing side. “You’ll come in right through the front gate in Sanji’s truck. Make up an excuse, fake a delivery—doesn’t matter to me—”

“You got it, Nami-swan!”

“—just get as many people away from the coastal side as you can. Zoro, you’re going to break off in the chaos and drop down through this manhole here—” she traces back to a secondary mark “—on the inside of the compound so we don’t have to deal with the internal grate. While Sanji and Robin keep the guards busy, you’ll start heading for the office underground.”

(Zoro nods.)

“Usopp, Luffy, and I will bring Merry around here—” she points to the X marking the main sewer line’s ocean runoff, “and take care of this side so Luffy can get in, then we’ll scale the warehouses here to here—” she points to buildings along the outer edge, then moves inward, “and provide cover fire while disabling the lookouts he’s got stationed along the roofline. Luffy, you’ll meet with Zoro in the center—same destination.”

She gestures to Usopp, then, who suddenly perks up.

“Right!” he says, then he shuffles his own duffle toward them and rummages until he produces a series of small metal objects that would look halfway innocuous if they weren’t in the middle of discussing a mass bombing. “These are going to be your explosives—”

“Woah, woah!”

“—they’re not finished, dumbass!” Usopp snorts, and Sanji blinks back, almost embarrassed. Usopp rolls his eyes, then holds out the devices to Zoro and Luffy to inspect. “You’ll each have a couple of these to place underneath Kaido’s office and then along the sewer walls on your way through. In theory, a big enough charge should destabilize the whole place. The structures will crumble even if we don’t destroy the buildings themselves—we’re going for the foundations. Nami and I will use much, much smaller charges to break the sea grate. They’ll still make noise, which is why we need the distraction. But the big ones? Those are all you.”

Zoro nods, turning the little things over and over in his hands, and next to him Luffy watches in silence—absorbing (hopefully).

Nami picks up the thread again, gesturing back to the map. “Sanji, Robin—no matter what, you’re going to leave the way you came. Same with Usopp and I—we’ll take Merry and get the fuck out when our escape window starts to close. You two—” she looks at Zoro and Luffy, then—hard. “You’re going to be in the thick of it, so you’ll have to use your best judgment. Two entrance points mean two exit points if things go south. Once you meet up in the center, pick an end and escape that way. The goal isn’t to fight, it’s to sabotage and run—or swim—whatever.”

Luffy hums, but Usopp elbows him and he scowls, then nods. Zoro just shrugs.

Nami sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, and Sanji grumbles, “Why does the whole plan hinge on these morons?”

“Oi—”

“Because,” Nami breaks in, cutting off the argument before it even begins as Zoro glares at Sanji over the map, “in the worst possible scenario, they have the highest chance of survival. And, Sanji—you’re out,” she says with a kind of vehemence that has them all paying attention. “If you get caught, Zeff and the Baratie go down, too. Same with you, Usopp—” she turns to him, then, and Zoro sees that he’s gone a little pale. “I don’t have to tell you this, but you’ve got to stay as close to the exit as possible. You’ve got the boys. Robin, Zoro, and I—we’re still too deep. But you guys? You’ve got people to go home to.”

Zoro scowls right back at her, though. “You’ve got Nojiko,” he says, and Nami visibly swallows—but she stays resolute.

“She’ll be fine without me,” Nami snaps, almost defensive in her willingness to sacrifice herself. “This might be better for her in the long run, anyway. If this is the final straw for Cross Guild cutting out the smuggling operation, maybe Arlong will move on and leave Cocoyasi in peace.”

“Bullshit,” he bites back. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

She slams her fist against the deck, leaning forward into his face. “And what about Perona, huh? Or Mihawk?” she glances at Luffy, then—but Usopp throws his hands up before she can add anything else, half-throwing himself between them like they’re going to jump across the map at any moment.

“Come on, guys,” he whines, placating. “How about no one tries to die?”

Sanji rolls his eyes. “No one is trying to die,” he gripes, but there’s an edge to his voice that sounds forced. “Although—”

Then Luffy smacks his tail against the deck hard, maybe out of habit or maybe to snag everyone’s attention intentionally, and he says, “Alright!” determined and almost serious (but a little bit stupid, too). “Let’s kick Kaido’s ass, and then I’ll kick this Arlong guy’s ass—” then he turns to Robin, eyeing her despite her silence, “then I’ll kick Croco-whoever’s ass. So how about that?”

For a moment, they all just stare at him—and then Zoro snorts out a laugh, shoving Luffy’s head to the side. “You don’t even have legs, moron,” he says, “How’re you going to kick anyone?”

And Luffy flails back, smacking his face in return with one hand—then whipping his tail around to slam into Zoro’s back, knocking out of him so hard he wheezes—which utterly breaks the tension.

“H-hey, cut it out you two—”

“Nami-swan was talking, you dickheads!”

“Shut the fuck up, shit-cook—”

“But Sanji, he started it!”

Then Nami claps once, dispelling the chaos, refocusing them all on the task at hand—and as she glares them all down, Zoro pretends not to see the color in her cheeks, the way she clears her throat before she speaks. Because of course—what did she think? That any one of them would let her give up? And Robin right along with her, because Luffy has made her one of his, too—claimed her like Nami, Usopp, and Sanji.

Vaguely, Zoro marvels at the implications of what Luffy is saying—what they would be planning if they kept going. Dismantling not only Kaido’s gang, but major sections of the Cross Guild as well. And why stop there? If they’re going to be free, they all need to be free.

“Right,” Nami says, clearing her throat one last time as she wrangles them back. She gestures between them, indicating the two teams. “We won’t have any way to communicate once we split up, so everything has to be timed perfectly. We go in at ten; Sanji, Robin, you’re going to be pissed you’ve got to work for the restaurant after hours, and when it turns out you’ve been given the wrong address—something—give ‘em hell. You’re not getting paid enough for this shit, blah, blah, blah.”

“Yes, Miss Navigator.” (“Aye, Nami-swan!”)

“Luffy, Zoro—once you enter the sewers, you’ll have less than thirty minutes to get in and out. The sooner you can escape the better. Usopp—” she waves and he nods.

“The bombs will be set on a time limit,” Usopp says, and when he finishes rummaging through his bag a second time he produces five devices that look like jerry-rigged kitchen timers under glass, then passes one to each of them except Luffy. “That’s going to be the most important part. You’ve got fifteen minutes of wiggle room from our arrival time because we don’t know exactly how long it’s going to take you—” he gestures vaguely toward Sanji, Zoro, and Robin, “—to get to the drop-off point, but when I say you’ve got half an hour from then, you’ve got half an hour. Whether you’re out or not, they’ll blow at ten-forty-five.

“Those—” he continues, pointing to the watches, “we’ll set them exactly at ten, and that will tell you how much time you have left, no matter where you are. Luffy—” he shrugs almost sheepishly, “they’re not waterproof, so you’re just going to have to move fast.”

Nami fixes them all with a serious glare, then. “We need to be gone by then,” She says, looking into each of their eyes in turn.

Then, Luffy huffs, pouting despite the gravity of the situation. “But Nami,” he whines, “I want to fight him!” and Nami just clicks her tongue.

Before she can say anything, though, Robin speaks up for the first time all evening. “This is the best way to ensure everyone has the highest chance of survival and success,” she says matter-of-factly. “If we were to engage Kaido directly, we would lose any advantages we have in destroying the rest of the district.”

Across from her, Nami nods. “It’s going to be fast, it’s going to be messy, but it’s going to be thorough,” Nami insists. “By the end of this, Kaido will be wiped off the map and the poison run-off, the main contender for the bounty, whatever the hell they’re trying to put on the market—all of it will be gone.”

For a moment, they bask in the simple excellence of their plan, and Zoro can’t help but agree that it’s pretty fucking good. In, out, boom.

To his left, Sanji clicks on his lighter, igniting a fresh cigarette—then leaning away from the paper between them when Nami snaps at him. As he exhales out toward the sea, he says, “Weird kind of poetry to it—taking him out with the same shit he used against the harbor.”

Robin hums. “Fighting fire with fire, if you will,” she adds smoothly, already lifting her cocktail to her lips to hide her smile. “Quite literally, in fact.”

Nami has no qualms smirking and just raises her own drink in a genuine toast. “Fuck him—and we’ll figure out what to do about everything else after.”

Zoro can’t help but agree, lifting his flask with a wordless grunt—and at his side, Luffy beams, wide and full of teeth.

Then Nami smacks her palm down in the center of the map and grins right back. “Alright, everyone. Let’s go blow up some fucking buildings!”

- - -

In Zoro’s defense, the plan doesn’t fail immediately. He makes it into the sewers first. Then the whole thing goes to shit.

Sort of.

He figures out almost immediately that the map he’s been given makes no fucking sense, a random squiggle of blue at best—and if he wasn’t already keenly aware of how much time Nami poured into making it, he might actually blame her. (Instead, of course, he blames Sanji—who’d spent the length of Nami’s careful explanation flitting back and forth across the deck, offering her drinks and sweets, distracting Luffy and by extension distracting him.)

Still, he loses track of his turns almost immediately, the infrastructure guidelines along the concrete incomprehensible in near-total darkness. By the time he takes his seventh left, one hand running across the edge of the wall to stay on the walkway (and out of the storm sewer main rushing past, toxic current heading straight out to the ocean), his watch is inching toward thirty, already well past the leeway they’d been given to infiltrate.

By some miracle, his eighth turn looks correct—along with this ninth and tenth—so he starts dropping Usopp’s devices, and then he’s standing next to a series of arbitrary painted markings that look identical to the ones on Nami’s map. And fuck, fuck—he’s made it. Half-blind, searches the ground, but it’s just an empty walkway. No other explosives, no debris—nothing.

Luffy hasn’t been here, which could mean one of two things—this isn’t the right place, or something has happened.

Not willing to chance either possibility (but still relatively confident that this is it), he dumps the bulk of his explosives but keeps a few just in case, then turns—not heading back the way he’d come, but forward, toward the direction where Luffy should be emerging. And he curses. And curses again.

Now completely off course, he runs until he hears the sounds above start to change—shouting, gunfire—like a fight has broken out aboveground. So he curses a third time, because even if Luffy isn’t the cause it’s a clear indication that something has gone wrong.

Then, finally, Zoro hears the rage before he sees it, inhuman snarls ricocheting along the concrete at a deafening roar—so he curses yet again and tilts on his heel, sprinting right, right, left—until he skids to a halt under a bright spot in the darkness, a cracked-open manhole over a half-crumpled metal ladder. Through the opening, someone (human) screams, followed by the rapid pound of machine-gun fire.

And fuck, Luffy—

Without hesitation , he grips the broken ladder and hauls himself up, leaping through the floor more than climbing. He doesn’t stop—and within seconds, he’s on his feet in the middle of a brightly-lit warehouse, surrounded by smashed crates of something and a chaos of gunmen (alive and dead) he recognizes.

Behind him, Luffy snarls again, and Zoro draws two of his swords, already lunging to fight—and then he almost freezes (but doesn’t, because he has more discipline than that).

Even fully on land, Luffy is a horror, already in his monstrous form as he bears down on Arlong’s massive, gleaming machete with his teeth and claws.

Arlong. Arlong. Who shouldn’t even be here—so far outside the realm of their calculations that Zoro wonders if he’s seeing things. And yet undoubtedly it’s him.

(And Zoro remembers the look of triumph in Arlong’s eyes as he’d screamed at Nami in the parking lot; Sheepshead’s cryptic message in the sand; the strange convenience of the marina’s destruction when they’d both been away for the night; Crocodile’s sword, Zoro himself, conveniently pointed at Nami and Luffy and Robin, too. Arlong, who values money over every thing else, in the territory of a man just about to pour something new and deadly onto the market, and who is still the strongest contender for a nonexistent two hundred-thousand dollar bounty. The emotion Zoro feels is something past rage.)

It’s impossible to tell who is winning—whether Luffy or Arlong is defending, beast against blade or blade against beast. Arlong himself looks split halfway between elation and abject terror, pushing back just as hard while he yells, “Shoot it—just fucking shoot it—” and the men around them fumble with their weapons.

Zoro doesn’t give them the chance. In sweeping strokes, he swings his blades, disarming anyone within range. Under the weight of the adrenaline running through his veins, he tries to ignore how many familiar faces he cuts down—not because he regrets killing Arlong’s men, but because he regrets robbing Nami of the chance to do it herself. And yet, it’s an almost identical dance—Luffy locked in combat, Zoro at his back. So close to their first meeting Zoro wants to laugh right there in the middle of the fight—

And then Luffy and Arlong break away from each other.

Arlong stumbles back, still spitting orders even as he nearly trips over the broken floor, while Luffy overbalances, faltering for a fractional second. The pause is enough to break their rhythm.

As Zoro impales yet another gunman, Arlong notices him for the first time—eyes wide—and it’s enough of an opening for Luffy to body slam him right through the building’s wall and out into the night. Out into the open.

Zoro races after them, taking down anyone who crosses his path, but it’s too late—they’re rolling across the concrete, blood smearing in their wake, snarls and curses echoing across the metal industrialism as Luffy claws and Arlong kicks right back. The reaction is immediate, the sound of Sanji and Robin’s distraction abruptly fading then coming closer as the guards finally break away—heading toward the new (bigger) threat.

Zoro grins.

His grip tightens around his swords and he re-enters the fray. Fuck stealth—this he can do.

And he can do it so fucking well.

Over the din, Arlong spits, “—why the fuck are you he—?” but Luffy doesn’t even let him finish his sentence, just slams into him from the side again—and Arlong reaches around, wrapping his forearm around Luffy’s throat and lunging with his machete.

It connects just as gunfire cracks above them, raining down across the streets.

They’ve gone too far off course; Nami and Usopp haven’t cleared these rooftops, and Kaido has snipers.

Luffy doesn’t even blink—and in an instant, his teeth are buried in Arlong’s forearm, ignoring his own injuries, and Arlong lets out a strangled yell as he tries to jerk back—but Luffy doesn’t let go. The motion tears against Luffy’s razor-sharp mouth and Zoro sees the exact moment Arlong understands what’s about to happen—the widening of his eyes, the wordless scream—before Luffy bites down.

(Their limb-removal tally raises again.)

As Arlong stumbles back, jagged artery coating the dark road, he makes desperate eye contact with Zoro. He blindly claws at the air with his free (remaining) hand—yelling, “I’ll kill you—I’ll fucking kill you—” full of rage. “I meant what I said—I’ll kill you, I’ll kill her too—I’m going to be rich—”

And Luffy hisses, roiling patterns of black elongating as his body seems to shift with a kind of strange elegance, no longer a berserker-beast but some sleek, murderous thing.

Arlong doesn’t stand a chance.

By the time the back of his body hits the ground, he’s already dead—a shred of meat.

(It is satisfying, his death quick and dirty; he doesn’t deserve anything more.)

Then, in the distance, guards start dropping like flies—and when Zoro scans the buildings, he sees Usopp has replaced the rooftop gunmen, eyes trained through his sight as he picks off cannon fodder. Nami is nowhere in sight; Zoro hopes she’s already on her way back to the Merry to prepare for their escape.

Arlong’s death does very little to deter any of Kaido’s men and they keep coming, a different breed of enemy drawn by the presence of a sea monster and their rival’s biggest game.

He glances down at his watch—ten thirty-six—and curses.

From above, Usopp yells wordlessly and Zoro glances up to see him disengage his rifle, gesture wildly off in the distance behind him, and then disappear.

Time’s up.

As he fends off another enemy, Zoro shouts, “Luffy! Stick to the fucking plan! We need to go!” and blocks a hunting knife with one sword, impaling his attacker with the other. When he turns back around, Luffy is Luffy again—though bloody from the fight. Arlong’s blade had been a mean, lethal thing, and he’d been fighting to kill in an environment where Luffy lacked the advantage.

Still, Luffy throws off another body and starts making his way back toward Zoro—and back toward the sewers. His face is a mask of wrath. “I heard him from below,” he snarls, smashing his tail into someone’s leg hard enough that Zoro hears bone crack from a distance. “He knew she was alive and was going to start hunting for Nami himself.”

Zoro lets out his own wordless growl, and wishes that Arlong weren’t dead so he could land a blow of his own—and that Nami could, too. The revelation is another drop in the bucket, but it’s still— “Fucker,” Zoro seethes, and Luffy channels his anger into throwing another opponent across the concrete.

Zoro makes a beeline back for the smashed building wall, toward the sewer main entrance. Luffy isn’t far behind, moving swiftly across the ground with a practiced ease even as he bleeds freely onto the ground—but as he approaches, Zoro sees the strain in his muscles. He is hurt. Possibly worse than Zoro realizes—and then Zoro also realizes that Luffy doesn’t have his bag.

“Where are your explosives?” he shouts.

Even moving, Luffy manages to shrug, “I dunno,” he says, a little too uncaring. “I must’ve dropped them.”

“You lost them?”

Luffy scowls, “Not on purpose! There was a lot going on!”

Zoro wants to throttle him, but he’ll do it when they’re back on the Merry—because there’s no fucking way they’ll be able to find their way back to Sanji’s truck so far off course or with so little time left. Even if Nami and Usopp have gone, they’ll still be able to escape into the ocean itself. It’s the safest bet, especially if they’ve lost track of all the bombs.

Then, suddenly, the men around them start to fall back—

And a massive figure leaps down from one of the rooftops above, landing on his feet in the rubble like it’s nothing as he hefts a massive sledgehammer across his shoulders. His laughter booms across the concrete around them, stopping everyone in their tracks—loud, arrogant, incongruous against the carnage.

Zoro doesn’t falter, but he does turn—already blocking on a kind of instinct as Luffy pivots, too.

Kaido.

He’s only met the man once, maybe twice. Notoriously reclusive and equally ruthless, Kaido’s appearance lives up to his reputation. This is the man strong enough to run one of the most cutthroat gangs in the islands—to have sadists like Jack and Doflamingo under his protection, willing to listen to his orders. He’s not someone they can underestimate. He’s also the root of their problems.

If they can take him out here, the aftermath of the explosion won’t be left up to chance. He’ll be gone.

Maybe Luffy will get his fight, Zoro thinks.

Kaido approaches at a leisurely pace, kicking or stepping over bodies (the bodies of his own men) like they’re nothing as the living part for him in a wave. “Well, well, well—you’ve made a real mess of my shit,” he bellows, grinning wide right at the two of them before addressing Zoro. “But you’ve brought it right to me, so I’ll let you off easy.” He glances to the side, then, and seems to notice Arlong’s shredded corpse—and then he laughs again. “Or better yet, why don’t you join my gang? Hard enough to find good men these days—everyone’s got their own fucking agenda.” Almost casually, he lifts his sledgehammer with one arm and swings it through the air, an idle motion that’s a threat in and of itself.

Next to him, Luffy seethes low in his throat.

“No fucking way,” Zoro spits and then he draws Wado—sets it between his teeth.

Kaido shrugs good-naturedly, completely at odds with their surroundings. “Suit yourself,” he says—then he levels his hammer at Luffy. “Then you can just sit back and watch while I kill god and take the glory for myself.” With his free hand, he snaps at a random dogsbody, who jerks to attention. “Get Akainu on the fucking phone—”

—and Luffy lunges.

Scales once again black and glistening, he rockets into Kaido in a blur of claws and teeth—and Zoro isn’t far behind. Luffy’s first hit lands, digging into Kaido and latching on even as his fins shred every bit of flesh it touches—but Kaido doesn’t falter.

Without missing a beat, he drops his hammer and uses his free hand to grip Luffy by the neck, squeezing his massive fingers around Luffy’s throat as he pries him off—then tosses him bodily to the side like he’s nothing. Zoro shouts, rushing in with blades drawn, but Kaido curls one giant fist and lands a hit directly to his diaphragm. The force of the blow sends him reeling, and it’s enough time for Kaido to reach down and grab his sledgehammer again—just as Luffy regroups and leaps a second time.

This time, Kaido swings, both hands gripped on the handle of his weapon—and the massive, weighty thing connects against Luffy’s side mid-air with so much force that Zoro hears it and Luffy’s own heavy body ragdolls through the air, splattering blood across the concrete before he smashes into a nearby building—black and red and still.

Zoro gasps for breath around Wado but refuses to let it go, but the lack of oxygen takes its toll. When he attacks again, Kaido easily backhands him, undeterred by the sword in his mouth and as much an insult as a physical blow. The force of it nearly sends Zoro to the ground, but he stays standing—so Kaido just raises his hammer again, aiming for his head—

And then from the rubble, Luffy roars.

Snarling and spitting, he lunges out—and Kaido redirects, pivoting his hit just as Luffy launches himself—and the weapon connects again. This time, when Luffy smashes into the ruined wall, more of the structure starts to crumble, and Kaido doesn’t spare a second glance for Zoro himself—just follows the path until he’s standing right over Luffy (who isn’t fucking moving) and brings the sledgehammer down a third time—

Zoro aims for his exposed flank, running full speed to slash what should be a crippling blow, but Kaido isn’t even winded—just growls in annoyance and throws him off. This time, Zoro lands wrong—clipping off a piece of broken concrete that crushes something in his chest, and he gasps for air again and again—

As Kaido brings his sledgehammer down on Luffy’s body for the final time with a sickening CRUNCH!

And then suddenly, finally, everything is still.

(The fight lasts barely an instant, but god, god—it’s devastating.)

As Zoro watches through the blood dripping his eyes, Kaido throws his head back and laughs—then snaps again at the scattering of men still standing at the street entrance. “Somebody get that fucking governor. I want my money—”

Then in a blast of car horn and screaming, Sanji’s truck careens around the corner, engine revving as Robin mows down anyone not fast enough to leap out of the way, expression serene as always. Sanji is crouched in the bed, gripping the back—and as soon as he spots Zoro, he stands and shouts, “There you are, shithead—I knew you were going to screw this up!” and Zoro can’t tell how much of the insult is anger and how much is fear.

Gasping, he hauls himself up and grips his swords tighter, then grits his teeth—a second wind. “Shut the fuck up!” he yells back, even as Sanji leaps from the truck and runs.

Kaido blinks once, twice (still unfazed), then grins. “Well, if it isn’t Judge’s boy! I thought you were dead, Vinsmoke,” he hollers, just as Zoro kicks up momentum again and re-enters the fray. Zoro doesn’t even have to shout—Sanji already knows who to prioritize.

“I’m nobody’s,” Sanji spits back, sliding through the gravel as he beelines for Luffy’s body. Kaido moves to grab him but Zoro is already there, blocking the blow as Sanji dives, dragging Luffy out from underneath the debris while Zoro holds Kaido back.

“You’re still fighting me,” Zoro bites out, and Kaido has the audacity to laugh.

“Looks like the monster’s got himself a cult,” he says, “unless you’re going for the fortune yourself.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zoro sees Robin leap out of the driver’s seat to help, hauling Luffy’s tail as they practically throw his unconscious body into the truck bed. Kaido growls, pivoting—so Zoro says the first thing he can think of as a distraction.

“The money’s gone,” he shouts, and that gets Kaido’s attention. “Akainu gave up waiting and decided to fund the search himself. The bounty’s been rescinded!” It’s mostly bullshit, partially Arlong’s own declaration about Nami, but it works—and with a roar of frustration, Kaido swings like Zoro is personally responsible for the news. There’s so much anger behind it Zoro feels his heels slip against the ground, but he stays upright even as Kaido hefts his hammer again.

In the distance, he hears the slam of a car door as Sanji shouts, “Get the fuck out of there—we’re out of time—”

But Kaido is already plowing ahead. “If that’s the way he wants to operate, then fine—” he shouts, turning back toward the truck. “I’ll take the sun god’s power for myself—”

Zoro lashes outward toward Kaido’s legs hard and fast enough to make him stumble. As he does, Robin (back in the driver’s seat) revs the engine—and across the lot, Zoro meets her gaze. For one infinitesimally small moment, they look at each other, and all the years trapped together as the Guild’s worst predators coalesce into a kind of pure understanding.

She jerks the wheel, reversing, and then they’re blasting backwards out of the chaos—Sanji still in the truck bed with Luffy’s body, shouting back at him even as Robin rips them away.

At their retreat, Kaido roars, pissed and already shouting orders, but Zoro doesn’t think—just moves. He has no fucking clue how much time they have left, watch already long-smashed in fight, but he knows it can’t be long. He grabs the bag of his own leftover explosives still strapped to his swordbelt and hurls them into the distance toward the disappearing truck, where they land with an anticlimactic thud far down the road.

(He prays to no god but Luffy that it will be enough.)

Kaido starts to sneer something, but Zoro cuts him off, tossing his swords to the side.

“You want money? Take me—” and Kaido turns back, still snarling but intrigued, maybe, as his attention redirects again. “I’m the heir to the Cross Guild, the fucking King of Hell. Mihawk would pay a fortune to get me back. And if he doesn’t, then you’ve taken out their greatest weapon—Roronoa fucking Zoro.”

Zoro knows it’s half a lie even as the words leave his mouth—not that he’s worth it, but that Kaido would get any money at all. Mihawk won’t come for him, too proud to pay a ransom and too uncaring to fight on his behalf. He has his own reputation to uphold, a ruthless swordsman more heartless vampire than man, the kind of person who makes his living off the backs of grown men trying to kill each other for fun.

If Kaido accepts the trade, he’s as good as dead—but the others need more time. Luffy needs more time.

(Luffy, Luffy, Luffy. He’ll be so pissed, Zoro thinks. He’ll be so pissed that I died. Four months wasn’t enough. He wanted eternity.)

Kaido eyes him, assessing, and then without warning he grins and swings—slamming the sledgehammer into Zoro’s side. Zoro hears something else crack and his vision blurs, blacking around the edges as he skids against the ground, Kaido not far behind.

“Now that’s some fucking loyalty!” he booms, utterly delighted. “It must be the real deal, then. A real god. So how about I take you both—”

Then something in the distance clicks, beeps—

And the entire warehouse district explodes.

Interlude V: The Challenger Deep; 10924

When they were small, they’d fallen into the Trench. Someone (a grandfather, a father, an enemy) had chased them to the edge and they hadn’t stopped—

Half an accident, half a dare, half in flight (because there were three of them, then) they’d tumbled down, down, down into the depths—ignoring the way their muscles ached, their limbs trembled, their breathes shallowed under the pressure. Somehow, the dark became darker, and they watched—whispering to one another through gritted teeth—as the swirling things around them became strange. Appendages like lures, translucent skin, organs reversed. Astronomically, terrifyingly large—and incomprehensibly small.

And eventually, finally—on fire, glowing just like the stories. Fish of flames, bioluminescent in the midnight-black like tiny stars. Like tiny suns.

They did not reach the bottom, the impossible chasm too vast and terrible, so they would never really know—but they saw (and felt) enough. At the tender age of old-enough-to-understand, they heard god’s bones whisper from beneath the sand: the only thing worse than death itself is the emptiness of surviving alone.

Part VII

Rain pelts the unfamiliar window in waves, a wall of gray blurred though the industrial glass—broken once, twice, as lightning flashes in the distance. Around him—white, a near sensory-overload even in the dim lighting.

He is alive.

He is alone.

With a raspy gasp, he shoots up—pushing to his feet against the spinning room and his body’s own half-sluggish response (like he’s barely there and it’s barely listening to him) as he claws at the bleach-white hospital linens. He’s covered in bandages tight around his arms and chest, and he knows even half-delirious that he’s hurt. Still, he doesn’t even pause—just tears the IV out of his arm and ignores the way it bleeds, already gritting his teeth against the nausea crawling up the back of his throat.

Because fuck—fuck, how long has it been? Where are the others? Where is Luffy? Did they make it ou—

The moment one bare foot touches the cool tile floor, he freezes, midway through tumbling off the bed, wearing nothing but gauze and a shitty hospital gown.

Across the room, Mihawk stares him down.

He’s perched silent and cross-legged in a chair near the closed hospital room entrance. Not blocking it, per se, but guarding it all the same. For a moment, they look at each other—Mihawk’s expression placid and unreadable as always. A perfect, lethal mask, even when he opens his mouth to speak.

“I would advise staying under medical supervision, Roronoa,” he says, as though they’re already midway through a conversation, “lest you exacerbate your frankly impressive accumulation of injuries any more than you already have.”

Zoro blinks at him. His uncle just stares back.

Then, stupidly (and he wonders if he does have a concussion) Zoro says, “You actually came to get me,” voice fucked from disuse (and screaming and smoke) in a tone half surprised, half disgusted, and (against his will, almost) a sliver grateful.

That he’s woken up at all is proof of Mihawk’s rescue, but to see it confirmed—not that he’d been picked up by the people he thought would care, but by the one person he was sure cared the least—he’s not sure what to do with the information, and it pings against the sides of his aching brain.

Blandly, Mihawk raises his eyebrows, not moving an inch. “Indeed.”

He does not elaborate.

Then a secondary thought occurs to Zoro and he narrows his eyes. “Are you going to kill me yourself, then? For what we did, or for being a liability?” he nearly spits, finally standing up as straight as he can. It’s not as impressive as he would like. No matter how much he grits his teeth, tenses—his body still wobbles.

Mihawk draws out the silence like a cat playing with prey, watching him struggle. Zoro’s swords are nowhere in sight and he knows challenging his uncle would be as good as suicide in his current state, but he’ll do it if he has to. Some muddled part of his brain questions why Mihawk would save him only to off him later, but his uncle has always been one for making dramatic statements.

Still, he doesn’t care.

He needs out. He needs to make sure they got away. But he has no idea what would be waiting on the other side of the door if he did make it through. Buggy and his men? Crocodile and the rest of Baroque Works?

Zoro flicks his gaze toward the window. With the door blocked, it’s his only escape route. He braces himself to run—

And then Mihawk says, “I have been considering a revival of the vegetable garden,” and Zoro decides he must have brain damage. Ignoring the way Zoro stares at him, his uncle simply hums, “Apparently cabbages are quite low-maintenance. It will be an interesting experiment.”

A beat of silence passes before Zoro finally asks, “Am I dead?”

One of Mihawk’s eyebrows climbs higher. “Not that I’m aware of. Would you have preferred death?”

“What?” Zoro physically resists the instinct to recoil, only holding his ground by willpower alone. His stomach roils. “No—fuck, no.”

“Then through your recovery, I will consider clearing the underbrush a necessary part of your training,” Mihawk responds with a decisive nod, and then—as though that’s the end of it (even though Zoro isn’t entirely sure what it is)—he stands, brushing imaginary dirt from the legs of his pants.

Before he can stop himself, Zoro says, “That’s it?” and Mihawk audibly sighs. The look he gives Zoro is so withering a lesser man might piss himself.

“It won’t be easy, I can assure you that,” he says. “From what I’ve read, there’s a rather significant amount of manual labor involved in agriculture cultivation—even before any seeds are planted. They’re a fall crop, which works in your favor; the timing of your need for discipline aligns quite nicely. Beyond the grounds themselves, we will—“

Zoro decides that he has, in fact, sustained extensive head trauma and this is all an elaborate hallucination. Still, Mihawk continues—saying more in this single sitting than Zoro’s heard him speak in years. All about fucking. Cabbages.

Finally, Zoro bites out, “I disobeyed orders,” cutting his uncle off mid-word because he does apparently have a death wish.

Mihawk stops, stares at him with a look of such casual disappointment that Zoro retracts his hallucination theory—not even a broken brain could recreate his uncle’s annoyance so crisp.

“Not mine,” he replies blandly. “Your assignment went quite well, in fact. Although I’m inclined to disagree with your methods, the traitor in our midst has been dealt with quite decisively. Arlong will no longer be an issue.”

And oh, oh. Zoro just stares at him, processing—before he feels himself nod. “Right,” he says, tone skeptical. Right.

Mihawk raises his eyebrows and says nothing.

He rocks forward on his feet, then, because if Mihawk is giving him a pass then fuck, he’s going to take it—but he’s not going to stay. Even though he’s familiar enough with grievous bodily injury to know he’s not going to make it far regardless, he will push through if he has to. And he does have to, because he has no idea if the others (if Luffy) survived and no clue how long he’s been here.

As if sensing his thoughts (or reading them across his face, maybe) Mihawk sighs again, done with the conversation, Zoro’s inner turmoil no longer interesting enough to hold his attention (true or not). Bored and wanting to return to work.

“We will begin as soon as you’re discharged,” he says, and then he turns, puts his hand on the doorknob—and stops. Flicks his gaze back to Zoro, then toward the storm still raging outside the window. Hums almost thoughtfully.

“When I was a child, we had our own legends, you know,” he says, and Zoro feels his muscles lock up again. “I can’t speak for what it is today, but Shimotsuki was a superstitious island. The story goes back generations—a great swordsman descended from the night sky and wandered for a hundred years before giving up his search to found a village of warriors.” Mihawk tilts his head, then—expression impenetrable.

Zoro swallows.

(He knows the story—the bare bones of it. The other side of the coin, half a myth that fits the greater whole separated by an ocean. Never once has he thought it meant anything at all.)

Eyes sharp but voice almost musing, Mihawk continues, “It’s always struck me as strange, though—why the swordsman would abandon his quest after so short a time in the grand scheme of eternity. Were I honor-bound to another in the same way he supposedly was, I doubt even a thousand years would be enough.” He turns the handle, then, and murmurs, “How strange we humans are—to mold our stories around our own importance. If he stopped at all, I believe it was to grieve. But I find it difficult to fathom he would not continue searching anyway.”

Then, before Zoro can say a word, he steps out into the hallway and closes the door behind him, leaving only the sound of pounding rain in his wake.

Zoro stands there for a moment, tense and hardly breathing as brain stutters to catch up with whatever the fuck kind of cryptic bullshit his uncle has said now—

When there’s a sudden, frantic knock at the window behind him. He nearly overcompensates the turn, still reeling from his thoughts and his injuries, but as soon as Nami sees him, she beams—sopping wet and relieved in the pouring rain. Through the glass, she mouths, Open up, asshole! but the effect is lost as her lip wobbles and her hair sticks plastered to her face.

Gritting his teeth against the pain and nausea, Zoro crosses to throw open the window and immediately Nami leans in to throw her arms around his neck, nearly toppling into the room as rain streams in. She has his sword bag and a duffle slung across her back and it smacks him in the face.

The hug only lasts a second, but it’s enough to knock the wind out of him; from below, Usopp’s voice pipes up, shaking and strained, “He’s awake? Thank god,” (and Sanji groans, god damn it—are you kidding me? Plan B?)

When Zoro leans out, instantly drenched himself, he sees that his room is on the second floor—and that Nami is balancing on Sanji’s shoulders (red-faced and no longer capable of human speech) while Sanji stands atop Usopp’s (ashen, trembling, having the worst day of his life). All three are bruised and bandaged to varying degrees, but all three are alive.

Then, before he can say anything, Nami’s climbing in, waving to the hissing pair below through the opened window as she turns, whispers-shouts, “Thanks, guys!” then shuts the window on their griping.

She doesn’t even wait for a response, just yanks the bag off her shoulders and stands there dripping on his hospital room floor, holding out his swords. “I swear to god,” she says, swiping the damp hair out of her face with her free hand, “if you ever do that again, I’ll kill you myself.”

She shakes the bag, then, prompting him to take it. Almost numb, he does.

“I’m not apologizing,” he grunts, voice rough. He blames—all of it.

“Figured you’d say that,” she sighs, then she shakes her head, already crossing the room to dump the duffle on his abandoned bed as he says, “Chopper sent me. There’s a lot you’ve missed, but we need to get you out of here now—”

Chopper?

—and within seconds, she’s tossing clothes in his direction, still talking. “It’s been days. You were delirious, in and out. We knew you would wake up—knew you’d be fine,” she mumbles through gritted teeth (like she’s trying to convince herself, maybe), “but Luffy won’t leave the fucking cove. We were going to get you whether you were coherent or not, but since you are—fuck, you can dress yourself. Plan B.” She blows a breath out through her nose, then, and Zoro realizes she’s bouncing on the balls of her feet, gaze pinging back and forth toward the door even as she keeps digging through the bag. Urgent.

(But his brain snags on one word—Luffy, Luffy, Luffy—he’s alive. He’s alive.)

“Tell me on the way,” he bites out, already pulling the hospital gown over his head right in the middle of the room. He grinds down the part of his brain that processes pain—the switch he flips during fights—even as the motion yanks at his injuries.

Nami doesn’t even blink, and when he pulls on a shirt and glances up again, she sends her personal flask careening toward his head. It’s full. He takes a swig and it’s vile, the worst dregs of their moonshine, but he knows it’ll be a better painkiller than anything he’s been given here.

Thanks to days (days!) without food and an already spinning head, the alcohol hits with a counterintuitive kind of clarity by the time he shoves on his boots, dulling his pain and in the process, the haze around his senses. When he looks up, Nami has changed into a dry set of smudged overalls borrowed from Usopp, her hair tucked up under a cap.

Then, three pebbles hit the window in rapid succession, and Nami stills—looks at him. “That’s the signal—” she zips the duffle and slings it over her shoulder as she hands him a hat of his own. “Let’s go.”

“The fuck is Plan B?” he asks, but Nami just ignores him as she crosses away from the window and toward the entrance.

Then she turns, grins the grin of Shikkearu’s most notorious bookie, and says, “We’re walking right through the front door.”

- - -

The second floor is deserted, Mihawk having long-since disappeared, but the minute they step out into the first floor they come face to face with utterly unadulterated chaos.

Despite Mihawk’s intervention in Zoro’s (probable) execution, there had apparently been guards stationed throughout the building, all of whom have now congregated in the waiting room around a writhing, sobbing Usopp—who is putting on the performance of his life.

He’s bloodied and sprawled on the floor amid upturned chairs and tables, and for a moment Zoro’s heart leaps in his throat—until Usopp yells, “Please, you have to help me! That pack of sixteen rabid raccoons came out of nowhere—” and Nami yanks Zoro by the arm when a group of nurses suddenly bursts from the ER, a gurney speeding between them as they race for Usopp.

Before they can reach him, he moans, lashing out at the crowd of guards, hissing and spitting like a wild animal. Even the toughest among them jerks away, and one of the nurses (who looks suspiciously like Wanda) shouts—

“Sirs, please, you have to stay back—rabies is incurable and extremely contagious—”

And Usopp wails, “Oh my god! I’m too young and beautiful to die—!”

Just as Sanji bursts in from a side door, also looking worse for wear and yelling, “There’s one loose in the maternity ward! For the love of god, somebody help! We can’t find the rest!” and utter mayhem erupts.

With their most identifiable features covered, he and Nami look like two visitors finished for the day, and they scramble out onto the rain-drenched sidewalk as half the waiting room flees into the storm, caught in the confusion.

Sanji’s shitty yellow truck is parked at the edge of the lot, dented and scratched and scorched to hell, with Zoro’s motorcycle in the bed. Even though Zoro’s already winded they make it there in record time. Before he even fully catches up, Nami throws down the back of the truck and jumps in, already hauling Zoro’s bike toward the edge.

“We’ll leave the truck—they’ll need a way out,” she says, and Zoro grunts wordlessly in response.

As he helps her haul it to the ground (ignoring the way it pulls at his definitely broken ribs and the stitches he can feel itching against his clothes) Zoro mumbles, “Do I even want to know what Plan A was?” and Nami smirks.

“Specialized team of doctors transfers your comatose semi-corpse to another hospital,” she says, hopping back down the ground. “There was a stolen ambulance involved. Admittedly, this is easier,” she shrugs—because of course this was the less elaborate con. “We just didn’t know if you’d be able to get out on your own.”

Zoro snorts as he reaches for the handlebars, but she beats him to it—swinging one leg over into the front seat and forcing Zoro to sit behind her. He doesn’t argue, which speaks to how shit he feels.

Instead, he props his feet up while she revs the engine, and within seconds they’re ripping through the rain.

(And if he presses his forehead into her shoulder, a mirror of so many months ago, she doesn’t say anything. And just like she hadn’t then, he doesn’t say, I’m so, so glad you’re alive, either.)

- - -

The engine’s roar is lost in the rage of the storm, wind clawing at their clothes and hair as Nami maneuvers them along the cliffside road, down toward the cove. Riding down the mountain, they can see the entire harbor spread out below them—a straight drop down with an expanse of rocky alcoves and beaches stretching down in the distance. On a clear day, only a few embankments shielded within the trees are truly hidden—the entire coastline spread out on the horizon, beaches and the town itself in full view.

It’s all a gray blur through the sheets of rain bearing down, but even from so far away Zoro can tell something is wrong. There are too many ships out even in this weather—rows and rows of white thrashing in the swells, searchlights like targets on the ocean, illuminating the waves. Overhead, thunder rumbles—but even that isn’t enough to drown out the sound of evacuation sirens from the town below.

As they round the next curve, Nami swerves, jerking the handlebars as she narrowly avoids the branches of a fallen tree, cursing—and Zoro’s stomach lurches. To distract himself, he shouts, “What the fuck is happening?” through gritted teeth, and Nami clicks her tongue.

“We blew up a major industrial sector, that’s what,” she yells back. “And Akainu used it. Luffy’s not a secret anymore—if he ever was—and now he’s mobilized the whole Navy for his own bullshit agenda.”

Zoro curses. “But why are they looking here? Luffy should be out in the—” with a massive roar, a surge of seawater crests over the beach, washing out the road below even as the wave immediately retreats back across the sand—and Nami jerks them to a halt, skidding on the slick concrete. “Shit.”

He feels her take a shaky breath before she screams, “Because of you, asshole! We thought you were dead!” against the rain. “The whole place went up and you weren’t there—Arlong’s dead, Kaido’s missing, and suddenly Akainu shows up combing the waters with fucking—machine guns. I’ve never seen anything like it. What were we supposed to think?” She gestures out toward the water below, then—toward the expanse of ships and weapons. “All that money went missing? Well, there it is.”

“Luffy couldn’t get out even if he wanted to,” Zoro says, and it’s not a question—it’s a horrible realization. With that kind of equipment—and the amount of money spent—there’s no way Luffy would be able to escape with this side of the entire island surrounded.

Nami just shakes her head. “That’s the problem—” she yells. “He won’t leave. We brought him to Chopper because we didn’t know what to do and the minute he woke up he went ballistic. Perona showed up a day later—don’t even ask how she knew we were there—and said someone made a deal with Mihawk for your corpse. Your corpse, Zoro! She didn’t even know you were alive until Mihawk showed up at the hospital!”

It’s like she’s slapped him in the face—rage and defeat roils in his gut. Only one person would have known about the trade, would have bothered to make good on the exchange.

“Kaido’s alive,” he spits, and Nami jerks around to look at him, face ashen and eyes bloodshot as they sit there, drenched to the bone. He doesn’t even feel it.

“No,” she breathes—then she slams her fist on the handlebars, shouting, “Fuck. Fuck!”

Then, before he can say anything else, she turns back around—revs the engine, and leans forward. With a jerk, the motorcycle skids as she kicks off, blasting down toward the flooding. Then, just as they reach the bottom of the hill, she yanks the front wheel—jumping them the last few feet off the straight drop, down into the beach below.

It’s not far, but it’s enough to jar every single broken bone in his body as the bike hits the ground, spinning out in the wet sand until Nami gets them under control. He feels the edge of his vision blur and he hears Nami hiss through her teeth, but she doesn’t stop—and then they’re speeding off across the coast.

“What?” he shouts, and she shakes her head, cursing over the wind.

“We walked right into his trap—I knew it was too easy,” she presses even farther forward. “We got word that someone was coming for you at the hospital, but there was hardly anyone there and they were all our guys. Which means—”

“Shit—”

“—we left them alone.”

- - -

With the roads fucked, they’re forced to cut along the beaches and then straight through the trees theslves—and by the time they finally burst through the forestline, it’s a miracle they haven’t died. Still, when the bike skids to a halt in the sand and the cove spreads out before them, Zoro doesn’t care. Because there—scorched and listing to the side, practically run aground—sits Merry. At the noise, both Robin and Chopper burst on deck, and Zoro’s glad to see them (so, so fucking glad), but he only has eyes for the waves. Because the last time he’d seen Luffy—

And then, suddenly, he’s there, a flash of red in the stormy ocean, and Zoro runs. He doesn’t even stop when he hits the water’s edge, just wades to his knees as Luffy yells, “Zoro! Zoro!” and tackles him into the shallows.

From above, he hears Chopper shout, “Get out of the ocean—you have injuries—” but Zoro doesn’t care. He just grasps at Luffy, who grasps right back—either laughing or crying or both, it’s impossible to tell in the rain. Luffy is covered in healing wounds of his own, stitched and battered, still just as hurt from the fight—but he’s here.

And then Nami stomps up behind them, calling up to the others, “Has anyone been here? Is everything okay?” reminding him of the danger.

Luffy stops, listening as Robin calls, “No—is something amiss?”

And the timing would be comical if it weren’t so horrific—because as soon as the words leave her mouth something crashes in the distance. At first, the sound is just another noise in the storm—then another, then another, until a massive military truck breaks through the trees, crushing everything in its path—engine roaring over the wind. And in the bed, gripping the roll bar with one hand and his sledgehammer in the other, stands Kaido.

He’s burned and bruised, but he doesn’t look beaten—not by a long shot. And as the truck bursts out onto the sand, he laughs.

“Thanks for leading me right to it, redhead! Couldn’t have made it without you,” he booms. Inside the cab, the driver shouts something incomprehensible into the mouthpiece of a shortwave radio, drowned out by Kaido and the raging wind.

They’re all up in an instant, but they’re unprepared. Zoro doesn’t even bother with this swordbelt, just yanks the blades out of their case as Chopper dives against the deck and Nami rushes for the abandoned bike. Robin is the first to move, years of training kicking in as she raises a gun (kept nearby, probably, if he knows her at all) and taking out the driver with almost pinpoint accuracy. The windshield shatters and the car spins out of control—but Kaido just leaps out onto the beach as it overturns, unbothered. Amused.

As he eyes her, glancing back and forth between Luffy and the boat, he grins. “The Demon Child, too! You really do have a collection going—or maybe you just have a thing for killers!”

And Luffy growls, scales already shifting as he lunges through the water. Zoro isn’t far behind, following his path parallel on the beach, rushing forward as Kaido hefts his weapon, confident and terrible. If they can keep him distracted, the others have a chance to escape—and if they can take Kaido out here and now, it will mitigate some of the damage they’ve caused.

As Zoro launches himself from the left, Luffy tears out of the sea from the right and Kaido swings—but they’ve done this once before. Tracking his movements, Zoro ducks, lashing out at Kaido’s legs—toward the wound he knows he’s already left there, a weak point. His blade connects as Luffy uses the momentum of the sledgehammer itself to ram his tail into Kaido’s twisted chest, knocking him backward just as Zoro slices forward through the meat of his thigh.

Kaido stumbles, but doesn’t go down—instead, he just keeps fucking laughing.

Without missing a beat he readjusts his grip on the sledgehammer and reverses course, bringing it back across hard and fast enough to slam into Luffy, still poised to strike again—and the force of the blow sends Luffy skidding back into Zoro, crushing him hard enough send them both sprawling across the beach.

They’re both up in an instant, back in the fray, leaping at Kaido from the left, right, left again—kicking up wet sand and blood barely distinguishable in the rain. In the overturned vehicle, the radio crackles to life, vomiting something indecipherable against the raging downpour—and out of the corner of his eye, Zoro sees Nami yelling at Chopper and Robin from the shore, motioning toward the ocean in the distance—toward the mouth of the cove—

And then, suddenly, something high-pitched and screaming sails through the air, hits the treeline, and erupts. And through the wind and rain, a massive white ship emerges (followed by another, and another, and another), shredding the outcroppings in its path with mortars as its searchlights cut through the darkness.

At its prow, Akainu stands, red and vile, screaming into the wind. “There you are, filth! You’re mine!”

And Luffy roars—turning out to face him—

Leaving his back open.

Kaido takes the opportunity and before Zoro can regain his own footing, he’s hauling the sledgehammer back and swinging—and the giant thing connects, crushing against Luffy’s side with so much force his spine bends at an unnatural angle, half-launching him back into the water. Luffy’s body tumbles, hitting the wet sand with a muted THUD! then rolling down into the surf—disappearing into the roiling waves.

Teeth gritted around Wado, Zoro curses, pushing forward—because he can’t think about it. Can’t lose focus (even though fuck, fuck—not again—) and this time he aims not for Kaido’s vitals, but for his arm. Kaido doesn’t even try to block, too focused on relishing his own victory and screaming out across the water as Akainu shouts back, both enraged—and Zoro’s blade connects, ripping through the tendons holding Kaido’s sledgehammer aloft.

As soon as the hit lands, Kaido snarls at him, but the sledgehammer hits the beach and Zoro is already moving too fast for him to regroup. Instead, Kaido swings with his fist, and a weighty punch crunches against Zoro’s face—smashing bone—but Zoro just keeps pushing forward, driving his swords upward. To avoid the blow, Kaido leaps back, and the movement puts more distance between him and the weapon.

Good.

As long as he can keep him—

Then Kaido’s wrist flicks to his belt, pissed but grinning—and suddenly, there’s a glint of silver in his left hand, and—

He feels the pain but doesn’t see it—because he can’t.

Jack’s hunting knife is white hot, halving his entire world as Kaido lashes out and Zoro feels something warm and wet gush down his face. He thinks he cries out but he can’t be sure, because one minute he’s on his feet, scrambling for a foothold in the rain—and the next he’s sprawled on his back as Kaido looms over him, one meaty, bladed fist raised, poised to smash his face again—

—and something slams into Kaido’s side, a blur of white and seawater and rage.

Zoro hears the creature snarl—and thunder cracks, deafening and heavenly, as the sky opens up.

It’s Luffy but it’s not—every beautiful scale a pristine, terrible white like he’s been skinned to the bone and bleached. The claws of his monstrous form have shifted into knife-like, lethal things—a row of razor-sharp spines extending down each arm and the length of his back. His hair, no longer black but just as white as the rest of him, frames a snarl of massive teeth and eyes the color of Kaido’s blood—and in the murky gray of the storm, he glows, stripes of raw bioluminescence and electricity swirling under his ethereal skin.

There’s a tingling, crackling pressure in the air that has the hair on the back of Zoro’s arms standing on end, and over the smell of rotting fish and sea-salt he’s hit with the stench of burning meat—as Kaido screams.

In the distance, Nami yells his name, and that gets him moving again—but his left arm buckles as he misjudges the distance to the ground because he can’t fucking see anything on his left side—

And Luffy’s tail whips around, slamming him back into the ground, even as the teeth buried in Kaido’s jugular tear, and Zoro’s about to yell at him when suddenly something huge and metal and deadly whizzes past and he jerks his head to see Akainu standing on the prow of his fishing boat, spear gun propped up one shoulder.

Luffy whirls and the motion eviscerates what’s left of Kaido’s neck—and Luffy (is it Luffy? Because god, god—) lets out an incomprehensible, monstrous roar toward the ocean.

Akainu—foaming and spitting—screams back, “I’ll fucking kill you this time—” just as another burst of thunder rips across the sky and something wild and electric fizzes across Zoro’s skin.

Zoro feels like he’s being crushed, like he can’t breathe—and he can’t tell what’s rain and what’s blood anymore. He lets go of the hilts still clenched in his hands, braces both palms on Luffy’s tail, and shoves—and Luffy whips back toward him, then, animal eyes wide. Then the weight is gone and Luffy is there next to him, claws cradling his face.

“Your eye! Zoro, your eye!” Luffy says, and even though it's barely a mess of sounds Zoro can understand him. He pushes Luffy’s hands away, already sitting up, grasping for the hilts of his swords.

“‘S fine, I’m fine,” he shouts back, but even he can hear the slur in his voice. And yet—he’s beyond processing any of it at this point, the pain from the cargo district melding together with this into so much agony that he’s lost track of any of it—he’s come right out the other side into total dissociation.

In the distance, machine-gunfire cracks, spraying the beach as one of the Naval ships fires—and he whips his head around, ignoring the vertigo—just in time to see Nami duck behind the ruined trees, Chopper and Robin at her side, off Merry and safe ashore. They need to do something, but none of them are equipped to handle this kind of long-range fight—and they’re so few. Barely anything compared to the swarm of Naval ships and Kaido’s men flooding through the ocean.

He looks back at the white thing that both is-and-isn’t Luffy and grabs his neck, ignoring the way his skin tingles against the current still running through Luffy’s body, the way the sharp fins at his gills dig into his hands—and then he presses their faces together, a kiss so bloody and desperate it’s as much goodbye as I love you.

(Because he does—he does. More than anything, I love you.)

Then before Luffy can say a word, he shouts, “You have to go back—you have to get into the ocean where you can fight!” and Zoro shoves him away, then, toward the water’s edge. Or tries to, because Luffy is impossible to budge, pressed right up against him and grasping him in the middle of a fucking battlefield.

“What about—”

Zoro pushes him again, then hauls himself to his feet, ignoring the way his muscles barely listen. “I’ll be fine! Someone has to protect the others!” he yells back. “Go where you have the fucking advantage—you need to—”

He feels the blow before he sees the blood, another pelt of bullets hailing down around them as one—two, maybe, he can’t even tell anymore—clips him, and Luffy snarls. Zoro doesn’t falter, though. He’s so far past the point of processing it that he knows his body is only going to go down when it physically stops working—so he just stumbles backwards, gripping at the hilt of his swords with numb hands.

In the dark air, electricity crackles along Luffy’s skin and scales as he turns, facing Akainu across the water—and he roars. Akainu, half like an animal himself, now—so full of rage and fervor—yells wordlessly back, throwing down his gun and stalking across the bow toward some other lethal, mounted thing, shoving men out of his way—practically throwing them to the deck or overboard.

Then from behind him, Chopper screams—Chopper, the youngest, the smallest, the least involved of them all—and Zoro whips around so fast he nearly loses his footing in the sand. It’s not a cry for help, though, it’s a warning—and something launches onto the beach feet to his left, a mortar shell that blasts apart on impact—

The force of the blow knocks Zoro off his feet, sprawling him back into the sand. All sound disappears, replaced by a terrible ringing as his ears fail to process the explosion—utterly destroying his balance—and Luffy dives for him, shaking his head like a dog to clear his own ears, maybe. Not that it will help.

The world is a blur of gray, muffled and near-silent even as Zoro sees another rip of gunfire tear across the beach—and working on autopilot, maybe, he shoves Luffy again—half-begging, half-demanding he get back into the water, needing him there because even if he dies Luffy will be safe. His entire life narrows down to this one moment, like a ghost caught in a death loop—

Luffy, Luffy, Luffy!

Luffy doesn’t listen, because why would he listen? And he grabs Zoro, hauling him back toward the treeline away from the water. Zoro digs his heels in, shoving them both to a halt, but that’s as counterintuitive as anything else in the face of Luffy’s determination. He just shoves harder, so Zoro shoves back—and this time something gives.

In the storm and the rain, Luffy stares down at him—a horror of gore and lightning—and Zoro shouts (voice broken because all he’s done is scream, not because this feels like a valediction), “I swore—I swore I’d follow you out to sea when this was over—so you have to leave me here and fight—Luffy—I’ll be fine! Luffy—”

The harpoon punches through Luffy’s chest from behind—blade erupting through his ribcage inches from Zoro’s own face—and Luffy freezes, sharp-and-wild mouth half open as a choked scream gurgles out instead of words. Lungs and guts shredded—blood erupts from his mouth in a spray of—

And Zoro cannot process what he’s seeing—reaches out—

Then Luffy’s body jerks in a vicious, grinding, mechanical whirl that Zoro can hear even over the rage of the sea, of the storm, as Akainu retracts the chain on the whaling harpoon’s other end—dragging Luffy’s body. A mass of white and red, his bulk ragdolls across the sand, the harpoon’s curved edges digging into his chest to keep him on the end—like a fish on a hook—a dead fish on a hook—

Luffy snarls, wet and ragged, clawing at the sand, but there’s nothing to grab—nothing, even as Zoro throws himself out for him, but the winch is too fast, too fast—like he’s being sucked into the ocean itself—

And then he’s gone, swallowed by the waves.

Zoro’s whole world seems to freeze in a moment, silent and deadly and terrible, and Akainu laughs.

Then, unable to do anything else, Zoro screams out into the wind—screams for Luffy over and over again until his throat is raw—and the storm swallows it up like he isn’t even there—a speck of nothing on the beach, watching helplessly as the rain and the sea erases Luffy’s blood like he’d never existed.

Zoro pounds at the sand, the wet clumps of it sticky and carving through his wounds like a thousand knives of seawater and tears, and he can barely see Akainu’s boat through the downpour, the distance, the waves, his own blood—but he tries—because the winch is still grinding even as it drags Luffy’s submerged body through the sea. The other end of the chain has to surface, it has to, and then Zoro will be able to see—to do something, because it all happened so fast, too fast, and Luffy can’t be—

The winch stops.

In increments that feel both instant and eternal, the ocean becomes a sheet of glass, every molecule of oxygen sucked from the atmosphere, rain locked in place before his eyes—and the sea, the air, the very sky itself stills—and suddenly, there’s a great groaning from the earth, the kind of sound that starts low in his feet and builds, builds, builds—

(Like drums under the sea, the rhythm of the ocean’s very currents brought to life—)

And then, overhead, the clouds begin to move, twisting, swirling—a hole in the sky, shot through like a bullet as the sun pierces through the darkness, a single cylinder of light so bright it’s blinding—

(And he remembers, then, Nami’s warning. The eye of the hurricane, the deadly calm of it, the danger of it—)

And with a low, terrible creak, Akainu’s boat tilts—

(And the rumble reaches his chest, a pounding, pounding, pounding—)

—and the sea splits.

(And oh, he thinks. Oh, the Sun God in the Trench.)

- - -

It is indescribable.

The sound, the rushing wreck of a thousand tons of water displaced, of a thousand trees falling, of a thousand buildings cracked to their very foundations. The way the air moves, a vacuum of wind thundering across the world around him, drawn to the center, to the—

Great white hands peeling back the ocean’s layers, reaching up from the center of the earth, tearing apart the land itself. Making way for something as the ocean swirls, a whirlpool in the blink of an eye as it breaks the very laws of nature and the—

Boats sitting, fractured pieces like shards of broken shells in a pile of sand—lifted in an opposite palm as the sea itself drains through its fingers, its claws. The men are smears, now, of red and black and nothing, no longer Kaido’s or Akainu’s but dead. And Akainu himself is nowhere, not even—

In the hole in the sky where lighting rips through the air from nowhere, from the very sun itself, and it’s so bright against the chaos it burns his eye—the eye he has left—and he wonders for a moment if he’s gone blind—

As the massive hand closes around the ship, crushing metal and machinery like paper (and sailors like ants), something else shifts below, something with eyes like blood and endless rows of teeth the size of men, with skin like whalebone and hair the very reflection of sun off seafoam—

—and Nika returns.

Epilogue: The Surface; 0

(two years later)

No one tries to stop him as he crosses the gravel parking lot, a lazy swing in his step and one arm casually draped across the sword hilts at his waist. It’s broad daylight, just past mid-afternoon under clear May skies, and the marina should be empty—devoid of day-trippers enjoying the half-decent early summer weather—but not deserted. Not like this.

They hadn’t known, then—hadn’t known he would be here today.

A muffled, strangled gasp breaks the eerie silence, and as Zoro turns he makes eye contact with one of the dockhands, a spindly kid utterly wide-eyed and pale at the sight of him. For a moment, Zoro just stares him down—before the boy visibly quivers and scurries back to the harbor office, glancing back every third step.

Zoro just rolls his eye and continues on his way, unhurried. They’ll figure he’s arrived out soon enough.

He stops at the base of the shrine, a handmade, twisting thing made from the upturned roots of a fallen tree, dragged out from the cove when they’d finally realized he wasn’t coming back. It’s Usopp’s best work, Zoro thinks—an entire expanse of stars strung from the root-branches, its body carved and painted with curving waves, swirling fish, and an intricate sun of gold in the center. Not a monument to some long-dead, forgotten thing, but a memorial for a friend.

In the silence, Zoro digs in the pocket of his jacket until he finds what he’s looking for—a roll of too-sweet taffy wrapped in wax paper, etched with characters from his home island. He flicks it into the bowl at the shrine’s base and then, after a moment of deliberation, smacks his palms together. He doesn’t close his eyes, though—not like a pilgrim or a penitent. Instead, his gaze wanders out across the sea.

“Sorry for the shitty offering,” he grunts, “but Nami told me to stop leaving beef jerky ‘cause of the smell.”

As always, the ocean doesn’t respond.

Not as always, there’s the loud CRASH! of a door slamming behind him, and then Nami’s voice carries across the lot. “You asshole!” she yells, furious, “You said you were coming back next week!”

He shoves his hands back in his pocket and sighs, turning on his heel—back toward the boathouse, where Nami is standing half-in, half-out, glaring and chest heaving like she’s just sprinted to the door. And maybe she has—he doesn’t fucking know. Her long hair (down to her waist now) is pulled back into a ponytail and she has her drafting glasses pushed all the way up onto her head, like she’d come directly from her office.

Behind her, Koby appears, red-faced and stuttering. He has his hands raised in placation, mumbling, “Ma’am, please, you’re scaring the—” even though Zoro knows he knows it’s useless. Not when she’s this pissed.

Predictably, Nami just plows right over Koby, jabbing her finger at Zoro from across the lot. “Fuck you! You’re screwing up my plans!” She throws her hands up as she shouts a wordless, “Augh!” then she turns back to Koby (who only flinches a little). “Go call—fuck!—start with Usopp, I guess!”

Given an order, Koby straightens a little as he declares, “Y-yes, Boss!” with a salute, before he disappears back into the building. In his wake, Nami pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs.

Zoro just raises his eyebrows at her. “I can go back,” he says, and Nami flips him the middle finger.

“Absolutely not!” she yells. “Welcome home!” Then she slams the boathouse door hard enough to rattle the sign above—East Blue Marina, written bold and bright, still new. (It doesn’t really move, though. Usopp’s craftsmanship would never be so shabby.) Through the building’s open windows, he hears her holler, “Helmeppo! I swear to fucking god—get off your ass and get everyone out! We’re closing early!” and Zoro laughs.

- - -

Sanji is the first to arrive, which is only fine because he brings food and Zoro hasn’t eaten since his arrival on the island—not because he missed the chef’s terrible insults. Sanji seems to feel the same; he’d only shown up first because Nami had been the one to call, after all.

After they finish unloading the coolers, Pudding waves from the Baratie’s delivery van and calls, “Later, freak! Good to see you!” with a snicker before she peels out of the parking lot. Zoro briefly wonders if she’s doing it intentionally these days—but the thought only lasts as long as it takes for Sanji to light a cigarette, because as soon as he has both hands free he hauls what he can and kicks Zoro to get the rest.

(In the pile, there’s a crate from Perona—six bottles of rum, unopened.)

Usopp comes next, overalls still wax-stained from work, and he doesn’t even hesitate before clapping Zoro on the back with one broad hand the moment he steps onto Merry’s deck. The force of it makes Zoro grin, and he throws his arm around Usopp’s shoulders in return—nearly making him drop the wooden box he’s carrying.

“Hey! Watch it! This is fragile!” Usopp gripes as he elbows him in the side, but he isn’t angry—he just laughs right back, before disappearing into the wheelhouse.

Robin and Chopper show up together, the latter sprinting down the dock ahead of her only to stop, walk, and very cooly board once he sees Zoro sprawled on one of the beach chairs—watching, sipping shitty beer because Sanji has refused to let him open the decent liquor until everyone arrives. The exaggerated maturity only lasts a moment, though, because Chopper’s never been very good at hiding his excitement (and even though he’s older now he’s still so young), and as Zoro sits straight he blurts, “How was it? Did you have fun? Did you bring anything interesting back?” rapid-fire, bouncing on his toes.

Robin chuckles, ruffling his hair as she climbs up behind him, ignoring the way he whines in return—then she turns her soft smile on Zoro and says, “It’s quite lovely to see you. It’s been rather quiet without you here these past few months.”

Zoro snorts in return. “Don’t librarians like that kind of thing?” he says, rolling his eye.

Robin just hums, content, as she gently pushes Chopper forward to find Usopp. “Perhaps,” she replies. “But the change of pace is always nice. Old habits die hard, I suppose.”

Zoro tips his beer in mock salute, and when Robin reemerges from the galley a few minutes later, she has a drink of her own.

Nami is the last to arrive, caught up in some last-minute financial meeting he barely understands the explanation for—and the moment she tosses her duffle below deck she shouts, “Let’s go, people!” before stepping behind the helm. Within minutes, there’s a cocktail in her hand and they’re motoring out of the harbor, Merry’s new engine purring through the ocean waves like a dream—utterly incongruous to her patched-up and well-loved exterior.

- - -

The cove isn’t so much a cove anymore—just a torn-up strip of land and beach and jagged rocks, the rough expanse broken every now and then by some pile of offerings or a makeshift shrine or simply an interesting, colorful pile of shells. More people come here now—whether to pay their respects or just see the place where it happened. The resurgence of the Sun God, the annihilation of a corrupt government, the eradication of half the archipelago’s crime syndicate, the epicenter of the largest tsunami in centuries—big, earth-shattering things that sometimes still hurt to think about.

It’s not a secret place, no longer a safehouse of any kind.

Even so, it’s still theirs.

By the time they anchor, the sun is already setting—so under the fading twilight, the party begins. As Sanji grills right on deck, Nami cracks open Perona’s welcome-home gift and hands him a full bottle (with a glass too, of course—they’re not animals), then she settles in the (stolen) beach chair next to him and clinks her own drink against his.

Across the deck Usopp and Chopper close the wheelhouse and begin setting up Usopp’s latest invention, with Robin on standby to tack up a white linen sheet over the doorway. Every now and then, Sanji hands her something to try—much to Usopp and Chopper’s continued annoyance, because they want a taste too, damn it!

Zoro and Nami watch as the four of them bicker and laugh, and Zoro can barely imagine that other life—when Merry was just a nameless, empty fishing boat and they were two lonely criminals staring up at the night sky. They’re still criminals, of course—they all are, because life would be too boring if they played by the rules; they’re just happier.

With a sigh, Nami nudges him with her bare foot, and he raises one eyebrow at her as he sips his drink.

“How was it?” she asks, and Zoro shrugs.

“Fine, I guess,” he grunts back. “No new leads, but I’m not exactly surprised. Found a book for Robin to translate, though—with some maps in the back. They’ve got that hiccup-cunt-dracula thing you were talking about, so maybe that’ll help.”

Nami nearly chokes and kicks him for real, then, as she tries not to drown in a drop of liquor. “You’re doing that on purpose—hic sunt dracones,” she snickers, “here there be dragons,” and Zoro drinks again to hide his smirk. She just rolls her eyes at him in return. “Once she’s done with it I’ll take a look. Maybe it’s someplace we haven’t looked yet.”

“We’ll see,” he replies. “Who knew it would be so hard to find a big hole in the ground.”

Nami tilts her head, then, and sighs. “You’re sure he’s there?” she asks, like they haven’t gone through this loop before—discussing endless possibilities. Looking and looking again, island after island after island.

And like every other time they’ve had this conversation over the past two years, he just snorts. “No fucking clue—still no sign of the others, either,” he says, then he drinks again. She waits. He shoots her a look. “Not gonna stop, though.”

That seems to satisfy her and she nods. Tilts her glass to him again. Dangles her foot over the side of the boat so her bare toes skim the ocean’s surface below. (He’s been doing the same all afternoon.)

Then Usopp crows, “Behold!” from across the deck, capturing their attention with a flourish as he waves his arms. Then he flicks a switch on the box—all wires and tubes and reels—and the blank white canvas comes to life in a flicker of light.

Immediately, Chopper yelps in delight, and Sanji mumbles, “Holy shit,” under his breath. Even Zoro has to admit he’s impressed.

Utterly beaming, Usopp gestures toward the moving pictures now displayed over the covered wheelhouse. “I’m calling this a portable projector!” he announces—then he jabs his finger at Zoro, who just placidly swirls his rum. Usopp scowls. “Oh, come on—look a little more excited!”

“I’m in awe of your genius, oh magnificent mechanical engineer,” Zoro drawls back, and at his side Nami snickers again.

“I bet if you sold that, you could make a fortune,” she adds, and without even looking Zoro holds out his hand. She slaps it—a high-five—and Robin snorts into her wine.

Chopper ignores them all, starry-eyed as he stares at the miracle of technology. “Well I think it’s amazing!” he says, and Usopp puffs right back up, not one to stay derailed for long.

“Of course it is,” he declares. “I made it. Now—tonight’s feature film will be The Mark of Zorro—”

“Oh, you definitely stole the tapes for that—”

“Could you guys just be quiet for two seconds? Please?”

Sanji scoffs around his cigarette, already passing around plates of food. “Why? It’s a silent film—”

“Fine!” Usopp throws his hands up. “No movie!” and Chopper wails in despair.

Trying (and failing) to hide her own laughter, Robin says, “We’re sorry, Mr. Longnose—everyone will behave—”

“I am literally begging you to stop calling me that—”

(They end up watching it twice, both because it is cool and because, predictably, they can’t get through a single showing without a thousand little distractions. By the time Robin carries a dozing Chopper to bed below deck, the rest of them are too drunk to pay attention, anyway. It’s the best evening Zoro’s had in weeks.)

- - -

It’s hours later, long after dark, when Zoro breaks the glass.

The rest of them have long-since retreated to their fold-out cots or built-in bunks (because there are real bunks, now; because this is home) full of food and booze and laughter. Still, he can’t sleep—that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

He creeps on deck in the darkness that’s not really darkness under the bright full moon, the final dregs of a rum bottle in one hand and an apple in the other. He doesn’t see the wires from Usopp’s machine still spread across the wood until it’s too late and he’s already halfway to tripping—and for some reason his brain chooses to drop the bottle, not the food, as he lunges to save the projector before it smashes to the ground.

Frozen and blinking—still vaguely drunk—he stands there, staring at the mess and wondering if the others will come running only to see how utterly stupid he looks. Which he cannot have. Obviously.

Still operating at maximum efficiency, he rights the projector stand as best he can then crouches to pick up the shards of broken bottle—at which point he curses (distracted, because he’s still technically holding the apple, and he really does need two hands for this) and slices open his palm like an idiot. With a startled hiss, he drops the apple—then watches helplessly as it rolls across the deck, right over the edge.

No booze, and now no food.

Briefly, he considers just turning back around and going to bed.

Instead, he sighs—long and annoyed—and resumes gathering up the glass. And when he’s done, he walks right over to the railing and dumps that into the ocean, too—an absolutely flawless cover-up.

For a moment, he just stands there, staring out into the open ocean as he puts pressure on his bleeding hand and watches the way the moon bounces off the water. He can see all the way out to the horizon now that the cove is barely more than a barren inlet, and from here—on Merry’s little deck at the edge of their little island—the sea seems vast and impenetrable. An impossible thing to search. And yet—tomorrow (or today, really) he will wake up with the others and they will look anyway. Because how could they not?

The hole in his chest is still there—smaller, now that there are four other hearts to help fill the empty space, but it’s impossible not to notice the ache after knowing what it’s like to have the missing piece, even just for a little while. It hurts. But it would hurt worse, he thinks, if he stopped searching—and if he didn’t have anyone else to search with in the first place. He’s lonely, but he’s not alone—and that’s something. He can live with that if he has to. But. Still.

A cloud drifts in front of the moon, shrouding the deck (and the ocean too) and he sighs, then turns. It’s a sign from the universe, he thinks, to stop moping and go the fuck to sleep. This time he’s careful to avoid the wires now that he knows they’re there, but he still stumbles anyway, startled by a splash in the quiet distance. When his cut palm presses against the side of the wheelhouse as he flails for balance, he curses, because sure—his luck can’t get any worse, anyway.

Then in the darkness behind him, someone giggles, warm and giddy—and says, “You really do get hurt a lot. Did you know that?”

And it’s everything.