Chapter Text
There’s a poetic sort of justice to the fact that everyone knows and Luffy doesn’t, this time.
It’s fucked up, sure, a twist of fate so morbid only Robin would find joy in it, and even she looks vaguely sick. You see, repetition is a fantastic narrative device: There’s nothing more satisfying than a story coming full circle, when the intricate mosaic of setup and payoff results in much-needed catharsis. Simple and effective, any storyteller will tell you – and Usopp is damn good at telling stories. It’s the one thing he can be proud of, when everything else fails.
Usopp doesn’t feel particularly good about that – or anything really – right at this moment. Perhaps in future he will, by all the seas, he hopes he will because that means this too will pass, and they will emerge from it victorious, just another miracle by the miracle-working crew from the East Blue.
But right now, surrounded by the shaken faces of his crew mates, all he feels like doing is crawling back to bed and passing out until it’s all over. To run for the hills and never return.
Usopp can’t and Usopp won’t, however. Because it’s Luffy, and because he made that mistake once before and swore: never again, never, never–
The newspaper lies innocently between them, a few days old by the time it made it past Wano Country’s crumbling borders via a confused News Coo, a clearly-alarmed Bepo (he hadn’t even apologized for almost running over Brook in his haste to get to his captain, and looking back that should’ve been the first red flag) and Law bursting into the room the Strawhats have claimed for their recovery, covered head-to-toe in gauze and all warmth drained from his expression.
Usopp did not miss witnessing their ally that close to despair. It makes the bright smile Law shared with Luffy in their moment of victory seem like a distant dream, perhaps part of one of Usopp’s more ludicrous tales.
“They got him. They got Sabo.”
It’s like he dropped a live grenade in their hands, if grenades were made of words torn kicking and screaming from a nightmare they all share. Usopp wants to ask – They, who is they?! – and there’s always a ‘they’, the Marine or the World Government or CP0 or some other shadowy organization pulling the strings of corruption and misery. But it hardly matters because this… this is real, a realization that passes from Strawhat to Strawhat along with the black-and-white print staring at them from pages increasingly crumpled by nine sets of shaking hands:
Revolutionaries Defeated at Mariejois: No. 2 of the Revolutionary Army Successfully Captured!
And in their midst slumbers their captain, huddled in the softest blankets they could find and snoring away his injuries, and he doesn’t know.
The irony – horrible, grotesque, unfair, unfair – isn’t lost on Usopp. Two years ago, he would’ve killed to have this, to be there, to catch Luffy as he bled and screamed and burned at the pyres of his brother’s death. To save Luffy just as he saved every single soul in this room, Law included.
Please, is all Usopp can think of, begging to every deity he’s heard of and those he hasn’t, to anyone who will listen, let him rest. Luffy doesn’t deserve this, not again. Please, have mercy–
Zoro is the first to move and something in Usopp moves with him, a fledgeling sense of optimism fluttering pathetically in his chest. Because it’s Zoro and Zoro always leads them right when their captain is off saving the world or a country (or two). Yet all Zoro does is sit at Luffy’s bedside like a mountain shaken into rubble, a measured kind of collapse that hits Usopp square in the gut. He doesn’t know what the others are doing, doesn’t dare look away from their first mate, but someone is crying and someone else is murmuring comforting words, and that at least sounds like Sanji so the first must be Nami.
There’s only a handful of times Roronoa Zoro has yielded without mounting a counterattack right afterwards and none of them are memories Usopp wants to revisit. Not now, not ever.
“Who else knows?”, Zoro asks, the steel in his voice worn down to a dull edge at best, and Zoro’s hand settles on Luffy’s hair so gently it brings tears to Usopp’s eyes. Luffy mumbles in his sleep and smiles, nuzzling further into the covers with the clumsy comfort of a napping dog.
Law, too, is staring blankly at that gesture before blinking, focusing anew. He’s so tense a muscle visibly twitches in his jaw with the heavy swallow working its way down his throat.
“Bepo, me. Now you. Eustass is suspicious but he won’t leave Killer’s side, not yet anyways.”
The mere mention of Killer serves as an additional sucker punch on top of the veritable tsunami crashing over them, on the mend as he may be. That could have easily been Zoro, or Bepo, and the haunted glint in Law’s eyes says he’s thinking of it, too.
Zoro nods, absently. “And how long till we can set sail?”
For the briefest of moments, Law looks like he’s going to protest. The Trafalgar Law they met a few months ago would have, grim and annoyed, and the one from just last week would too, exasperated and loud–
Since then, they have beaten one of the Four Emperors and sent another one packing with her tail between her legs, and that feeling of having your dreams within reach if you only try hard enough, if you truly believe in it and your friends and yourself, it forges a bond like little else does. Hope is a dangerous thing – it can heal as much as it can wound, and Luffy has taught them all, one by one, how to endure both sides of that coin.
This pirate alliance of theirs has long stopped meaning what Law had wanted it to, and instead turned into what Luffy promised all along: Something permanent, something unbreakable, that all-or-nothing sensation of trust that is as much a freefall as it is flying.
So Law just… sighs. He rubs at eyes deeply smudged with missed hours of sleep and close calls all around, and Usopp can see his shoulders bend under the weight of being a captain.
“I… I don’t know. But I’ll find out. I don’t need to remind you all that this– It’s not like Kaido. Our chances against Kaido were slim to none but they were there. That report, it’s already outdated. The world has been shifting with us being none the wiser, and it could be that Strawhat’s brother is already…”
It’s like Law can’t bring himself to say it, as if even speaking the possibility into existence will make them lose something they can’t get back. His gaze flickers to Jinbei, briefly, then to Luffy, and sympathy deepens the lines on his face.
“I’ll find out”, Law repeats, firmly. “Just… be there when Luffy wakes up. Then we’ll decide.”
And though many things may have changed, two years and countless battles later, this remains the same, always, always. Being at Luffy’s side is a privilege and a duty no Strawhat will ever turn their back on.
Blinking the blurriness from his vision, Usopp looks at the bandages wrapped around Luffy’s chest with loving care and the deep purple of bruises peeking out underneath, and he clenches his trembling hands to fists and hopes. As long as there is a sliver of sky above them and the wisp of a current below, they will follow their captain to the end of the world and beyond.
Come whatever may. Because this time, they are here and they're not letting go.