the sea makes bones of bodies

by swordsmans

Summary:

[[internal jump links at ~8k word intervals for easier navigation; both chapters posted at once]]

At the question (or maybe just Nami, a reprieve from talking to Zoro—who he's still vaguely afraid of) Usopp perks up. “Kind of! I mean, yeah—the big Sun God in the Trench. But also the sea gods themselves, and the missing Moon God—it’s a whole thing,” he says, waving his hands as Nami crosses the deck, book tucked under her arm. Usopp trails off again but she gestures him onward and plops next to Zoro, dangling her feet over the open water, too.

“Go on,” she says.

He stares at them both before letting out a strangled kind of, “Do you actually want to know?”

Zoro and Nami exchange a look. “We have a keen interest in the local wildlife,” Zoro drawls, and Nami snorts out a laugh. The sound startles Usopp, who might be one of the most skittish people Zoro has ever met—second only to Koby, maybe.

Nami elbows Zoro in the side, trying (and failing) to hide her smile as he flips her the middle finger in return. “Local legends, then,” she amends.

Notes:

special thanks to TK and their endless patience holding my hand through this for three months... and shout-out to richie, who dropped the phrase "mermaid zolu" in my inbox blissfully unaware that im the assistant archival librarian in a maritime history/whaling museum. unfortunately for all of us, i was born to write this fic.

setting is vaguely american 1930-40s historical, but it's not that important.

(no beta, we die like ace!)

 

use these jump links to navigate to different parts of the fic like "chapters" if your page refreshes or you lose your place.

Prologue (Shallows)
Part I
Part II
Interlude I (Twilight)
Part III
Interlude II (Midnight)
Part IV
Interlude III (Abyssal)

Chapter 1: as above

Prologue: Shallows; 0-200

“ACE!” he screams, raw and bloody and broken—drawn out in a cry that reaches across the roiling waves like claws.

And Akainu laughs.

Around them, the sea churns, the sky above a mess of heavy clouds thick with the promise of rain—but the storm hasn’t begun. Not yet. (Not in any way that matters.) Still, the massive fishing boat rocks, tossed against the swells like a toy as Luffy lunges for his brother and for the human holding him aloft by the throat in the middle of the deck.

Ace’s tail—once a beautiful, pristine, abyssal-black—is a mess of snapped scales and viscera at the point where his torso connects, and still—Akainu braces one foot against its base and yanks, dragging the serrated, locked whaling harpoon through the pool of Ace’s guts.

There’s a burble of blood from Ace’s lips, but it’s nothing—a reaction, liquid forced through his body by function alone. Ace makes no sound.

Somewhere above the roar of the wind and waves, a voice wails his brother’s name over and over, but Luffy barely registers it—barely registers it as his own as he tries to drag himself across the slick wood, reaching out to kill or to save, he isn’t sure which—except there’s nothing left to save, except—no— maybe, maybe—

And then suddenly, Akainu stops—frowns. Drops Ace like he’s nothing in a heap and stomps one terrible, booted foot against his head. “You weren’t the one,” he shouts, furious, spitting, stomping again and again and again and again—

“Nothing changed! This is the age of man—the sea was supposed to be mine—the tides under my order—”

Then he freezes and turns—zeroing in on Luffy as he inches in agonizing increments through his own mess of blood and exhaustion. Akainu’s eyes narrow and the hand around his gore-tangled spear tightens, white-knuckled and violent.

“You. The one it was protecting—”

But Luffy just stares, reaching out for Ace, for Ace—even as his arms shake from the exertion of dragging his own body out of the water, of fending off half of Akainu’s hunting party—and the voice keeps sobbing Ace, Ace, Ace into the howling wind.

Akainu takes a step forward—

Something grabs Luffy from behind and Akainu snarls—just as familiar hands haul Luffy back, tossing him toward the edge of the deck. Sabo’s eyes are wide, unhinged, his face ashen and his own tail a barely-recognizable blue through the red mess around them.

“Go, go—” he yells, bracing his arm against Luffy’s own torso and dragging him back another length. “It’s too late! Iva says they’ve got mines—Luffy—the boat going to blow and we have to—”

Luffy tries to speak and no sound comes out—but the voice calling his brother’s name doesn’t stop. With everything he has left, he shoves Sabo aside and lurches forward again, smashing his brother against the deck hard enough to knock the air from his chest—because he has to get back—he has to tell Ace—

—and the human roars, rage incarnate, as he cocks his arm back to launch the horrific chew of metal and spikes—

—and Luffy barely registers it, because Ace is right there and he’s not moving and they need to go! He needs to get up and they need to go because they know the plan and Sabo said—

The world explodes.

---

Part I

(two years later)

No one tries to stop him as he ascends the massive yacht’s gangway, 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’d known, then—known he would be here today.

A muffled, strangled gasp breaks the eerie silence, and as Zoro turns he makes eye contact with some douchebag in loafers midway down the dock, wide-eyed and pale, who must have missed the memo. For a moment, Zoro just stares him down—before the man visibly quivers and scurries away.

Zoro scoffs.

They’re all avoiding him like pets who’ve pissed the carpet simply because one of their own has made it to his list. And they all know who he is, too, because this is the fuck-you money part of town; half the rich assholes who keep their yachts here are somewhere in his uncle’s books.

He wanders through the boat with no specific destination in mind and no clue of the floor plan. His target is here, after all. Zoro will find him eventually—he always does, no matter how long it takes.

Maybe that’s part of the fear, he thinks, and part of why Crocodile so rarely sends him out. He is more than capable of playing the long game, of embodying murder as a pursuit predator.

To wield that power too often would break the spell.

The yacht itself is just as quiet as the harbor, a great white abomination with floors and levels of all things—too many rooms and plush carpeting and a galley pulled from the bowels of some bullshit-fancy restaurant.

As he passes through one of at least two dining areas (or the same one twice, maybe) a massive, darkwood liquor cabinet catches his eye. Through the pane he can see rows of expensive, cut-glass bottles lined up like trophies—and he grins.

There’s a padlock on the case, but he doesn’t spare it a second glance. Nami might be able to pick it, but she’s not here—and he doesn’t particularly care about stealth. He hasn’t made a secret of his presence. No one has.

After a moment’s consideration, he grips the back of a nearby (heavily upholstered, expensive but not built for seafaring) dining chair and hurls it toward the cabinet just so. It catches on the wooden edge and cracks, clipping the side of the glass and shattering the whole thing—along with a third of the bottles. A third, but not all. Perfect.

The sound it all makes is near-deafening, and if his target has any denial left Zoro doubts it’ll last much longer.

No staff comes running at the noise, either, and he wonders idly if they’ve been sent home. It’s unlikely, really, given what he knows about his target. In all probability, they’ve fled or—at the very least—left their employer to his fate.

Shards of glass crack under his boots as he crosses to the destroyed mess, everything together worth more money than most people might see in a dozen lifetimes. Far more than the average public servant. Even a magistrate. Especially a magistrate.

And the liquor itself is also extremely, deeply illegal.

The bootlegged alcohol isn't his concern—not when there’s a high chance it’s come through their own organization. No, what his bosses have taken issue with is its brazen display—among other things. (Many other things.)

Zoro cracks open the empty doorframe—then grabs the biggest, gaudiest, most expensive-looking bottle still left standing and inspects it. Shrugs. Carries on his way with the neck held loosely in his hand as he wanders back into the bowels of the ship. He’ll consider it a tip for his hard work.

(Nami will get a kick out of that, he thinks.)

He finds the magistrate sitting straight-backed and sweating in a room that’s more study than personal office. Like the rest of the yacht, it’s ostentatious and terrible—a room to match the man who looks ready to piss himself the second Zoro kicks down his door. Because Zoro does kick down his door, just to be a little dramatic—he slams it open with his foot after standing outside a second too long, and his target lets out a yelp fit for the world’s most pathetic little dog.

Zoro doesn’t even have to say anything.

He just stands there, no swords drawn and a five-digit bottle of contraband rum in one hand, and the magistrate looks ready to vomit all over the papers in front of him. He doesn’t though—not immediately—and Zoro has to give him credit for that.

After a beat of silence, the judge starts to say something, more garbled exclamation than words, and Zoro raises an eyebrow. It’s enough for a new sheen of sweat to break out across his forehead.

“Mr. Roronoa, sir! I’ve b-been expecting you! I have a new proposal I think your employers might be interested in.” He starts to stand, but Zoro leans against the doorframe—blocking the exit in a way that’s both casual and predatory—and the judge immediately sits back down.

Zoro drawls, “Probably not, I’ll be honest,” and then regrets responding at all. Jobs always take twice as long when they start talking. Everyone always wants to bargain. And beg. And it’s a waste of his—and their—limited time.

Predictably, the man nods—all teeth and smiles and relief like death’s just agreed with him anyway. Zoro can see the whites of his eyes.

“Of course, of course—” the magistrate leans forward, nearly upending half the shit on his desk. “Then maybe I can offer you something. More than they’re paying you, I’m sure—there’s a rumor going around, you see, that someone with real power is willing to pay over two hundred-thousand dollars in exchange—”

Zoro shrugs, barely listening. This is too easy, easier than he’s worth, and he’s fully aware that he’s only on this job because of his status in the company. No challenge, no chase. Even though it should be a point of pride, the stupidity of the situation strikes him almost—well, it’s not demeaning, really, but some discomfort just to the left of it.

This isn’t a fight. The man in front of him is soft and wet.

Dinner.

“—ire a group of extremely competent seamen, you know—fisherman with experience catching exotic game, if you will—because they’ll have the best chance of killing it fi—”

The shrug turns into a stretch, and Zoro cracks the joints in his neck. It’s more to force the energy out of his system than because he needs it, but the judge in front of him pales—voice hitching up half an octave as he continues wheezing.

“—ecognize that many of the locals view it as some kind of religious icon o-or, I don’t know, a sea god, but surely you’re a more pragmatic man than tha—”

The begging begins.

Zoro sighs and steps fully into the room, crossing toward the giant desk where he sets the bottle of liquor. The man doesn’t even stop talking—just stares at it in horror as he tries desperately to save himself.

“—s far more than I owe Crocodile—or Mihawk, even, and—and that kind of money should be enough to clear any outstanding de—”

“It’s not about your debt,” Zoro breaks in, already wanting this over with. “You weren’t smart. We don’t keep you in office to make things harder for us—that’s not how it works.” He sighs.

For all that his priorities have changed since childhood, he still believes in giving his targets the chance to die with dignity, a courtesy explanation at best. Not that anyone ever takes it for what it is—a kind of mercy. (Not that he makes it easy.)

“It’s about respect,” he continues. “You knew you were going to piss off the wrong people—our people—the second you accepted his cash.”

With one hand, Zoro slowly starts to draw Kitetsu—and the acrid smell of ammonia fills the air. The magistrate really has pissed himself, and Zoro clicks his tongue in disgust.

Utterly shameless, the magistrate grovels, “Look—look, I admit it—dealing with Akainu was a mistake. Tell your boss—your bosses—I said the governor’s campaign was a mistake and I’ll give them everything—” and grasps at the bottom of Zoro’s jacket like a drowning man. Zoro places the Kitetsu’s edge against his neck and he freezes, trembling—openly weeping.

The whole thing would be pathetic, Zoro thinks, if it weren’t so predictable.

“Are those really going to be your last words?” Zoro asks, one eyebrow raised, and the judge just wails like a child.

The soft skin at his throat parts like warm butter.

On his way out of the study, Zoro swipes the blood from his sword onto the room’s plush red-velvet curtains and grabs the rum, inspecting its gold-trimmed label. It’s fancy fancy—the kind of prize his uncle might have lined up behind his own I-am-arrogant-asshole-with-power desk in a decanter of all things. Zoro can’t help but marvel at the stupidity and the audacity needed to flaunt an entire cabinet of the stuff—an elected official, no less—and, vaguely, he regrets smashing the bulk of it.

It’s the principle of the thing, though; good rum bought with a double bribe. No one reaps the rewards of betrayal. No one double-crosses the Cross Guild.

Still, Mihawk might appreciate the gift—so, naturally, Zoro is going to get absolutely smashed on it himself, his uncle be-damned. His next fight isn’t until tomorrow and Nami’s out on a job, so he has nothing better to do, really.

He doesn’t even bother concealing the rum on his way back to the gravel parking lot—just keeps it dangling loosely in his hand as he passes yacht after pristine pleasure yacht, another world entirely from the fisherman’s district down the shore. They’re barely boats at all, he thinks.

Even the marina’s shrine—a gaudy, gold-and-turquoise thing right at the edge of the water—is only vaguely recognizable. As Zoro crosses off the docks toward his motorcycle in the lot, he has no choice but to look it in the eyes—the twisting sea god, rendered with so much artistic liberty Zoro can’t tell where the fish ends and the man begins. The figure’s arms are outstretched in supplication to—something—with a massive dish in its hands, but the collection plate is empty. Why pray to the gods when you’ve got everything already, after all?

Not that he himself believes, really. They’d learned different lessons back at home, and—here, now, so many years later—he's never bothered to ask. One god’s just as good as the next, he figures; or no god at all.

When he finally reaches his bike, he tucks the bottle of rum into one of its soft leather saddlebags—but before he can remove his swords, someone approaches erratically from behind, gravel crunching under their feet as they run. They’re not a threat, though—and when he turns, Zoro sees one of the maintenance boys zipping toward him with a nervous energy, like he doesn’t want to be seen. Even though they’re in broad daylight, out in the middle of a lot.

His nickname fits, Zoro thinks—carrot, onion, celery, something. Vegetable One at best. There’s barely any room left up top with all the anxiety; earnest, talented, but so fucking skittish.

Zoro’s half-tempted to tell the kid outright that he’ll never make it onto his list—but there’s a chance, too, that he’ll screw up someday. And Zoro can’t guarantee anything, really, where his assignments are concerned.

So to put him out of his misery, Zoro just calls, “Hey, kid,” and the boy waves back.

“Mr. Roronoa, sir—” he starts, wheezing a little. “I’m glad I caught you. There’s a phone call for you in the boathouse.”

Zoro raises an eyebrow, but the kid doesn’t elaborate—just gestures back at the ornate staff offices for this side of the marina, Mariejois painted thick across the building in what Nami swears is honest-to-god gold leaf.

Zoro sighs and follows—and ignores the way a hush falls over the open room when they enter.

Vegetable Kid ushers him quickly into one of the offices, empty save for some groveling manager who’s clearly spineless enough to push the whole thing on one of his dock workers. The manager—some blond kid, young and incompetent enough to be a nepotism hire—doesn’t move, so Vegetable One just points to a great black rotary phone sitting off the receiver.

Zoro eyes it, but Vegetable One just says, “She doesn’t sound like she wants to be kept waiting,” and Zoro glances at him again. The kid gives a shaky, half-cocked smile in return.

(He’s not entirely a coward, then, even though there’s a green tinge to his skin and he looks ready to keel over.)

Zoro eyes him with new interest but doesn’t comment—just picks up the receiver and barely bites out, “What?” before Nami starts talking.

“Oh, good—I caught you before you left. We’re heading out in a few hours so I’ll need you to pick up dinner before you get here. I’m still making sure the route is clear so you have to go, but your cousin recommended it—so I called ahead and told them you’d be there in two hours. That should be enough time to actually find the place—”

Zoro squints at nothing, as though Nami were standing right in front of him. “What?” he repeats, more baffled than angry.

There’s a scoff on the other end of the line. “I don’t feel like dealing with Kaido’s morons alone tonight, so you’re coming with me,” she says, as though they’ve discussed this at length and this isn’t the first he’s hearing of it.

To his left, the manager starts to hiss something at the grimy maintenance boy—who still hasn’t left, waiting and watching Zoro with a nervous, curious gaze. Then the suit grabs Vegetable Kid’s upper arm, half-lifting him off the ground as he hauls him toward the door with fury in his eyes—and a simpering, apologetic look back at Zoro—and Zoro glares.

Still holding the phone to one ear, snaps with his free hand and the man jumps—immediately at attention—and lets go. Instead of chewing him out, though, Zoro ignores him altogether and makes eye contact with the boy instead, then jerks his head wordlessly toward the door. Vegetable Kid’s eyes widen even further, somehow, and he scampers away unharmed.

Into the receiver, Zoro snaps, “Oi, don’t just decide shit like that for yourself,” and the manager wrings his hands like he’s the one who’s been scolded.

Nami, however, is unfazed.

Of course.

Through the line, he hears her snort—and he can almost physically see the eyeroll she’s surely giving him.

“Okay, tough guy,” she replies. “What else were you even going to eat for dinner?” Vaguely, he thinks of the bottle of rum and wonders if Nami would know how much it’s really worth. The pause seems to tell Nami all she needs to know. “That’s what I thought,” she says, smug. “I had Helmeppo write down the address for you. We’re leaving at seven, so don’t be late.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he gripes—then he hangs up, scoffing, pretending to no one that the line isn’t already dead.

He’s not angry at the demand, because food is food and Nami is Nami—but he can read between the lines well enough. It’s a bribe wrapped in an order from someone without the authority; it’s an ask from a friend.

Nami has pride and this is the closest she’ll ever come to telling him she needs help with something on the job.

The manager jumps anyway, and Zoro takes the opportunity to glare at him again.

“Where is it?” he grunts without preamble.

Suddenly given purpose, Helmeppo fumbles over to his desk and pulls a piece of neatly-scrawled stationary (a little too fancy for a phone message) from his blotter.

(And Zoro wonders, vaguely, if he should be worried about the Navy showing up given how much the asshole’s sweating—alongside the fact that he’s just offed someone in Akainu’s pocket. Although, frankly, he’d be impressed if Helmeppo had the balls.)

Without so much as a thanks—or a glance back, even—Zoro snatches the card and turns on his heel, striding back out into the morning sun.

As he crosses the parking lot for the second time, he finally turns over the card—the Baratie. He’s never heard of it. It sounds pretentious, though—some French bullshit catering to this clientele, probably. Not him, and certainly not Nami. But it’s as good as anything, he supposes, as long as the food is decent.

(It does not take him two hours to get there, and he feels equally vindicated when—having been told Nami would pick up the order—some blond asshole ushers him around back, then shoves a pair of paper bags in his arms. Zoro doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth for a thanks before the dickhead slams the Baratie’s door in his face.)

- - -

The weather holds, and the cargo district’s concrete loading bay is still and calm after dark, too. Through the new moon fog, they can’t see the warehouses themselves—like the whole world ends at the edge of the docks ahead and in the endless ocean behind. They wait in impatient silence, quiet only broken by the gentle waves lapping at the edge of Nami’s nameless fishing boat.

In the orange-yellow glow of the outdoor lights, Zoro can see a rainbow sheen reflecting off the water, some kind of vague and indefinable oil slick. There’s a thickness to it that clings to the edge of the sea wall, gathering in a glistening, iridescent line that plays tricks on the eyes—a second water line.

It reeks, too—like dead fish and rotting seaweed and something sour, but he can’t pinpoint exactly where the smell is coming from. He’s never noticed it before—the sheen, the scent—and he wonders if the currents have been pushing it out to sea rather than down the coast toward the harbor. They’re far but not that far, just on the outskirts of the island’s north side—close enough to have seen it.

But, then again—he rarely travels out this far. The warehouse district is Kaido’s territory, after all, and the only reason they’re even this close to his border at all is courtesy on Nami’s part.

Her decision to let Kaido’s men choose their rendezvous point is, Zoro thinks, an effort to keep things business as usual. In recent weeks, they’ve become harder and harder to pin down—something about sabotaged smuggling ships and lost cargo—most of which Zoro has only bothered paying attention to insofar as Nami is concerned. Which is to say, very little.

Even so, their buyers are late.

The short-wave radio in the wheelhouse clicks on in a burst of static and Nami sighs, long and annoyed, into the night air. It’s their cue. She waves her hand and Zoro leans back against the wall, slipping out of view easily enough in the moonless night.

He’s not technically supposed to be here—shouldn’t be, really, in any official capacity, particularly considering the politics of his position. But he barely follows the rules as they stand and Nami had been the one to ask. Still, no matter how badly he might relish the exercise, he knows not to involve himself unless he has to.

(Or unless he really feels like it, at least.)

A moment later, a black-rimmed truck slides into view—the kind of car favored by Jack and his ilk—and a man and woman emerge to greet them at the edge of the dock. There, they pause and make no move to board Nami’s boat, staying on land—and Nami doesn’t meet them halfway, either, feet planted firmly on deck.

There’s a beat of tension as the three of them face off before Nami finally sighs again.

“Took you long enough, Sheepshead,” she calls, firm but light—like she knows they’ve been rude but they also know Nami will let it slide because they’re allies and that’s what she’s supposed to do.

The pair laughs.

Sheepshead and Ginrummy look deeply stereotypical for this kind of job, Zoro thinks—like they’ve been peeled up from the pages of a mail-order catalog for hired goons. Both tall and muscular, both dressed in matching black suits; both jacked up on the stupid bravado that comes with being the subordinate of a subordinate to Kaido, as important as an acquaintance of a second cousin thrice removed. Zoro resists the urge to roll his eyes in the darkness.

“Well, thanks for hanging around,” Sheepshead drawls, and from his place in the shadows Zoro can’t tell if he’s smiling or his face is just fucked up and frozen that way.

Nami scoffs, crossing her arms as she strides across the deck toward the tangle of fishing nets at the boat’s stern—a massive pile of rope and tarp thrown over half a dozen meticulously-packed crates of smuggled booze. “I’m here to do a job, so I’d rather not leave before I’m paid,” she replies. Jack’s subordinates make no move to help with the exchange, though, and Zoro narrows his eyes—unseen.

“About that,” Ginrummy starts, waving a little vaguely as she glances over to Sheepshead—and they exchange a look. “We have a proposition for you.”

Nami shakes her head. “We’ve been through this before. You know I can’t negotiate for Arlong,” she says, and Zoro has to respect the fact that she only spits a little when she says his name.

“Not your boss,” Ginrummy shoots back, not even hiding her derision. “You.”

It feels like deja vu.

“I’m flattered, really,” Nami replies, sugar-sweet, “I can’t imagine why, though—I’m just the delivery girl.” Zoro hears the steel in her tone. Her patience is already wearing thin.

“Now we both know that isn’t true—” Sheepshead croons back, a little too eager. Ginrummy laughs, leaning forward over the edge of the dock, but Nami stands her ground—so Zoro stays put.

“Do you have my money or are you wasting my time again?” she snaps, dropping the facade, but Sheepshead just puts his hands out—a little placating, a little condescending. Nami clicks her tongue, and though her back is turned Zoro can imagine her face clearly enough.

Sheepshead seems unfazed, though. “This is better than money, doll. It’s an opportunity—”

“That wasn’t the deal—”

“Just hear us out!” he continues, cutting her off. “Rumor has it that you’re the one who actually runs these routes.” Nami doesn’t reply, and Zoro sees him light up, prematurely triumphant.

Ginrummy picks up the thread, grinning. “You know these waters like the back of your hand,” she says, “better than Arlong claims to.”

Zoro feels the sting even though it’s not directed toward him—the hit to Nami’s pride. Not at the statement—because that much is true; she is the best—but at what Nami has to do next.

She laughs, letting annoyance seep into her voice as she says, “We both know that’s not the case,” with a wave of her hand, but Ginrummy just shakes her head again.

“We’re serious,” she says, and Sheepshead nods vehemently. “The reward on this thing is going to be huge and you’d get a fair cut of the profit.”

This time, Sheepshead interjects. “Kaido’s not fucking around with this. He wants in on the hunt and he’s willing to pay good money for the best. You respect the water, and he needs someone like that—otherwise we’ll never find them.” As he speaks, his tone shifts to something fervent, almost.

Nami shifts her weight, puts a hand on her hip in mirrored condescension. “Get to the point if you’re going to waste my time,” she snaps.

Ginrummy holds up her hand. “This isn’t like last time, we promise!” she says, tone cocky and unapologetic. “This is something special. The new governor issued a bounty for dangerous marine wildlife, but we know the truth—”

Sheepshead breaks in, then, unable to contain his excitement. “—he’s hunting the sea gods! His criteria fits—and everyone knows his history.” He looks enamored, too—like he really believes it. Zoro resists the urge to sigh. “Imagine it—you’d get the fame of killing a god and you’d walk away with a sizable chunk of cash. No one could touch you—and you’d be under Kaido’s protection.”

Zoro sees Nami shift on her feet again, not a signal but a restlessness all the same. The exchange is taking too long—has taken too long already. Neither of them have time to listen to a history lesson on fishermen’s superstitions and the wives' tales that follow.

At the heart of the new city cropping up around them is a fishing town with generations stacked on generations—its own history still entrenched on the shore, out in the harbors, and buried in the beaches. Nami and Zoro don’t know, having grown up on their own islands with their own legends—both of them—but they know enough.

They’ve seen the shrines, seen the motions fishermen go through for calm seas and good luck, seen the supermoon festival lights from afar. What they’ve never seen is a sea god—and Zoro isn’t even sure he would care if one fell into his lap. They have other things to deal with. Self-examination of faith has never been high on either of their priority lists.

(Still—there’s something vaguely unsettling about the glee with which Sheepshead talks about the prospect of killing a god.)

With another sigh, Nami says, “I appreciate the offer,” not an ounce of sincerity in her voice. “However, I am going to have to insist you give me the fucking cash,” she rests one booted foot atop a nearby crate, then, and Zoro hears the bootleg bottles rattle inside, “or I’m leaving with everything.”

That riles them up well enough. “You ungrateful bitch,” the Sheepshead starts, tone shifting on a dime and temper quick to flare. “We’re offering you the opportun—”

He steps out of the shadows and sighs, bored and rough, like he’s been part of the conversation this whole time. “I say we go now,” he calls to Nami, purposely ignoring the pair on land. Unfazed, like she’d already been expecting him, Nami rolls her eyes, playing along even though neither of them are really joking. This isn’t a game, after all—no matter how much they act like it sometimes.

“Your call,” she replies, shrugging, letting the annoyance in her voice solidify, angry at the situation and angry that they have to do it this way when they both know she could kick their asses just as well—just not with the kind of immunity he might be able to. Or threaten to, at least.

Pissed at the interruption, Sheepshead puffs up like a canary, pivoting toward Zoro and already prepping for a fight. “And who the fuck are you?” he snaps, then he turns back to Nami, “This is a business exchange. You can’t just bring your boytoy out to—”

Zoro raises one eyebrow and at the same time, Ginrummy pales and snatches out to grab Sheepshead’s arm in a vice-grip. She’s staring wide-eyed at him, and Zoro resists the urge to bare his teeth for fun.

“Shut the fuck up,” she hisses, low and angry. “That’s fucking—look.”

By some miracle Sheepshead does shut up, then, and really looks at him—clocks the color of his hair, mossy but still visible in the yellow dock lights; clocks the gold jewelry dangling in his left ear; and, most importantly, clocks the three fine swords resting casually at his hip.

Zoro sees the blood drain from his face, too, and tries not to take a little satisfaction in it. Sheepshead has balls, though, and he presses on—turning back to Nami, a shaky sneer on his face. “Bringing muscle now?” he says, even as Ginrummy continues to chant, Shut up, shut up, shut up, with an increasing level of alarm—unable to tear her eyes from Zoro.

Zoro just makes a vague gesture with his hand, waving at the pair to wrap things up. “Let’s go,” he grunts again, glaring, and Ginrummy starts nodding like he’s going to break her neck—or like some stupid-looking bird, maybe.

“Yeah, yeah—of course,” she says, yanking her partner before he has a chance to open his mouth again. Sheepshead turns to snap at her, and in that moment Zoro exchanges a look of utter commiseration with Nami. He knows, then, that they’re going to get absolutely wasted after this—and on the good rum, too.

As Sheepshead and Ginrummy half-sprint back toward their car still idling by the docks, their hissed bickering echoes off the unseen warehouses around them—

“Get the hell off me!”

“Don’t you know who that is?”

“Some big-shot from the club, so what? I’ve heard about him—”

“No—I mean yes, he is, but—that’s fucking—that’s Roronoa fucking Zoro!”

“—shit, isn’t that—”

“He’s Mihawk’s kid!”

—and Nami relaxes a little, heaving another massive sigh (for the umpteenth time tonight).

A heavy breeze rolls in, then—and she shivers as it pushes the acrid, clammy fog deeper into their skin. For a moment, she stares at the sky, frowning, watching the black clouds above.

He thinks of the magistrate’s desperate insistence that hunting a sea god would save him, the insistence on money, money, money, and Zoro wonders if Nami is considering the offer on her own—whether to hunt it herself. He wouldn’t be surprised. The fact that either shared their plans speaks of desperation and naïveté in equal measure, both the judge and Jack’s men. How easy it would be to just take the opportunity for themselves.

He wants to ask, but doesn’t know how.

Then, suddenly, there’s a splash! to their left, like something massive hitting the water.

For a moment, Zoro wonders if someone has fallen in, but—no. A fish, probably. He glances toward the noise, but he can’t see anything through the rainbow slick.

The sound seems to snap Nami out of her thoughts; she shakes herself, refocusing on the tasks at hand. Zoro waits, but she doesn’t elaborate, so he decides not to try. If it’s important, she’ll tell him—she always does.

Then into the silence, Nami groans, “Augh, let’s get this shit over with,” and nods toward the nets and fabric still coiled over their delivery as cover. “At least help me move some of this. Make yourself useful.”

Moment passed, he grunts “Fuck off,” but doesn’t hesitate—just throws off one of the tarps and grabs two crates. Nami steps out of his way as he strides off the gangway, hauling the boxes up to the dock while she moves to grab one herself.

When he drops the crates they CRACK! against the concrete, and the sound echoes off the industrialism around them. The bottles inside don’t shatter—they’re too well-packed for that—but they do make enough of a racket that Nami glowers at him as he steps back on deck. He shrugs in response. If they’re as obnoxious as possible, maybe Assholes McGee: One and Two will hurry the fuck up with their money—and they can leave.

He glances over toward the idling car to see Ginrummy and Sheepshead still deep in an argument, Sheepshead gesturing wildly while Ginrummy seethes. They don’t even look up at the noise.

With a snort, Zoro grabs another crate and scowls. “This better not be a pattern,” he gripes. “Fucking—sea monsters.”

Nami just rolls her eyes and hefts a box of her own. “Almost hurricane season,” she says. “Makes people crazy.”

- - -

Hours later, they’re anchored in a cove far from both the harbor and the rendezvous point. It’s their own place, as close to a safehouse on the water as they’ll ever get, and over the years it’s become something like a refuge for them both. Away from the city’s violence, away from the marina’s watchful eyes, the cove is quiet. Here, they can breathe.

They’re sprawled, exhausted, on two stolen wood-and-fabric beach chairs dragged out to stargaze. Zoro dangles one arm over the side of his, beer held loosely in his hand as he tilts his head back and stares at the expanse above them. With no moon, it’s like they can reach up and touch the Milky Way. So far from the warehouse district, the water and the air are clear, the heavens on display in the ocean’s reflection.

They’ve demolished their leftovers from the Baratie and cracked open the rum from his morning job, and now they’re running on fumes—the two of them well on their way to drunk right alongside the loopy kind of exhaustion that comes with too many hours on too little sleep. It’s nearly three in the morning and he’s approaching his twentieth hour awake—and he knows Nami isn’t doing much better.

This is their routine. It’s always nearly the same, no matter how much time passes. They’ll go days, weeks without seeing each other sometimes—working their own jobs—but when they do meet it feels like the two of them against the world, going, going, going until they crash. In the morning, they’ll pay for it (they always do), but for now, they drink, holding onto the darkness—keeping the wreck of tomorrow at bay.

With a sigh, Nami clinks the sweating neck of her own beer against his, still fresh from the ice box down below, then she takes a long pull—and burps, grins, leaning to face him so she’s half curled-up in the chair. Her hair bunches up against the side of her face as she presses it into the fabric and idly, drunkenly, Zoro wonders if either of them will live long enough to turn gray.

“Mission accomplished,” she says with fake solemnity, balancing her bottle on one arm.

Zoro snickers, tilts his beer in mock salute, and swigs—burps back, “Hooray,” and Nami lets out a hysterical kind of giggle. After a moment, though, her snickers peter out and she scrubs one hand down her face, tired and wired all at once.

“God, I’m so fucking close,” she says, then drinks again. “He’s going to slip up soon—Arlong—I just know it. This whole sea god thing has everyone losing their minds.”

Zoro shrugs, squinting upward. “Today’s the first I’ve heard of it,” he says, and wonders if that’s really true or if he just hasn’t cared enough to pay attention.

Nami snorts, “Figures,” picking at the bottle’s paste-paper label with her nails. “It seems legitimate, though—although I can’t imagine where Akainu’s getting the cash. Two-hundred thousand dollars.”

“Campaign money, probably,” Zoro grunts.

“Or he’s made a deal with someone—one of us,” Nami replies, frowning as she takes another sip of her beer. “Big Mom, maybe, if Kaido’s still going for the bounty himself.”

But Zoro shakes his head. “No way,” he says, half a laugh. “His whole thing is taking back the waters. He’d drop dead before getting a loan from one of the gangs.”

“God, I wish. Wouldn’t that be ideal, him dropping dead,” Nami scoffs. “Maybe now that they’re down a cabinet member—thanks for that, by the way; busy morning for you—his next stupid bill won’t pass.”

Zoro raises his bottle again and Nami returns the gesture, a shadowy silhouette in the dark. He doesn’t say anything, just waits for her to continue. She’s in a pensive kind of mood, and he’s always been a listener, anyway.

After stripping the label off her beer completely and flicking the strips of damp paper overboard, she does. “If they start rolling out Naval patrols, we’re fucked.” She glowers at her bottle. “And the fishermen, too. They don’t get it—it’s an excuse to confiscate anything with value. He’s not going to stop with smugglers and—I don’t know—sea monsters.”

Zoro frowns right back. She’s right. (She usually is.) “He doesn’t give a shit when his people vanish,” Zoro says.

Although the magistrate himself isn’t worth missing—a slimy, power-hungry kind of man in the worst way—it’s the principle of his death that almost bothers him. He’s not the only one of Akainu’s associates to have made it onto his list (the third, maybe, or the fourth), and yet he knows the response will be nearly the same as the rest: silence, plain and simple. A saddened obituary in the paper, an even more boilerplate press response. Any consequence will happen behind closed doors, and even that will be legislative at best.

Still, Nami nods. “Exactly,” she says, waving one hand vaguely through the air for emphasis. “If he doesn’t care when his own cronies fall off the face of the earth, there’s no way he’s going to honor his word to everyone else. And now with this whole bounty thing? I can’t believe people are buying into it.”

“Money’s money,” Zoro shrugs in reply.

“I mean—yeah. Fair.” She sighs, lifts her bottle to the night sky like that might help her see how much she’s got left. “My point is that there’s no way Arlong can resist that kind of cash, just like the rest of them. And I know he believes in it.”

Idly, Zoro muses, “I bet Buggy does, too,” and Nami snorts into her beer.

“He would.”

A chilled breeze rolls across the water, and Nami shivers, tucking her legs further up into the lawn chair. With a roll of his eyes, Zoro just sits up and slips one arm out of his jacket.

“It’s total bullshit, if you ask me,” he grunts, swapping his beer between hands as he pulls his coat off the rest of the way. Without asking, he tosses it to her—where it lands in a heap on her lap and she yelps, barely moving her drink out of the way in time.

She shoots him a glare—but even so, she tucks it over her bare legs like a blanket as she sighs. “Maybe,” she says, then sips again. “It doesn’t have to be real though—just real enough that Arlong fucks up and pisses off somebody big.”

She sounds hopeful, almost—but tired, too. Zoro wants to reassure her somehow, to say something, but he doesn’t—because he can’t, not really. He’s never been good at that sort of thing, and anything he can think of is half a white lie, anyway.

And besides, she’s never wanted reassurance—not when it comes to that (Arlong and Cocoyasi and the money)—so he settles for hoping his jacket is warm and parrots, “Fair.” Nami hums wordlessly in response, an acknowledgment of his acknowledgment.

They lapse into silence, then, because what else is there to say? It’s not uncomfortable, though. Just peaceful. The midnight-ocean-quiet of lapping waves, ropes against metal, and hissing bottlecaps. They drag the basket closer for more food and shitty beer, lukewarm now that it’s been above deck for so long, but neither of them mind. Beer is beer is beer, after all. And they’ve both eaten worse.

Then, apropos of nothing and a little drunk, she says, “Mild summer, killer fall,” and Zoro audibly snorts.

“No way,” he replies, shaking his head even as she grins—smarmy and confident—over the rim of her bottle. “Don’t rope me into that shit with you again. No more weather bets. No.”

“Wow,” she sighs, batting her eyelashes. “You’re so cool and stoic. What a man. Afraid you’ll lose?”

“The fuck is wrong with you? No.”

She just huffs, switching tactics, and lets out an aggravated (melodramatic), “Oh, okay—coward.”

“No.”

“Augh! You’re the worst.”

“Maybe,” he snorts back, “but at least I’m not stupid.”

“I disagree—”

“Oi—”

“Fine. I wouldn’t get any money out of you, anyway,” she sniffs, almost grumbling but not quite—and the effect is largely ruined when she sticks her tongue out at him. He flips her the middle finger in return.

(She tucks his jacket closer around her legs. When he finishes his beer, she’s already handing him another.)

In the beginning, they’d been two angry teenagers pissed at the world, thrown together by time and circumstance. Brought along as part of Arlong’s deal, instinct for the sea honed to a fine point even at fifteen, she’d sworn fealty to his uncle right alongside her boss. And Zoro, trapped in his own way, had watched from the corner of the room (silent, grieving recent losses) and seen the rage in her eyes. Not at the job—because she really does control the routes of every smuggling vessel in their operation, and she really does know the sea like the back of her hand—but at the man himself. The black hole holding her home island hostage under a mountain of protection fees.

(Zoro hadn’t known, then, of his own lost causes.)

Even though Arlong—and, by extension, his gang—works for Mihawk and the Cross Guild, he still commands some measure of control over his own territory, a place Zoro’s been warned away from for reasons he knows but can’t quite understand. Cocoyasi’s sacrifice, part of the deal, the agreement—Arlong’s free reign for his resources and cooperation in exchange. It’s unfair, and he despises the politics of it all—the alliances, the hierarchy, the rules.

It’s why he knows, too, that his own future is fucked. What place does he have in the Guild long-term if he’s only cut out for fighting—for killing? Not the rest of it. He thinks of his sister for the first time in months (this is a lie) and her face is hazy, but the promise they’d made as kids—it’s crystal, even in its own childish naivete.

On a fundamental level he and Nami are both stuck spinning their wheels. As soon as he blinks, the seasons have changed. Today a favor, tomorrow a fight, the next a job. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The interest always raises, so she’s never got enough money; his uncle always wins, so he’s never got enough strength. So she works and works more and he fights and fights more. Trapped, but trapped together.

She is the closest thing he’s ever had—will ever have—to a friend, he thinks. Someone who understands the rules enough to play the game well, and who doesn’t hate the game itself so much as the people running it. In some other life, maybe they could have had more than each other and their jobs. But here, now, they’re just two untethered fuck-ups spinning out, unmoored but not out of control—not yet.

If he prayed, he would pray for freedom—but he doesn’t, because what would he even pray to? In the dark, he marvels at the capacity of the human mind to believe its own bullshit. The only god he worships is the small god of his own victory—heavy weights and alcohol and blood in the dirt after a fight. And the only god Nami worships is the small god of her own treasure hoard—her own ingenuity and the fishing boat under their feet and the smell of a ripe tangerine in the summer.

No sea monsters, no shrines, no conflicting myths.

But still. Two hundred thousand dollars.

- - -

When he jolts awake, the sun is just lighting up the horizon in a half-dark tint of deep, hazy purple. The empty bottle slips from his grasp onto the wooden deck with an CLANG! and in an instant, he’s sitting up—blinking blearily around because something woke him, something else, not that—

There’s a metal clatter from his left and he swings his head, searching the near-darkness—nothing. Nami’s beach chair is empty but his jacket’s been folded and left behind, and as silence descends again he knows in his gut that the noises aren’t coming from her. She’s below deck, curled up on the fold-out cot where she should be. Right?

Right?

“Oi,” he grunts, voice rough with sleep, but the quiet cove swallows up the sound and it doesn’t seem to go anywhere—

Suddenly, a CRASH! sounds up from the stern, near the cram of nets and ropes that are just that (fishing bullshit) now that all the bootlegged liquor has been pulled out from underneath—and Zoro is on his feet. It doesn’t sound like machinery—so it can’t be any of the boat’s measly hauling equipment.

As he advances, he wonders if he’d fucked up in joining Nami and they’ve been been tailed by Kaido’s men for it. It’s not the first time he’s followed her on a job, but there’s been a strange kind of undercurrent to the waters lately and Kaido himself has become unpredictable.

Even half-asleep and half-hungover, a fight wouldn’t be a challenge—not really. But it would be a pain in the ass.

“Hey,” he barks again, louder this time—clearer—and the rattling stops a again—

—before it’s replaced by what Zoro swears, swears is a muffled, “Shit!” and a wet, fatty kind of scramble that reminds him instantly of fish smacking the deck after a haul.

And yet. A human voice.

He doesn’t think—just rushes forward, already reaching for his sword. If they have been followed, it’s a ballsy move on Kaido’s part, because to take him on outside the ring is as good as challenging his uncle across company lines—and because he is who he is, too, there’s a guarantee the poor sap Kaido’s sent won’t make it out of the altercation alive. On purpose, even.

Zoro lunges for the back of the boat in one swift motion, but he’s too late. Before he can gather his bearings, there’s one final CLANG!—then the flash of something red in the early-morning moonlight—followed by a massive splash, like the sound of something big, person-sized or more, hitting the water.

Zoro dives for the railing, already leaning over to see where they’ve escaped because if he can identify the boat then—

But there’s nothing.

Just a foamy ring of ripples already dissolving into the sea, spreading outward from the overturned basket now bobbing alongside the hull.

Their overturned basket.

Zoro blinks, wondering just how much he’d had to drink—

And then Nami calls, “What are you doing?” from behind, voice sleepy and annoyed. He turns to see her halfway up the hatch, wrapped in a knit blanket, and he relaxes just a fraction—because there is no one else, he realizes. No dinghy in the darkness piled high with grunts from a rival family, and Nami is fine.

“Nothing,” he replies dumbly, standing alone in the middle of the deck with his sword drawn. He can physically feel her eyeroll from across the boat.

“Whatever,” she snorts, then yawns—long and tired in a way that has Zoro yawning, too. He hears his jaw crack in his ears and almost winces.

As she finishes climbing the ladder and hauls herself on deck, she sighs, stretching up and out with all the grace of a cat emerging from a comforter—rumpled, bleary-eyed, a little bit grumpy even as she’s trying not to laugh at him.

“Come on,” she says, “let’s start heading back. We’ve got a fight tomorrow,” she stops, makes a face, “—today.” Then she motions broadly toward the empty anchor reel. “If you’re awake enough to swing your sword around you’re awake enough to get us moving.”

As he sheathes Kitetsu, he gripes, “Yeah, yeah,” ignoring Nami as she sticks her tongue out at him. He’s already crossing the deck, though—shaking off the weirdness as he props his sword back with its companions on the beach chair.

He sets to work in the winch, raising anchor, and Nami tucks the blanket closer around her shoulders as she gathers his swords without a word. Then, with a vague wave, she disappears into the wheelhouse to chart their course back to the marina.

Absently, Zoro wonders if they have enough fresh water left for shitty coffee. They have a long day ahead—both of them—and the sun isn’t even up yet. They’ll need it.

(And as the anchor chain creaks in the near-silence she leaves behind, he tries to ignore the basket sinking just out of sight, disappearing into the dark early-morning depths. The basket that hasn’t been in the water long. The basket that he certainly hadn’t put there.)

- - -

When they pull into the marina a few hours later, it’s barely ten in the morning and the day has already felt endless. Nami gripes at him for the basket when she finally notices it’s missing, but they’d both had enough to drink the night before that the argument (if they can even call it that) dies out quickly. Zoro doesn’t mention what he’d seen because he hadn’t seen anything, really—just a blur in the darkness that he’s willing enough to write off as the product of his hangover.

In the end, Nami just sighs. It’s nothing, really, in the grand scheme of things—but he knows, too, that every penny counts.

Unlike Mariejois, their marina is small—a dingy, well-loved little thing compared to the massive gold-plated yacht club miles up the road. Despite the fact that it’s run by one of the largest criminal organizations in the area, Arlong Park is a working man’s docks through and through, home to the fisherman who keep the heart of their seaside town running, even as the buildings around them reach higher and the wealthy tourists flock like migratory birds to the gleaming promise of new luxury. Here, Nami’s worn-out, beat-up hauler—old and old-fashioned even when she’d bought it—is almost invisible amid the smattering of similar vessels.

Nami cuts the engine as they coast toward the docks, Zoro already positioned at the rail, checking the boat’s fenders just in case they come in too fast and scrape the wood—but they never do, because it’s Nami at the helm, and she could maneuver them anywhere with her eyes closed, he’s sure.

(Which is a curse in and of itself, too; having the skill to go anywhere makes the chains around her ankles that much heavier, he thinks.)

With practiced ease, he swings one leg up over the side and plants his foot on the edge of the dock, and in quick, muscle-memory knots, he ties them off to the posts. By the time he’s finished, Nami is standing on deck with her pack slung over one shoulder and his own bag at her feet.

“I still don’t understand why we have to go all the way back,” she calls, picking up the thread of a conversation they’d started at least an hour ago. “We’re going to be late enough as it is.”

Her voice echoes a little, bouncing off the creaking wood around them—the only other noise the hollow CLANG! of lines hitting metal masts and mechanisms. Around this time, everyone with work on the water has already long-since left, and those who aren’t are likely further inland, waiting for the harbormaster to reopen after his fisherman’s lunch.

Zoro just shrugs, reaching to help as she picks up his things and hands them over, then steps over the side herself. As he hefts his sword duffle—a long, nondescript bag to the casual observer, something entirely worse to anyone who might recognize him—over one shoulder, he grumbles, “We won’t be late.”

Nami just rolls her eyes as they start down the dock. “Yeah, we will—you’re in charge of getting us there,” she replies.

“Fuck off,” he gripes back. There isn’t any bite to the curse, though—not really. “It’s not my fault he’s too high and mighty to make the drop himself. Or get someone else to do it.”

Nami snorts. “He’s making you do it. That’s someone.”

“And if I don’t, neither of us get paid,” he shoots back, and he almost physically sees Nami concede the point—fair, indeed.

As they cross onto the gravel patch that serves as the marina’s haphazard loading bay, he sighs, knocking one massive shoulder against her much smaller frame. She shoots him a glare, but it doesn’t carry weight, either. They’re both still tired, and the meat of the day has just begun.

The lot is filled with a scattering of beat-up trucks, half the regular crowd of overnighters but enough extras, too, to raise their eyebrows.

In the distance, he can see a crowd gathered near the boathouse—the large-ish, semi-official-ish office where Arlong and his men manage the marina’s business, both legal and not. Less formal than the yacht club’s, but the center of operations all the same.

It’s bigger than the usual gathering and Zoro idly wonders what’s going on—but Nami hasn’t mentioned anything, and they’re both inclined to steer clear of the building even on their best days, anyway. If it’s important enough, he’ll hear about it eventually. He always does.

They cross toward his bike, one of the few motorcycles in the lot. Like Nami’s boat, it’s beat-up to be at home in the crowd. A once-sleek, black thing—only big enough to carry his shit and someone else, too. He likes the maneuverability a smaller bike offers. It’s better for jobs, for quick getaways—and for the adrenaline, too. Even though Perona has been on his ass to get a real car since his last accident, he refuses to give it up. It’s his—and that’s something.

When Nami doesn’t say anything else, he scrubs a hand through his hair and sighs awkwardly, never one for communication—even less so for reassurance.

“Look, when we get there—don’t even bother coming in, just stand in the shade or something,” he says, nonchalant—like it doesn’t matter to him what she does either way. Because it doesn’t, really. What matters is what she wants. And to see her boss’s bosses—well, he knows exactly how she feels about his uncle and the rest. “They might not even be at the house, anyway.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Nami shrug, frowning, staring into the distance—and he tucks his sword bag back under the seats, securing it in place while he waits for her to respond.

Suddenly, a shout rises up from the crowd around the boathouse—and when Zoro glances over, he sees a mop of pink hair pushing open the door. Coby, already frazzled before the day has even begun, waves a placating hand at the crowd even as he props open the doorstop, one arm balancing a stack of newsprint that sends the crowd into a frenzy. He can’t hear what Coby is saying, but Zoro can imagine it. The poor kid’s been working at the marina for a few years now—inadvertently trapped in the organization under Arlong after he’d set out to apprentice as a fisherman and picked a mafia-run harbor of all things.

Nami sighs—although their situations are different, they both do still feel sorry for the kid.

(Mostly.)

As the fisherman start to file in for the day, vying for the doorway and for Coby himself (or the papers he has in his hand, maybe), the boy stumbles, jostled against the throng—and the newsprint scatters just as a massive breeze rips across the harbor. The wind sets off a chorus of metal CLANGS! as every boat in the harbor rocks, followed by the indignant cries of the fisherman as everything in Coby’s hands immediately bursts out into the sky—across the lot—in a spray of black ink. They can hear his anguished little wail even from this distance, and Nami snorts, shaking her head.

Tension broken, Nami swings her leg across his motorcycle’s second seat, and Zoro catches her eye, exchanging an amused (but sympathetic—they’re not heartless) look. As he settles in front of her, Zoro starts to snicker, too, but doesn’t get the chance—because a newspaper smacks him in the face midair like an ill-timed gift from god. Nami does let out a real laugh, then, right in his ear at the absurdity of it, and Zoro feels his face heat as he pulls the paper away.

The headline—bold and black and all-caps—halts him in his tracks.

GOVERNOR OFFERS TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS TO KEEP OUR WATERS SAFE!

Big changes are on the horizon as newly-elected governor Akainu Sakazuki takes a hard stance against unchecked marine wildlife. To kick off the initiative, he has authorized payouts from the fish and game department to anyone presenting proof of unknown and dangerous oceanic predators off the coast, specifically proof of capture or kill. Authorities are calling it a “Fisherman’s Bounty”, with hunting bans temporarily lifted and the reward open to any civilian able to provide evidence for—

“Oh,” Nami says, and Zoro glances up to see her peering over his shoulder at the front-page article. “That,” She groans into his shoulder blades, “is definitely not going to make our lives harder at all.”

Zoro snorts, tossing the paper aside—and the wind immediately catches it, curling it up into the air with the stragglers still swirling around the lot.

“Open to any civilian,” Zoro replies as he squints back toward the boathouse. “Someone’s going to get themselves killed—that’s fuck you money.”

Nami just sighs again and wraps her arms around his middle, settling in to leave. “Oh, absolutely,” she says, almost weary. “And for once, we won’t be the ones doing it.”

- - -

The ride from the marina to his uncle’s house isn’t long, but it’s winding and rough. The road runs parallel to the ocean bluff, a straight drop off the edge of a cliff, then up through the inland forest.

Ever one for seclusion, the mansion sits on the ever-expanding city outskirts, still safe from encroaching industrialism in both its location and design. It’s a relic from an age rapidly shrinking in the rearview mirror of progress, all dark wood and hand-carved ornamentation, endless hallways and gas lamps and floor-to-ceiling windows. The front drive alone is a massive, curving path leftover from a time when horse-drawn carriages needed the space, and at the center of the loop is a giant marble fountain—dry now, simply because his uncle doesn’t care enough to keep it running, but a bawdy display of the building’s original extravagance all the same.

Maybe in another life, it could have been beautiful—full of staff, bustling with large parties and even larger families. Now, though, it sits almost entirely empty, only Mihawk himself in consistent residence while Zoro and his cousin move through its front door like ghosts. No one is entirely happy here, whether because of the house itself or what it stands for, but no one is entirely willing to leave, either—not really. Where else would they go?

One of the greatest benefits of their relative isolation (Mihawk’s insistance on secluding himself in the middle of assfuck nowhere) is that they’re all left well-enough alone, his uncle’s business partners rarely bothering to make the trip. Both live closer to the up-and-coming city, Crocodile ruling his corner from an equally-gaudy penthouse in the upper floors of some glistening building tall enough to scrape the sky—while Buggy lives… elsewhere. Zoro has never bothered to ask, and he’s only rarely worked with Buggy directly, anyway—instead involving himself in their smuggling operations through Nami herself.

Usually, that is.

As Zoro cracks his spine, stiff from the ride, he eyes the set of brand new, sleek vehicles that definitely don’t belong to either his uncle or Perona—and the two figures standing in the mansion’s shade, just past its entrance. Crocodile’s lackeys, following in his wake as often as Mihawk moves through the world alone. The woman watches them with a keen eye and serene smile, and the man at her side stands as stoic as ever.

Zoro doesn’t see any of Buggy’s people, but where one goes, the other follows—so he knows Buggy is inside, regardless.

Neither figure moves an inch as Zoro shrugs on his jacket, and Nami doesn’t get up immediately, either—just eyes them warily from across the crushed-shell drive. To anyone watching, it’s a stand-off—unintentional or not—but even from this distance Zoro can see the moment Daz dismisses her. Robin is another story, maybe, even as her expression stays unreadable.

Nami just stares right back—then rolls her eyes and dismounts. “Just hurry up,” she says, already pulling her hair out of its tie as she scrubs out her scalp. “We don’t have all day.”

Shade occupied but the open drive too hot and sun-direct to sit in while he’s inside, she waves him vaguely toward the house before turning off toward the mansion’s grounds—the overgrown side garden’s gate hanging open and untended in the opposite direction of Crocodile’s watch dogs.

They’re just four people in the sweeping network of Cross Guild’s many arms, after all, and were she and Zoro not friends, Zoro doubts they would have ever met. They have no real reason to interact—but Nami has every reason to be wary of them both.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles back, not watching her go, not giving Robin a warning glare because to do so would be to mark Nami in her mind as someone important (although he knows she knows already—because it is her job to know).

Instead, he turns toward the house. He wants to get this over with as much as Nami, especially if the other two are here. The weather is mild, and half the second-floor windows are open, including his uncle’s study—leaving nothing to dampen the three-way argument happening inside.

As he approaches the front door, Crocodile’s shadow catches his eye and inclines her head. “Mr. Swordsman,” she greets, smile placid—anonymizing him in that terrible way she does, never letting him forget for a moment that Zoro is a function before he is a person. She reminds him of a snake sometimes—cold, calculating, deadly. “What a lovely surprise.”

The man at her side stays silent.

“Robin. Daz.” Zoro grunts in reply, but he doesn’t stop—while the two of them, he and Robin, occupy the same space in their organization’s hierarchy, they’re hardly allies. Half of the time, Zoro can’t tell what the woman is even thinking, and he doesn’t particularly care to. Robin inclines her head as he passes.

“I trust everything went well in court?” she asks, raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah, the judge’s dead—no issues,” Zoro bites back. He hates beating around the bush about it—his job. It’s stupid, he thinks—they all know what he does. What they all do.

Robin just hums vaguely in return. “Wonderful to hear.”

Without another word, Zoro pushes through the mansion’s massive front door—and is immediately accosted by the echoes of thunderous shouting as Crocodile and Buggy storm out of Mihawk’s office. The red velvet, gold-trimmed foyer is as old-fashioned and ornate as the mansion’s exterior, a wide center staircase crawling up to a hayloft-style, wraparound indoor balcony. His uncle’s study sits just to the right of it on the second floor, wide double doors thrown open with a BANG! that bounces off the dusty marble floors and clouded floor-to-ceiling windows.

“—s your fault he’s blaming us for this bullshit,” Crocodile spits, turning on his heel to jam a lit cigar inches from Buggy’s nose as the smaller man nearly stumbles into him from behind—obviously chasing, but whether they’ve been run out of Mihawk’s office or he’s following Crocodile himself, Zoro can’t tell. “This is your job, you useless sack of shit—but I’m not surprised you’d screw it up.”

Buggy throws his hands in the air like he’s going to fend off an attack (which he might be, really) but the hit never comes, because Crocodile is already turning again, rampaging down the stairs with so much force that his long, wool-and-fur duster billows out behind him.

Emboldened by Crocodile’s retreat, maybe, Buggy whines, “But I didn’t even do anything—!” as he scrambles after, glaring daggers at Crocodile’s back in a way that directly contradicts his plaintive tone.

Zoro has seen this song and dance too many times to count—the pleading, the wailing, and the violence. It is easy to forget, he thinks, that (in his own way) Buggy is just as dangerous, just as powerful as his uncle and his boss. If Mihawk is the sword, Crocodile is the poison—and Buggy is the friend who’ll break your arm while he’s shaking it, a smile on his face all the while. Easily underestimated and largely so intentionally. Zoro is continually baffled that Arlong is his subordinate, but that in and of itself speaks volumes how dangerous he truly is.

Still—he’s utterly punchable, a wet rag of a man, and Zoro is glad they so rarely interact.

“Obviously you did nothing,” Crocodile bites out, slamming the side of his fist against the railing as he stalks down the steps, Buggy hot on his heels and fingers flexing, clawlike, at the air behind Crocodile’s neck. Zoro isn’t stupid enough to bet against Nami’s prediction that the three of them will all kill each other one day.

Then, in a blink, Zoro watches Buggy’s face morph from murder back to a pathetic whimper.

“Well, not nothing,” he starts, “I meant—”

But Crocodile is already cutting him off, thundering, “That’s the problem. You were aware of the problem and did not fix it.” He whirls around a second time and again Buggy almost crashes into him—and Zoro wonders, then, if Crocodile is doing that on purpose, too. “We don’t have anything to do with whatever is happening to his ships mid-route—his own incompetence, probably—but as long as he thinks we do, we run the risk of losing an extremely lucrative fucking client. So fix it before the rest of this gets out of hand!”

“I know! I know, I’ll deal with it,” he wails, but even across the room Zoro can see a sadistic kind of gleam in his eye that makes him wonder if they’re all fucking with each other as much as humanly possible and getting off on it.

Because even though Crocodile is fuming, spitting, screaming at him—Buggy is still three steps behind. Which means he’s three steps above Croc on the stairs. And no matter how much Crocodile might want to loom and intimidate the smaller man, he physically can’t. He has to look up.

The bulging vein in Crocodile’s neck is visible even from a distance.

“See that you do,” he grits out, voice thick and haughty as if to overcompensate for the reversal of their positions.

Then Mihawk appears in the doorway of his study, a lazy gait to his step as he watches the exchange from the balcony rail (above them both) with an expression somewhere between haughty aggravation and disdain—and as the two of them turn to glare up at him simultaneously, Zoro regrets thinking the phrase “getting off on it” so much he wants to die. Because dear god.

Crocodile is the first to break by necessity, maybe, and he scoffs as he turns to continue his descent—and makes eye contact with Zoro, still standing in the doorway. He scowls, and—dismissing (ignoring) the other two altogether, snaps, “I don’t have time for you.”

Zoro just glares right back, unfazed. He’s deeply tempted to spit out some kind of retort, but instead just keeps his mouth shut—because to antagonize Croc would be to antagonize all of them (technically), and no matter what kind of internal game the three of them are playing he is still one step lower on the food chain.

That being said, they may be the bosses, but they’ll never all be his bosses—and as the family kind of family he has a special sort of immunity to their bullshit only he and Perona (and his own father, even at so much distance) share.

When he doesn’t respond but doesn’t back down—its own kind of insult—he watches as Crocodile’s face splotches red. By the time he reaches the foyer floor (Buggy dutifully scrambling after), Crocodile looks desperately like he wants to hit him, to take out his rage at his business partners on the final straw—but doesn’t. Instead, he whirls a third and final time—and smashes a fist directly into Buggy’s nose before he even has time to blink.

Buggy keens, blood immediately spurting across his face, but Crocodile just grabs him by the collar and shoves past Zoro, hauling Buggy out through the main entrance and bodily tossing him into the daylight, where he tumbles down the steps and lands in a heap in the drive.

With no one left to prop it open, the front door slams shut behind them—and the whole front wall of the house shakes. Which would be more impressive, Zoro thinks, if the house weren’t half-falling apart already. And if the pair’s shouts weren’t still sprayed across the room through its open windows—fading into the distance as they descend the drive.

Behind and above him, Zoro hears his uncle scoff, but he has no way of knowing what exactly for.

Then the first floor door to his left swings open and Perona emerges, bustling out into the foyer in a black bloom of fur and lace, pink hair curled into an ensemble of feathers and a massive designer purse slung over one arm—either unaware or uncaring of the chaos. As soon as she sees him, she stops mid-step and scowls.

“Oh,” she says, nasally voice dripping with the kind of distilled disdain only an older sister (or the closest approximation he has, now) could conjure. “You’re back.” Visibly, melodramatically, she looks him up and down and gives a disgusted shake of her head as she laments, “When was the last time you showered?”

For a moment Zoro forgets his uncle is watching the whole exchange, because this is the first time he’s seen her in days and she’s just so—he flips her his middle finger and she sticks her tongue out in return like they’re five and nine again, him yanking on her hair and her (bigger than him, then) bodily crushing him in response.

Above them, Mihawk clears his throat and they both blink—scolded without a word like they really are kids. Then Perona sniffs, tosses her hair, and strides for the door. She’s dressed to the nines with an overnight bag and she’s going out—and he does not ask—he does not care. Really. Because Perona can handle herself, and despite the care she’s put into her appearance it’s probably nowhere serious, and—well, they’re all criminals anyway, but—

His uncle’s voice cuts across the foyer, crisp and impatient as it bounces off the marble. “Roronoa,” he says, and it’s not a greeting—it’s a statement. As if they’re already midway through a conversation and this isn’t the first time they’ve seen each other in days, too. “Crocodile has an assignment for you.”

Zoro scoffs, shoving both hands in his pockets, and rocks on his heels because that isn’t what he’s expecting. In the momentary pause, Perona ducks out toward the door (unacknowledged), jamming an elbow into his side as she passes. Zoro doesn’t wince—just flips his middle finger at her again behind his back, because he’s truly a well of creativity.

His uncle raises an eyebrow at the exchange, but does not say anything. Because of course not. He rarely does, even when it matters.

The door closes—softer this time—behind Perona and he barely glances in her direction.

A beat of silence follows in her wake as Mihawk stares him down—until Zoro grunts, “Well, that’s his problem. He can tell me himself,” and wills his legs to move. Hands shoved into his pockets, he crosses toward the staircase with as much apathy as he can muster. Mihawk only watches his approach, unimpressed and vaguely uninterested—and Zoro feels like prey walking right into a trap, alone and vulnerable in the middle of an open, empty room. He regrets leaving his swords still tucked away on his bike. Without them, he feels naked.

Drawing out the moment, Mihawk waits until he’s nearly at the landing before he drawls, “Very well,” with barely a hint of inflection—as if he ever rises to Zoro’s bait, still waters always—then he pivots on his heel and turns, retreating back into his office.

Forced to follow, Zoro takes the remaining steps two at a time and tries to ignore the way his hurried footfalls echo across the hall—humiliating, forced to run after his uncle.

By the time he reaches the study door, though, Mihawk has already returned. In one extended hand, he holds the locked, black leather briefcase that this whole fucking detour had been for in the first place. Zoro scowls, deep and unpleasant, and snatches the case with all the petulance of a child—and Mihawk just stares back, impassive. Judging.

Without a word of thanks (either of them), his job is done.

Zoro turns back toward the stairs and does his best not to glance inside the study—but his eyes skirt across the massive desk, the framed oil paintings, the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the neglected garden anyway. Through the glass, light catches a patch of vibrant orange amid the lush, overgrown greens and blooms, just as quickly there then gone. Mihawk doesn’t move an inch.

Instead, he waits until Zoro is swinging open the front door to call, “Do try not to die tonight,” across the hall, voice carrying and yet somehow still uncaring—and it’s the closest thing he will ever get to good luck.

He pretends not to hear.

- - -

Even though Robin and Daz—and Crocodile and Buggy—have long-since left, the briefcase comes with him through the garden gate anyway.

If the house is a monument to ages past, the grounds are a relic—twisted paths of a once-meticulously kept swathe of nature overcome by Nature itself. As children, they’d spent hours flitting between the vegetable beds, the rose bushes, the ornamental forest—but now, the woods triumph in their menace; the roses, bent and toothed, form an impenetrable wall more branch than leaf, a kind of labyrinth in and of itself; and the vegetable beds are nothing more half-disintegrated scraps of wood at odd angles, traps laid out by the passage of time. The paths have been scattered, crushed seashells giving way to moss and dirt, and the garden has become something like a labyrinth.

As Zoro trudges through, thorns and branches catch on his clothes, as though the very estate were trying to pen him in. It isn’t far from the truth, he thinks.

He finds Nami where he expects—nearly twenty minutes later at the edge of the woods, twice what it would have taken in years past. (He does not get lost—absolutely not.) She’s cross-legged on the stone bench, eyes closed in something more respect than reverence, but when he approaches she looks up and sighs—stands—brushes dirt from the bottom of her pants and starts picking her way back to him through the underbrush.

Sparing him the tree.

Out of sheer bull-headedness, maybe, he meets her halfway anyway, passing the briefcase over without question because she’s already reaching for it, the more capable of them both. Nami takes it with a sigh that’s more frustrated than sad (though the sadness is there, too—he can hear it) and she apologizes, quick and gruff.

“She makes me think of Nojiko,” she says, stepping around to lead them both back to the driveway. Zoro turns to follow—and he does not look at the carved kanji, worn with time and new growth; does not look at the shredded black ribbon, what’s left tangled in fibers through the branches; does not look at the worn path here, the clearest on the grounds, a subtle kind of maintained. It is a child’s memorial, carved in a fit of rage at having his life uprooted in so many ways so quickly, now transformed into something more after so many years.

(It’s a reminder of her—but now, in his stagnation, it is also a reminder of his failings.)

Instead, he says, “Four months left,” like she doesn’t already have the days counted in her head.

“Four months,” she repeats, and with every step away from the tree and toward the garden’s winding depths, she seems to stand just a little bit straighter. “Her last letter said Genzo helped fix the hole in the roof, but who knows—” she shakes her head. “Nojiko wouldn’t tell me if anything were wrong, anyway.”

Zoro shrugs. “You’ll just have to see for yourself, then.” And Nami nods—determined but tired, too.

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess so.”

Leaves and fallen twigs crunch underfoot as they pick their way through the underbrush—and after a beat of silence, he continues (haltingly, because he knows what he wants to say but not how to say it), “She’s fine, probably.”

Nami glances back at him, almost surprised, but Zoro just shrugs again in return and shoves both hands in his pockets, not looking away but almost—then Nami snorts, smiles a little, and rolls her eyes as she turns ahead.

“Of course she’s fine!” she retorts, waving a hand over her shoulder even as she steps forward with a new kind of vigor. “She’s my sister, after all. By the time the supermoon festival rolls around they’ll probably have—I don't know—built an entire house or something. Planted half an acre of new trees. Who knows!” she laughs, and it’s almost genuine. “I guess I’ll find out when I get there.”

Somewhat satisfied, she pushes ahead, and Zoro trails behind her—eyes on her back, watching. Waiting. And as though aware he’s keeping an eye on her, she doesn’t turn around—so he can’t see her face. Can’t read the expression there.

He can guess, though.

- - -

The music blares so loud he can feel the sweat vibrate on his chest.

In the interlude between fights, the club’s singer croons over a cacophony of brass and double bass—trumpets screaming out across the hall over pounding drums. The chaos of noise crashes against his head and sets his vision spinning—though he could owe half that to the adrenaline in his veins, the shitty shots he’s been downing without question in the last hour, or the musky haze of smoke and body odor in the air.

Like any self-respecting gambling den, the Shikkearu speakeasy is underground—a massive open room hidden in plain sight underneath two innocuous buildings at the edge of town. Its ceiling extends upward into a missing first floor, a mirror of Mihawk’s grand foyer in stone, wood, and brass with its single staircase and wraparound balcony. Half of the expanse is filled with open card tables, a long wooden bar extending along one wall and a raised stage against the far corner. To the opposite side, the night’s main source of entertainment (and indiscretion) stands, a fighting ring larger than anything regulation, rimmed with chain and surrounded by a crowd of hungry, sweaty patrons.

Without windows, a kind of sour miasma hangs heavy and never seems to dissipate—not even in the long morning hours when the whole room is empty, the night’s chaos finished.

Now, in the thick of it, he can barely see, let alone hear, let alone think—but it doesn’t matter, because the crowd parts for him as he rolls his neck, creating a path to the red-topped bar where Nami is holding court.

She’s dressed to the nines, gold rings and glittering sequins glinting off the gaslight overhead as she plays the part of a reputable bookie. Faster than Zoro can blink, she scribbles in her ledger, pulls tickets, and counts stacks of cash from a sleek, leather briefcase propped open on the bar. It’s her own personal set up—different from the case he’d retrieved from his uncle, the club’s overall bank—and it completes the look of wealth and status; the look that says, trust me with your money! All of your money!

For all intents and purposes, she is leagues above every other betting agent in the place, at least as far as the crush of well-dressed men waving bills in her face are concerned. She only runs above board and always puts the best odds on the crowd favorite for a guaranteed win—and Zoro always does win, which in turn keeps him in the club’s good graces. So the patrons are happy, the establishment is happy, and Nami is happy, too.

(And if she takes a healthy cut of every bet—well, that’s her business.)

No one tries to talk to him or, god forbid, touch him—but he glares around anyway, sliding in between the barstools until he’s pressed right up against the counter in front of her. Without looking up, Nami slides another shot of something toward him, then turns back to the man at her right who’s openly gawking at Zoro now—at all of him, right down to the swords at his hip.

True to his uncle’s life philosophy, the club has only a few rules: no firearms, stop when the referee calls a match, and no throwing fights—the latter worst of all, because it would destroy the point of the place. The ferocity of it. Every win he’s claimed has been earned, against swordsman and other alike. And tonight, two rounds in, his swords have tasted blood.

Nami leans forward into the man’s space, asking something, but he’ frozen—so Zoro tosses back the shot without breaking eye contact and the man turns red, watching the column of Zoro’s throat without shame—and then Nami waves another ticket in his face and that gets his attention. Finally. Just as Zoro turns away, leaning across the bar to grab a pitcher of water from behind the counter, he hears the man double his bet over the din.

He tries not to smirk—he has an image to maintain, after all.

By the time he’s standing straight again, Nami is shoving the man away, forcing him back into the throng as she slams the lid of her briefcase shut. “Round’s closed!” she shouts, grinning broadly (all teeth and sharp eyes) at the crowd still gathered. “Thanks for placing your bets!”

With one hand she gestures, shoo-ing them like rats into other corners of the club, away from the two of them. She’s not the only bookie here, after all—far from it—so they have plenty of options. (She’s just his bookie, they know.)

Half the crowd disburses with a grumble, but a few swaying patrons look like they’re about to argue. They’re mostly corporate types—new-moneyed, white-collar men in buttondowns and suspenders, dress shirts clinging to their skin and shirtsleeves rolled up to their elbows, sweaty and flushed with alcohol and the adrenaline of watching the night’s previous rounds. Some haven’t lost their blazers yet, and those are the real suckers—the bettors who haven’t been here long enough to loosen up, pockets still full of cash to burn and the overconfidence to believe they’ll walk away richer.

Zoro rests one arm against the hilts of his swords and just looks at them.

A ripple passes through the crowd.

Within moments, the bubble around him has grown to include Nami as a dozen grown men scuttle off like embarrassed teenagers.

Then, in one quick motion, he dumps the pitcher of water over his head. It’s cool against his skin and it stings, clearing the world in a shock as it pools on the stone floor at his feet. As he shakes his head, he feels the sweat and grime leftover from his last fight loosen—and he only clears his eyes in time to catch a mouthful of towel thrown directly at his face. Nami gives him a disgusted look, but it's the cleanest the floor’s been in years, probably—and it’s no worse than the blood and booze left at the end of each fight night, anyway.

Instead of responding, he just scrubs the towel over his sticky skin—then through his hair like a dog—and Nami grimaces when he tosses it back to her.

“Nice work,” she yells, holding the towel at a distance before she drops it behind the bar—out of sight. Probably in the trash can. “Three rounds, though? Took you long enough.”

Zoro just shrugs, leaning forward across the counter. “Oh, fuck off,” he says. “He had scythes.”

“My mistake, didn’t know you drew the line there, Mr. I-fight-with-a-sword-in-my-mouth,” she snorts back. Instead of snapping back, he just grabs her drink and downs it—and she lets out an indignant kind of Augh! as she gripes, “Oh, like you’re so normal!”

Over the blaring music, he can barely hear a word that she’s saying, but he’s used to it by now. He can read Nami well enough as she pokes at him. She’s enjoying herself, though, as much as she complains. There’s a glint in her eyes, the one she gets when she’s winning, and Zoro knows they’re about to cash out big.

Even so, Nami crosses her arms, tilting her head toward the ring behind him as she raises one eyebrow. “You wanna know?” she asks, but Zoro just shakes his head. From her vantage point at the bar, Nami has a clear view of the entire floor, from the bandstand to arena to the tucked-away couches in the club’s far corners. It’s not the best place for betting by any means, especially wedged on the working side of the speakeasy’s massive bar, but it is the best place to scope out his opponents during each night’s brackets.

Nami doesn’t seem surprised when he refuses—he’s never said yes before. Still, though, she’s never stopped asking and she’s never moved somewhere quieter, either. After so long, he thinks she likes the challenge of diagnosing a fight and adjusting her odds on the fly just as much as the con potential if he ever decides to take her up on the offer to cheat.

In response, she shrugs—and then the bartender sets two shots in front of them as if on cue. She’s a leggy blonde with a puppydog smile and a name Zoro can’t remember—not that it matters, because she’s only got eyes for Nami.

“Thanks, Wanda,” Nami coos, taking one of the two glasses with a wink that has Zoro rolling his eyes, too. He’s never actually asked how she’s been able to keep her place behind the bar on fight nights—an area technically off-limits to her, no matter who he is.

“No prob!” Wanda chirps, blowing a kiss as she scurries back to the next person waiting.

As he grabs his own shot, Zoro snickers at Nami, who rolls yer eyes in return, even while she grins—and they tip their shots back in a silent salute to one another before swallowing, hissing through their teeth in unison.

He’s lost count of how much he’s had to drink at this point, and the music isn’t helping—but he knows he’ll have a clear head in the ring no matter what. He always does. Like the crowd is out of focus and the fight is what’s real.

He’ll feel it after, maybe—or maybe not, depending on the day—but he’s still got one fight left and plenty of adrenaline running through his system.

A broad hand claps on his bare back hard enough to jolt him forward, and Zoro nearly drops the glass in his hand—and in front of him, Nami goes very still.

“Roronoa,” a voice drawls, and Zoro feels his skin crawl as he shoves back from the bar, smacking the man’s hand away. Zoro glares, but Jack just stares him down—holding his hands up in mock surrender as he takes an exaggerated step backwards.

Kaido’s third right hand (his left leg, really) is a big man—bigger than Zoro, even—with a wide chest that seems to take up twice the space he physically occupies, a permanent scowl etched under incongruously well-kept blond hair. What he lacks in charm he makes up in sadism, however—a fact which makes his presence in person that much more unsettling.

“The fuck do you want?” Zoro bites out, but his words are half-swallowed as the crowd gathered around the ring screams in approval at something, cutting off the band as the opposing bracket’s next round begins.

At the edge of his vision, Zoro sees a few heads turned in their direction—not regular patrons but his uncle’s men keeping an eye on them both. Because even though the Cross Guild’s speakeasy is technically open to the public, it’s still Cross Guild territory—and Jack is one of Kaido’s subordinates.

Jack just smiles. “Now, now,” he says, then turns his sharp, unreadable gaze on Nami, who’s watching him through a scowl of her own. “I wanted to apologize for the way my men acted last night.” He holds his hands out in offering, almost—the very picture of repentance.

Nami scoffs. “I’m not looking for job offers,” she says, and Jack nods, utterly amenable. It sets Zoro’s teeth on edge.

“Perfectly understandable,” he agrees, then he cuts his eyes to Zoro before turning back to Nami. A show, then. All of this is. “It was extremely inappropriate of them to try and recruit from another family, and for that I extend my regrets. I know no one in your organization tolerates betrayal, and I would never want to take you from their good graces,” he continues, and it’s almost too apologetic.

They both know Jack’s reputation, and Zoro doesn’t believe for a moment that he’s only here to smooth the wrinkles of inter-family diplomacy. Nami catches his eye—she’s picked up on the same thing.

Before either of them can respond, though, the crowd erupts again, and this time the cheering doesn’t stop—it just builds and builds until the announcer is yelling, too. Distracted, Zoro turns toward the noise along with everyone else nearby—which gives Jack just enough time to lean forward and hiss, “Just know Kaido doesn’t tolerate any bullshit, either,” directly into his ear, completely under cover of the noise. “So stay out of our way.”

Zoro jerks back, but it’s already too late—with another overly-friendly smack on his shoulder, Jack is already halfway to disappearing as he pushes through the undulating crowd and out the rear door. None of the staff give chase because Jack hasn’t technically done anything—entering the building isn’t a declaration of war.

Unsure if he’s just been threatened, Zoro turns to Nami—who looks just as alarmed as she stares beyond him toward the exit.

Neither of them have time to parse out the warning, though—because the announcer is already calling the match and calling for him, too—

“—ext fight will be our last of the night, so I hope you’ve placed your bets! Now give it up for our very own undefeated champion—Roronoa Zoro, The King of Hell!”

—and the crowd roars.

---

Part II

As the crab trap scrapes up the side of her boat, draining seaweed and sand back into the ocean, Nami throws her head back and groans. “What the hell?” And from across the deck, Zoro eyes the piles of twisted metal and frayed rope steadily accumulating with each passing hour. Once is a fluke, twice a coincidence—but this?

In one heaving, angry motion, she hauls her trap over the rail and tosses it with the rest. It’s half-crumpled, hit by something with enough force to make the whole thing look more like chicken wire than real eleven-gauge steel, the thick mesh punched through and peeled back—identical to the last four they’ve pulled up.

“Use shittier bait next time,” Zoro calls. “Stop giving the crabs meth.”

Nami just glares and peels off her thick workman’s gloves—leaving Zoro to haul up the buoy still bobbing in the water. “I don’t think it’s the bait,” she snaps back, and then she throws her hands up and stomps back toward the wheelhouse. “I think it’s sabotage.”

Zoro sighs as he leans over the side of the boat, yanking the slick rope up on deck. It doesn’t look tampered with, the thick growth of seaweed and algae still fully-formed along the whole thing. Instead, it’s as though something big and hungry tried to crack it open underwater, a crab shell in and of itself, and succeeded.

In the days since Jack’s cryptic warning, they’ve been impatiently waiting for the other shoe to drop. Although they’d tried to piece together whatever he’d been referring to, they’d both come up empty—and had instead resolved to wait. We’ll just ask them when they try to kill us, Nami had finally said—and Zoro had agreed. It made the most sense, after all. And with Jack’s reputation—there’s no way he wouldn’t try something if the opportunity ever arose.

(It’s been ages since anyone has tried to kill them, after all—they’re overdue.)

Destroying half of Nami’s crab traps, though? It’s certainly not the blood and violence he’d been expecting.

“Could be sabotage,” he grunts, conceding, finally dragging the buoy onboard. “Seems kind of petty to go after a hobby, though.”

Nami scowls at him again—this time through the wheelhouse window. It’s another calm day, with low swells and a faint but steady breeze, and they’ve got the whole place thrown open to let the air pass through.

“It’s still money,” she gripes before turning to check their navigational instruments. “I have to do something during the day or they’ll start asking questions down at the docks.”

Zoro rolls his eyes as he tosses the buoy in its own pile, then throws himself down on one of the low wood-and-fabric beach chairs they’ve dragged on deck again. It’s wedged up against the edge so he can dangle one leg off the side of the boat, toes just barely skimming the top of the water below.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he replies, poking through the chair’s pocket, hunting for their flask. “But you don’t have to fish.”

“I own a fishing boat,” Nami shouts back as he finds it, grins, unscrews the top, and takes a swig—then hisses.

Atrocious moonshine.

Oddly fitting, he thinks. Shitty day, shitty booze.

Scowling, he yells, “I don’t know, give tours?”

Nami barks out a laugh, then turns and leans her arms on the window frame. “Yeah, like there’s anything to see out here.” She holds out one hand and Zoro tosses the flask to her—and she catches it easily. Takes a sip of her own. Winces. “God, that’s garbage.”

“You filled it last time,” Zoro snorts as she caps and throws it back across the deck—then she disappears, ducking under the window to rummage out of sight. When she reemerges, she has a flask of her own—presumably not some moron’s piss-adjacent approximation of sellable hooch. “Oh, I hate you,” he says, eyeing it.

Nami just sticks her tongue out at him and Zoro sighs—but drinks again anyway. He’s not about to waste their alcohol, even the worst of it.

(Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a shadow pass over—under?—the sea, and a distant part of his brain registers something odd about it. There aren’t that many clouds in the sky—but he doesn’t know enough about the weather to really know, and he’s not paying that much attention, anyway. Seaweed, maybe, or an especially foamy crest.)

After a beat of silence, Nami hums, “I could do fishing charters, I guess.”

“I think you’re trying to tell me you really do like fishing,” Zoro replies, swinging his leg a little so that his toes touch the water with the next gentle wave.

“I don’t like fishing,” she replies. She rolls her eyes.

In response, Zoro leans back and smirks. “You can admit it—you actually adore fishing. I won’t judge.”

“You will absolutely judge.”

“I’ve seen your taste in women—if I were going to judge, I’d have done it by now.”

Nami lets out an indignant Augh! around a mouthful of liquor, and Zoro throws his head back to laugh as she coughs—and shoots him the middle finger even as her eyes water, utterly dampening the insult.

Then the boat rocks once, twice—an unexpected bump in the current, and Zoro’s foot dips deeper into the ocean for a moment—fully submerged and then out again, soaking his rolled-up pants to the calf.

Nami glances at the instruments in the cockpit, still recovering from her fit, but there must not be anything of note because a moment later she wanders out to lean against the wheelhouse door frame. “We could be hauling nets right now, you know,” she says. “Or hunting for that—I dunno, the sea god.”

Zoro shakes his head. “And miss the excitement? No way,” he deadpans, “I live for pulling up broken crab pots.”

“They weren’t broken when they went into the water,” she wails back. “Now I have to pay to get them repaired or buy new ones—and I don’t have any fucking crabs!”

“Thank god for that. I dunno if I could take witnessing a crab orgy right here on deck,” Zoro mumbles in response, swigging from his flask again, and Nami snorts—

“Don’t be jealous—just because it’s been ages for you—”

—and it’s his turn to choke, sputter, curse as he nearly flails out of the chair trying to flip her off and not drown in a drop of liquor all at once, and Nami laughs.

“Let the crabs fuck! They deserve it! Their lives are hard enou—”

Suddenly, the short wave radio in the wheelhouse crackles to life, beeping long and loud over an explosion of white noise—and both of them freeze. Before Nami can reach for it, the static resolves into a garbled, frantic voice neither of them recognize—

“—ot one! Someone get Kaido—Fuck! I can’t believe it’s real. We actually caught one! Tell him—”

The voice cuts off and there’s a burst of fuzz before another breaks in, shouting, “Wrong channel, moron! Do you want someone to hea—”

—and then the machine goes dead.

Zoro and Nami stare at each other for a moment, blinking into the sun—and the boat rocks again, followed by the sound of a massive splash off the port side. The noise snaps them both to attention, but they ignore it. Instead, Nami turns back to her equipment, frantically inspecting the cockpit’s various machines.

“We’re on my channel,” she half-shouts, full of glee, as Zoro hauls himself up and steps into the wheelhouse. “Unless someone’s eavesdropping, we’re the only ones who’ve heard it.”

Zoro crosses his arms and leans in to look over her shoulder—but it all just looks like numbers and dials to him. He frowns, thinking. “If it’s someone who knows your channel, it’s got to be one of your contacts—someone recent enough to still have his own radio tuned. And he said Kaido.”

Already, Nami is adjusting something at the wheel—then she throws a lever and the boat’s anemic outboard motor revs to life.

“We’re going,” she says, and the boat suddenly jerks as Nami swings the wheel—wrecked crab pots and beach chair sliding back toward the rail in an inevitable arc. The engine lets out a terrible whining noise but holds steady. When she looks at him, there’s a familiar delight in her eyes.

Zoro grips the door frame for balance as the deck rocks. And he grins. “We’re going to steal it?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

“If it’s real?” she replies, laughing. “Of course we’re going to steal it.”

- - -

There’s no opportunity for stealth. The moment they pull in view of the cargo district’s loading docks, they see the crowd of Kaido’s subordinates clustered in bunches around something that’s been dragged away from the edge—if the massive, sopping, kelp-tangled net left haphazard on the concrete is any indication.

Half of the men turn, weapons at the ready like they’re waiting for something—but no matter how trigger-happy they look, no one opens fire. They just watch their approach, and then the central cluster parts—and Jack glares at them from the heart of his subordinates. He has one foot resting on a lone, sealed crate and a hunting knife unsheathed in one of his hands.

Nami cuts the engine to idle and slips parallel to the shore, and Zoro doesn’t have to be told—swords secured at his hip, he’s already at the deck’s edge, already reaching out to snag a rope against one of the pilings. The knots are quick and dirty enough for a getaway if they need one—which they absolutely will, Zoro thinks as he surveys the crowd. Two against twenty-or-more aren’t terrible odds because they’re both armed, but if they’re going to pull this off it’ll be closer to Zoro against everyone while Nami snatches the creature.

If she can.

“I had a feeling you’d show up,” Jack shouts without preamble, a wild look in his eye that Zoro’s never seen before. There’s no beating around the bush, then—Jack isn’t the type. For all Zoro disagrees with his methods—Jack’s known more for his brutality than his finesse on jobs. If anything, Zoro can appreciate the lack of bullshit.

(The thought brings to mind Jack’s threat and he wonders, suddenly—stupidly—if this is their chance to ask what he meant.)

“Well, we got your call at the cathouse,” Zoro yells back, a feral grin on his face—already itching for a fight. “It seemed rude to stand up an appointment.”

A few of the men snicker—involuntarily, maybe, if the sickly pallor that immediately seeps into their skin is any indication—and Jack’s face turns a blotchy, angry red.

Before he says anything, though, Nami steps out of the wheelhouse, metal staff in-hand. She’s already armed—which means no one is really pretending. “Easy, boys,” she calls. “We just want to see if it’s real.”

Jack just snorts.

In response, Zoro shrugs, one hand resting on the hilts of the swords at his waist as he steps onto the dock. In his peripheral vision, he sees grips tighten on weapons, but still—no one shoots. Nami follows close behind, gesturing toward the crate with her free hand before raising it in mock-surrender.

“Can you blame us?” she says, “If you’ve really caught a sea god, who knows if we’ll get the chance again.”

Jack stares at her a moment, assessing them both, then he laughs, kicking the crate so hard it clatters against the concrete docks—

—and that’s when Zoro hears it. A whimper, almost. A child’s cry. Something not quite animal—not in any way he’s expecting. Something that makes a sick feeling churn in the pit of his gut alongside the adrenaline of their race to the docks.

At his left, Nami sucks in a breath through her teeth—hissing, almost—and he knows that it wasn’t his imagination.

Something is not right.

(He glances around, then, and realizes that half the men really do look ill—blood drained from their faces as they glance nervously around, eyes pinging from Jack to the crate under his foot to the ocean and back—)

“Fine! Why not?” Jack barks out, a deep kind of gleeful that seems wrong. “If you make it out of here alive, no one will believe you anyway.” A few of the men laugh with him—intentionally, this time, as Jack continues, “Maybe it’ll give you some of the sea god’s luck.”

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Nami replies, but she turns her head slightly and catches Zoro’s eye—just for a moment—and shoots him a look halfway between confused and alarmed. Zoro understands. There is a possibility—possibly a large possibility—that they have miscalculated the kind of crazy needed to hunt mythical sea monsters on faith alone.

Jack kicks the crate a second time, then, hard enough to displace the lid—and they hear the noise again, louder this time. It seems to stretch the grin on Jack’s face wider, and he reaches for whatever’s inside. In one swift motion, yanks out a tangle of weighted lines—and then the sound really does become an oh-so-human wail.

Zoro feels the ground drop out from underneath him, and Nami physically sways.

Deeply, deeply miscalculated.

Trapped in the fishing net is what looks to be a little girl, no more than six or seven, with ruddy purple hair and a dirty face splotched from crying and smeared with grime and blood from somewhere, pale skin already bruising. She has her eyes clenched shut and she’s practically curled into a ball, arms thrown over her head as she’s held aloft. If it weren’t for the trembling, whimpering noises, Zoro might easily mistake her for dead.

Instantly, Zoro has a hand on his swords and Nami lurches forward—but Jack grins, shaking the bundle like a doll.

“What the fuck?” Nami yells, knuckles white on her staff, but Jack just inspects his prize, calm as can be.

“It looks just like one of us! It talks like a human, too,” he says, almost impressed. Then he tilts his head. “Without the tail, perhaps. And the fins—” He shakes the net again, and the girl whimpers—

And Zoro does notice, then, that something is off. There’s something in the net with her, maybe—an iridescent, green thing like the body of a fish—the fins of which are bent against the ropes at an almost painful angle. But there has to be a mistake, like they’ve thrown in some giant tropical sea creature to collect the bounty, because undoubtedly, it’s—

“That’s a kid!” Nami growls, enraged, beating him to it. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Jack just looks at her like she’s stupid—glancing between Nami and the child he has in his grip. “No,” he shakes his head. “It’s a fish. An animal.” There’s a gleam in his eye that’s a shade closer to unhinged as he stares them all down. None of his men say anything, half enamored and half ill, and he steps closer, then, toward the two of them—

—and the ocean erupts.

A wave of seawater drenches the loading dock and rocks their boat hard enough to send the crab traps skidding across the deck—and a pair of feral, screaming growls tears through the air. Within seconds, something lithe and massive and angry claws itself out of the sea, sharp nails digging into the concrete deep enough to leave grooves as it hauls its body from the water, razor teeth gritted and hungry.

In the space of a breath, Zoro wonders—with startling clarity—if he’s having a breakdown.

Because the creature looks like the real fucking deal—the body of a dark-haired young man (or something like a young man, covered in swirls of shifting black from the tips of its curved claws to its human-like shoulders) grafted to the tail of a massive fish (or something like a fish, mottled red scales tapered like knives and iradescent in the orange sunset), all fangs and claws and spiny fins—and rage.

A sea monster. A sea god.

Snarling, it drags itself across the ground with startling, terrifying ease—using its own momentum and upper body strength to propel its own bulk forward. Some of lower recruits scream, terrified, and scatter outwards, running inland and half parallel to the water’s edge—and then a gunshot ricochets through the twilight, followed by another—then another—as Jack’s men instantly move to protect the two hundred-thousand dollar investment still clenched in their leader’s fist.

Zoro ducks, heart thundering in his ears as he draws Kitetsu—and at his left, he hears Nami shriek.

A second bulk, larger than the first and with a mop of blond, human-like hair, lunges out of the water—but instead of hauling itself up onto shore, it reaches one terrifying hand out to snag the ankle of a fleeing gunman and yank. In seconds, the man’s skull smashes into the concrete as he falls, but Zoro can’t even tell if he survives long enough to feel the blow because in an instant, the body is gone—dragged into the black ocean.

Nami turns to look at Zoro, whose eyes are wide and legs already pivoting to run, maybe—

—and then the little girl screams.

“Help! Luffy! Help me!”

And, god—she really does sound like a human child.

Nami makes the decision at the same time he does, and without hesitation she redirects, turning on her heel with her metal staff gripped in both hands as she smashes it into the temple of a man running straight for the water. In tandem, Zoro moves, curving right with one swift motion as he slices through the meat of another thug’s arm, forcing him to drop his gun—and half his hand, too.

Zoro knows, logically, that they’ve just made a huge fucking mistake—attacked members of a rival family in what looks like (and may have been) a bid to steal their fortune, but she’s—she’s just a fucking kid. And even they have lines that they do not cross.

Monster or not, they’ve put a baby in a sack and called it god, and if that’s what it means to believe he wants no fucking part of it.

As another gun fires—then clatters to the ground, the red creature to his right growls and plows forward, slithering across dry land with an almost practiced ease as it shoves aside men and weapons alike. It cuts a direct line for Jack as it snaps and spits, and Jack doesn’t even have time to react—he just thrusts his hunting knife outward in an arc that misses the creature by a mile. Then, in a blink, it’s sinking its teeth into his leg, latching on with its claws and tearing.

Jack screams in a way Zoro has only rarely heard, even in his own line of work. Suddenly, the gifters left around them all have their weapons focused directly on the monster, poised to defend their leader even as he writhes on the ground. The monster is as good as a massive target, all unprotected muscle in the middle of the open loading bay. Either it doesn’t realize what’s happening or it doesn’t care, because the beast doesn’t stop—just jerks its head outward and mutilates Jack, ripping his leg clean off at the knee.

Still, Jack doesn’t let go of the net. Instead, he grips the hunting knife still clenched in his hand and thrusts it downward, directly into the creature’s upper back. It growls, but doesn’t stop—

—and Zoro moves before he’s even fully aware of his own actions.

(He’s already fucked this whole thing up, anyway, he thinks—what are a few more bodies?)

In one swift movement he starts forward, disarming another man with a decisive slash to his wrist—already drawing Enma with his left and then smashing another thug’s temple with the sword’s hilt.

As their bodies hit the ground, half of the gunmen start to turn, distracted by the fact that he’s attacking them, not the creature. It’s a split second, but it’s long enough for Nami to leap in with a low grip on her staff as she swings the metal like a bat—and it smashes into the face of another gunman with a sickening crunch. He goes down like a lead weight and Nami grabs his pistol before he’s even fully hit the ground.

The little girl lets out another terrified wail as the red creature finally lets Jack’s body slump to the concrete, and for a moment Zoro wonders if they’ve made the wrong decision—wonders if it will attack them, too—but the monster just turns and grasps at the net.

With surprising (or unsurprising, maybe) ease, it tears at the ropes with its claws while the little one cries, “Luffy! Luffy! Luffy!” in a way that sounds terrible, tiny hands reaching for the bigger thing—and then it wraps her in its arms in a protective embrace as she buries her face in the crook of its not-quite-human neck. It’s bleeding freely from a jagged slice down its back and shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to notice.

They freeze there for a moment, the two of them, and Zoro swears he hears the creature talk back—but it sounds low in its throat and more growl than anything. Then it lurches, tries to move, and gets almost nowhere.

Zoro realizes the problem at the same time the creature seems to.

With its arms full, it has no way of dragging itself back to the ocean—not at this distance.

(Another thug goes down at Nami’s hand, and then the blue-and-blond blur heaves out from the ocean again, drowning one more attacker in the same grab-and-smash maneuver—and then there’s a third one, too, orange and purple—)

Zoro can practically see the creature in front of him thinking—scanning their surroundings—and then it stops. Turns to look him dead in the eye. Assessing.

(And for a split second, Zoro is hit with the strangest feeling—like he’s suspended in water, weightless and floating—and he understands with a kind of startling, painful clarity that nothing is ever going to be the same again.)

The creature flicks its eyes to the ocean, then back to Zoro, and it’s like they’ve had an entire conversation. Something just clicks. Then it grins, a mouth full of knives, and Zoro has the strangest urge to grin back.

Without hesitation, Zoro sheaths his swords, ignoring Nami’s frantic, “What the fuck are you doing?” as he steps forward and wraps both hands around the tapered base of the monster’s tail. He feels the tense muscle corded under his fingers, strong and taut with anticipation, and he glances up—sees the monster smiling like a human with more teeth and gore, sees the little girl staring at him with wide eyes. Sees the mutilated corpse of Jack, just a pile of meat that was once Kaido’s man. Makes his choice.

Zoro plants his feet against the ground, braces his legs, and heaves.

It’s the heaviest thing he’s ever lifted, its tail alone more packed mass than the average grown man, but Zoro is pumped up on kind of fuck you adrenaline he rarely feels even in his worst fights. In two massive pulls, he practically hurls the monster toward the sea, and he swears, swears, he can hear it laughing—or something like a laugh.

Nami catches on fast, turning to cover him with another block and disarm—then fires two shots from her stolen gun into the legs of another lackey.

She’s not fast enough, though.

As Zoro heaves a third time, forcing the creature and its offspring? charge? (they barely look anything alike, though they’re clearly the same species) the last few feet to the water's edge, he hears another gunshot too close and feels a searing pain rip along the edge of his shoulder. He almost loses his grip as the bullet tears through skin and muscle, but he holds onto the creature’s tail through sheer force of will—even as his brain starts to disengage his entire arm in agony.

The creature growls, but Zoro doesn’t stop—even when Nami yells his name, “Zoro!” and he hears another round of gunshots.

There’s a flash of blue and purple on the dark water as the other monsters shove their much-more-human heads to the surface. With one final burst of momentum, Zoro hauls the creature off the loading bay and sends it careening toward the sea in tangle of limbs and fins—

(“—Sabo, you promised your brother would stick to the fucking plan—”)

—and Nami grabs his uninjured arm and yanks, shoving him toward her boat. That gets him moving again.

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he draws Kitetsu once more and slices cleanly through the lines holding their vessel as Nami covers him, firing round after round into the distance.

When the gun finally clicks out, she tosses it into the sea—just in time for Zoro to grab her wrist, then, and haul her onto the deck in front of him. As soon as she’s off the dock, he braces both hands against the edge of the boat and shoves, gritting his teeth as he feels something warm and wet start to ooze down his shoulder. Then, miraculously, the engine roars to life—Nami has made a beeline for the cockpit and she’s already smashing levers, pressing buttons, gripping the door frame with one hand as the boat jerks.

Zoro leaps fully onto the stern just as Nami peels out into the open ocean and away from the warehouse district as fast as mechanically possible. Haphazard gunshots follow them into the evening air, but within seconds they’re too far to hear them—whoever they’ve left standing long enough to shoot in their wake.

- - -

Minutes (or hours) later, Nami finally lowers the engine to a crawl—then cuts it altogether, leaving them both in a kind of deafening quiet, untethered in more ways than one.

With one final burst of energy, Zoro hauls himself fully over the railing and onto the deck—and then just stays there, processing. Through the open wheelhouse doorway, he can see Nami standing stock-still, rigid and white-knuckled at the helm, where she’s been steering them practically on autopilot.

After a beat of silence she turns—blinks at him. Zoro blinks back.

And they both burst out laughing. Nami’s legs buckle as she clutches her sides and crouches in the wheelhouse, curled into a ball while balancing on the balls of her feet. “What the actual fuck?” she wheezes—high-pitched, incredulous, and utterly hysterical. “What the actual fuck?”

Zoro feels like he’s losing his mind, too, just a little, as he nearly doubles over—unsure whether his body wants to keep laughing or freeze. He’s not even sure where to begin—how absolutely fucked they are for possibly (probably) starting shit with another family? The realization that sea monsters are real? The fact that he’s been shot?

He blinks again, then—brain finally catching up with his limbs.

Oh, he thinks. He’s been shot.

He barely feels it when his body hits the deck.

- - -

When he regains consciousness, he’s sprawled across one of the beach chairs on deck, now pulled out of the crush of crab pots (also missing) and shoved against one wall of the wheelhouse. Nami has stripped him to the waist and banaged his shoulder, but the cotton is still seeping red and a large portion of his left arm has gone numb. After testing his limits with a stretch, though, he’s not particularly worried about permanent damage. Technically, this isn’t the first time he’s been shot—and he has enough mobility to move, to grip, to do everything important, which is the best possible sign the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital.

He does fucking hurt, though.

When Nami sticks her head out of the doorway and sees that he’s awake, she just sighs—but he’s known her long enough to hear the multitudes it contains. Relief, exasperation, frustration, fear. Without a word, she just walks over and sits on the edge of his lounger—then flops over, burying her face against his uninjured side as she lets out another shuddering breath.

The best he can do is wedge her closer without a word, but that’s all either of them need—they’ve never been the best at speaking, anyway. So they stay like that for some indeterminate amount of time, tucked together in the darkness, sticky and sweaty and exhausted—until Nami sits up. Swipes at her eyes.

And that is that.

They agree almost immediately that they can’t head back to the marina for fear of what they’ve started. While it is unlikely that Kaido would move to retaliate so soon, they have just as much to worry about from their own people, too. For stirring up trouble where it’s not wanted, any of their bosses would be well within their rights to demand retribution in an effort to placate Kaido for Jack’s death. Even Zoro. Especially Zoro.

(Because they’re fairly sure Jack is dead now.)

Even so, Zoro needs a doctor. Badly.

They circle through the open water until day breaks, Nami practically glued to the short-wave radio as they wait for news. And yet—nothing.

When another hour passes without word of the incident, Nami comes to a decision and Zoro has no choice but to agree. By mid-afternoon, they’re closer to shore, tucked away in their place, the cove.

As soon as they drop anchor, Nami all but shoves him below deck, barely extracting a promise that he’ll stay put before she disappears again. Then, minutes later, Zoro hears the tell-tale sound of her dinghy hitting the water, followed by the slosh of oars as she heads for the shore.

To his credit, he does stay put—he couldn’t leave even if he wanted, not with his shoulder wound left to fester in the gummy ocean spray for almost a full day now. Instead of waiting below deck, though, he raids the very dregs of their tiny galley cabinets and sprawls back out on his lounger with the shittiest bottle of liquor he can find—something more engine fuel than fit for human consumption. On purpose this time.

Over and over, he turns the events of the previous evening in his mind, still struggling to process the reality of it. Now that they’re safe (for the time being) and Nami has a plan, he’s finally left with a little bit of room to address the most baffling part of the whole thing—the fucking. Sea monsters.

He takes a sip of the clear liquor and stares at the clouds overhead without really seeing them.

The existence of them, yes, and that sea monster in particular—because he’d only gotten a good look at one of the big ones, really, and his brain is refusing to process that the baby hadn’t been a little human girl at least in some capacity.

Of all that he’d seen, though, that had been the closest to what he imagines might be a fucking—a sea god.

The black-and-red creature had all the outward appearance of something more animal than person, patterns undulating under pale, luminous skin—teeth and spines and claws. But when they’d locked eyes—he’d known. He’d seen it thinking, planning, communicating. He’d heard at least two of them speak, and he wonders if the voice from the water had been one of them, too. And if they’d been talking at all, really, or just mimicking human language like a parrot.

Except. Except.

The little one had called for help, had called someone’s name—

Luffy?

—and it responded.

Zoro’s never put much stock in the fishermen’s superstitions, despite spending so much of his life in town, on the water. He’s heard the unbelievable, stupid tales about giant squids and mysterious whirlpools and women in the sea hundreds of times. Seen the offerings in shrines by the shore, left in the rain for the gods, for a carved Nika. Watched the fervor whipped up by Akainu’s hunt with enough apprehension to realize people did believe.

And yet, he can’t deny what he’s seen. He can’t think himself out of it—something half man, half fish. Fucking. Mermaid. Or merman?

He takes another swig and holds the acrid moonshine in his mouth as long as he can without gagging, counterintuitively trying to clear his head with the burn.

Maybe it’s the alcohol, but the look in its eyes—it seems seared against the sky as he stares at the clouds, processing nothing.

Zoro has to know. He has to see it again, both to believe it had been real in the first place and to figure out what the fuck.

For a brief and terrible moment, he thinks he understands even some fraction of Akainu’s obsession.

If he goes the rest of his life with only a glimpse of whatever that was, the indescribable something of it, maybe there will be a hole in him forever. An empty place he’d never known existed, filled for an instant and then gone just as fast—a blink. A heartbeat.

As a breeze winds though the empty cove, rustling his hair and cooling the sweat on his face, he drinks. And he plans. And when Nami returns that evening with Chopper in tow, he’s somehow managed to convince himself he’s not entirely crazy.

- - -

Chopper is a smart decision—only affiliated with the Cross Guild in an informal capacity but trusted enough to keep their location a secret if shit really hits the fan.

He’s a scrawny kid, short and scruffy in an endearing kind of way—and smarter than either of them will ever be, at least when it comes to some things. He’s also a sweet kid, with an optimistic disposition completely at odds with his job—apprentice to one of the city’s back-alley surgeons, a legitimate doctor willing to work discreetly with the families.

He cleans Zoro’s injuries without prying for details, instead just griping about how long they’ve been festering and giving him strict instructions to keep them clean, damn it!

He’s well aware of Zoro’s track record when it comes to changing bandages, having taken care of him more than once after a particularly nasty fight. Nami nods along on his behalf, even as she paces—not because of his bullet wound, et al., (he’s been shot before; they both have), but because of the variables still in play while they’re stuck hiding out.

Nami does her best to wheedle information from him, but by the time Chopper leaves they still aren’t sure what kind of damage they’ve done. All he can offer is that there is no information—it’s been over a day, and despite the fact that news always travels fast in their circles Chopper hasn’t heard anything—not about Jack. Not about the child-monster. Not about the gifters they’d killed. And not about Kaido or Akainu, either.

It’s unsettling.

They stay off the grid for nearly a week, waiting for the guillotine to take them both out—and still, nothing happens. No manhunts, no report of an inter-organizational bounty, not even mention of the incident over any channel on the short-wave except to let other smugglers (and, ostensibly, legitimate dockworkers) know the cargo district has been shut down. Even so, they agree to lay low.

Because of his injury, Zoro stays on the boat while Nami ventures into civilization for supplies. He spends the bulk of each day on deck left to his own devices, staring across the sea as he tries to meditate or train. Despite its initial shock to his system, the bullet had only plowed through the meat of his arm—no bones broken or significant nerves damaged. Within a week, he’s pulled the stitches out himself and incorporated enough stretching into his usual routine to keep the scar tissue from fucking him up long-term. So he ignores Nami’s pointed remarks and continues to work out, even as the rest of his injury heals. He doesn’t have anything else to do, anyway.

(And when Nami isn’t looking, he tips half his meals into the water and watches the fish swarm—but it’s only ever just fish, and he feels stupid for even trying.)

Then, on the eighth day, Robin arrives.

With the cove inaccessible by road (it is a safe house, after all, or something like it) she appears on foot, emerging from the woods in silence. The moment he notices her, Zoro is on his feet with Nami close behind—like standing straighter will do anything if Robin decides to make a move. They’re wide open on deck, veritable sitting ducks if she’s come with a gun.

Instinctively, he reaches for his swords, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder—but Robin just holds her hands up, palms out in the universal sign of surrender. She doesn’t seem armed but Zoro doesn’t relax, because that doesn’t mean anything, really, in their line of work.

“I come in peace, Mr. Swordsman,” she calls across the water, an unbothered half-grin on her face as she picks her way along the rocky beach. She inclines her head to Nami, too—tacit acknowledgement of someone far below her rank that sets Zoro’s teeth on edge, because Nami wouldn’t even be on Robin’s radar if not for him.

“What do you want?” Nami shouts, gripping the prow’s railing as she leans over the side. Zoro scans the treeline for any sign of backup, but the woods are quiet—just like the rest of the cove around them.

Robin ignores the question. Instead, she practically purrs, “Ah, our dear Miss Navigator—how quiet the waters have been without you.”

It’s a power play even as she looks the picture of innocence—and they both nearly flinch, because that means Robin (and perhaps Crocodile, too) knows who’s really running the smuggling routes. Not Arlong, which—Zoro doesn’t entirely have time to consider the implications of, but he fully realizes isn’t great.

Again, Nami calls, “How did you find us?”

And again, instead of answering, Robin redirects. “I’ve come to relay the message that hiding makes you look entirely guilty,” she says, shrugging demurely, casually. “Far more so than going about your business as usual. If you’ll allow me aboard, I will explain.”

Zoro frowns and exchanges a look with Nami, who shakes her head ever-so-slightly. A trap, then. Definitely a trap.

Even so, Robin waits patiently, standing still but unbothered along the shoreline with both hands in the air. As Zoro watches, Nami gauges the distance to the wheelhouse—and he searches the trees. Absolutely nothing.

(There’s a ripple in the water, dark rings—then stillness. Silence.)

Zoro is the one to break the standoff. After too many moments, Zoro glares and levels Kitetsu at Robin across the water. Even if they run, they’ll be running blind. They need to know. And even though he doesn’t trust her she has come alone. As far as he can tell, at least.

“Fine,” he growls, “but if you try anything, I’ll gut you.”

Robin blinks at him, an unreadable—almost amused—expression on her face, but it’s gone so quickly Zoro’s half-convinced he’s imagined it. Then, she nods. “Of course,” she calls back, “I mean you no harm.”

Zoro finds the statement hard to believe.

And yet, there’s no ambush waiting for him when he retrieves her in the dinghy, and she sits—prim and quiet—until she steps up onto the deck of Nami’s boat with no hostility whatsoever and speaks.

The tale she weaves is as disconcerting as it is baffling.

“There were no survivors?” Nami repeats, incredulous, as Robin tilts her head—listening. Assessing.

Again, Zoro is reminded of a snake as he thinks of the gunshots following in their wake, echoing across the water. The black blurs on the docks. The shouting, the yelling. No survivors—impossible. Either a lie or a message—

“Technically, yes, there were,” she replies. “However, it does not seem any lived long after my best guess at your time of departure.” Her tone is blasé, and Zoro narrows his eyes.

“And who do we have to thank for that?” he asks, but Robin just looks at him, expression a mask—as always.

“Who can say,” she shrugs again.

Nami shakes her head, sitting heavily on one of the beach chairs. “What about the bullets?” she glances at Zoro, then—and at his swords. “Blade wounds, at least, have got to be identifiable.”

Robin just hums, unbothered, like what she’s telling them makes any sense at all. “When Kaido himself arrived to…” she pauses, an over-exaggerated thoughtfulness in her tone, “collect his prize—”

(She knows, then. Clearly. Somehow. Not about them, but about them. Zoro and Nami exchange a look, and there’s a tense coiling in his gut at the thought of her—and, by extension, Crocodile—getting their hands on the creatures. On the little one. They’d be no better than Jack, he thinks.)

“—every single body was mutilated beyond identification.”

Inexplicably, he thinks of the sea god’s razorblade teeth and the shreds of Jack on the concrete—but no, he’d thrown it back into the water. And it should have escaped—right?

When neither of them respond, Robin continues again. “Fundamentally,” she splays her fingers through the air, gesturing vaguely at both of them, “there’s nothing connecting either of you to the incident, so long as no one knows you were there in the first place.”

And there it is.

Zoro scowls as he hears Nami huff through her nose.

“Which you do,” Zoro says, “Obviously.” And Robin only smiles demurely.

“Which I do,” she replies.

It’s a clear threat, and yet—there’s something in her tone that tells Zoro she’s not issuing a challenge. Just informing them, maybe. For one strange, swirling moment, Zoro feels very small, suddenly keenly aware that he is just one piece in the much larger game of all this. Mihawk, Crocodile, Buggy—Kaido and Jack—Arlong. Robin herself. And Akainu, too—whose bullshit is largely responsible for tangling the web in the first place.

Into the silence that follows, Robin just smiles.

- - -

As it turns out, she is correct—which Zoro should not be entirely surprised by, he thinks. And in the immediate aftermath of the incident, two things happen.

Nami (with Chopper yelling in the background, too) forces Zoro to bow out of fights until his injury fully heals, no matter how vehemently he protests.

And with the loss of an officer and his men, Kaido—already paranoid—retreats into his foxhole and hunkers down. Deals dry up almost immediately, forcing Nami to look elsewhere for income and product, at least in the short term. Big Mom and the Germa family pick up the bulk of their exchanges for the month of May, inadvertently solving the problem of Kaido’s own inconsistency, but still—it’s not entirely enough to cover her quotas and her fees. Not without supplementary cash from the club.

As a result, Nami doubles her time on the water hauling nets—and Zoro joins her, because there is a kind of safety in numbers, even if the threat of retaliation from either end recedes with each passing day.

(And so that he has something to do, too, because he will not go to Crocodile and ask; he will not. And he fears, somehow, that they will reappear the moment he stays away from the ocean too long and he’ll miss it.)

Mihawk leaves him well-enough alone, and Crocodile doesn’t send someone to press him about the job he still hasn’t accepted—and for a few hazy, surreal weeks Zoro feels almost normal, like he’s just a fisherman in a crew of two. Like he’s nobody.

It’s exhilarating but terrible, too, because for the first time in years he has the space to really think about the broader strokes of his life—if any of this will ever end. And yet—if the weeks and months and years stretched out before him held something other than fighting and killing, running and smuggling, what would they contain? Not hauling nets, surely.

(He dreams of something else, something bigger. The dream of a child, too wide and grand for the real world but there all the same. And he thinks of someone gone but not forgotten, now just a tree in the yard, and wonders what she would say if she could see him now.)

Even though their buyer is different, the routine is the same—although Big Mom’s family stays as cautious as Kaido, Germa insists they meet in the open ocean rather than the outskirts of their own territory. It’s truly neutral ground—and a power play, too, even as whispers of sea monsters reach a fever pitch on land.

Because through the summer, that is the biggest change—the fervor.

The warehouse district massacre (because to the public, to the average fisherman it is a massacre when details finally disseminate) ignites a kind of fire in the local population. Within days of their return to the marina, Zoro and Nami watch group after group set out for the open sea in search of the creatures, huge swathes of nonbelievers now utterly convinced. Hunting parties, organized and militant like there’s a wild animal on the loose—which, Zoro supposes, there is.

More than once, they’re approached with offers to join for a cut of the bounty. They’re well known enough, and Zoro’s own reputation precedes him as a fighter among the locals more than anything else.

They refuse each one.

Akainu visits the marina, too—all pomp and circumstance and acrid cigar smoke, shouting from a makeshift podium outside the Arlong Park harbor office while his group of black-suited lackeys stand stoic at his side. He makes threats and promises in equal measure, a two-faced advocate for the working man’s safety and the health of their children as he conjures images of terrifying beasts lurking just below the surface, smashing their ships and poisoning their waters.

He shouldn’t even be there, not really—both because it’s a shitthole well below his station and because it’s not entirely a secret what Arlong Park really is, even (especially) among the rich and powerful. It’s half the reason their yachts are kept well enough away in Mariejois—to create the illusion of safety even when they’re all thick with the same heavy scent of blood and violence.

Nami and Zoro watch from the back of the crowd as Akainu spits and seethes, the blistered burn scars on his face and neck stark in the late summer sun—half the fishermen around them cheering even as others frown, shake their heads, mutter to themselves.

One day, the shrines (handmade and wooden, carved with love in a way the shrines in Mariejois are not) are in shards on the ground, smashed in the night—the next, they’re rebuilt, stronger with double the offerings as an apology for the destruction. One day, the nets on a hunting boat turn up in shreds—the next, they’re new and lined with barbs and razorwire, traps for torture more than death.

The divide grows.

Zoro and Nami survey the chaos from a distance, neither entirely willing to involve themselves lest they reveal just a little too much—and out of a strange sense of conflicted conscience, too. Zoro finds the whole thing especially disquieting. For all intents and purposes, a hunt should be exciting, the perfect remedy for his… whatever this is. Apathy. Malaise. Boredom.

And yet, he can’t help but think of the sea monster—think of its dark eyes, its shifting red-and-black scales, its grin. How it felt to hold the meat of its tail in his hands as it let him drag it across the concrete. Because he understands that, now—now that they know more about the damage the creatures caused in the aftermath of Zoro and Nami’s own escape. The monster had trusted him enough to get it—and the little one, too—to safety, when it could have just as easily killed them both instead.

He can’t bring himself to feel afraid of it, even after witnessing firsthand the creature’s power and brutality. In that moment, it had seemed so painfully human—and something else, too. Something more.

He doesn’t believe in the gods, but maybe—maybe, he thinks, he could believe in that.

So Zoro doesn’t want to hunt it. Not really.

He just desperately, desperately wants to see it again.

So without acknowledging it to himself—or to Nami, either—Zoro stays long after he’s healed and back in the ring, and they continue to fish.

With Nami’s pots still destroyed and shoved aside in the hold for some indeterminate later date, half of their days are spent hauling nets the old-fashioned way. Ostensibly, they’re stockpiling cash and resources—padding their pockets with legitimate income as hurricane season hits full-swing.

And yet, as he baits their nets with stranger and stranger things (raw whole-cuts of meat, an endless parade of half-prepared food, thirty bags of penny-candy opened and tossed), she says nothing—so he wonders if she wants to see them again, too.

Still, though—they always surface empty. Or empty of monsters, anyway. And Zoro begins, finally, to wonder if he’s actually, physically losing his mind.

(But sometimes, when they’re out on the water and the sea is quiet, their boat will rock apropos of nothing—and Zoro will swear, swear he sees a flash of red through the waves.)

---

Interlude I: Twilight; 200-1000

“He’ll be pissed if you screw up the plan,” Sabo says by way of greeting as he swims up from behind, tone largely unbothered despite the gravity of his statement. Luffy scowls—not at the thought of angering his father but at the implication he should care—and just keeps swimming forward, hauling his catch (a mammoth whale carcass fifteen times the size of them both) by the tail.

They’re just at the edge of where sunlight no longer touches below the surface, the world around them an empty expanse of darkness below, teal blue above—the seafloor a distant thing out here, so far from the continental shelf. It’s a wonder Sabo has even found him so far from base, but his brother has always had a kind of seventh-sense for finding trouble. And Luffy’s well aware that he is trouble.

(It’s at least halfway intentional, after all.)

A pair of mako sharks swarm in the distance, rocketing toward his prize—and Luffy just scowls at them too as Sabo eyes the whale, expression more intrigued than scolding.

“I’ve caught bigger, you know,” he says before Luffy—preoccupied with watching the wave of competition—can respond.

At the challenge, Luffy sticks his tongue out, attention diverted again. “No you haven’t,” he shoots back. “And I’m not going to screw up his plan—even though it sucks, anyway.”

Sabo waves a lazy hand, blue scales shimmering even in the dim light, pulling it in and reflecting it back. He’s built for the shallows the same way Luffy is built for the deep—and yet, they are brothers in every way that matters.

“I have caught bigger. You were just little at the time,” he says, nodding his head matter-of-fact, almost grinning, mostly teasing.

“No way,” Luffy gripes, “When I was little, you were little, too,” just as the makos zip into range—brave enough to try because they’re sharks and sharks are stupid, always assholes who think they’re the toughest in the sea—jaws already gaping wide—and Luffy glares. “This is mine,” he hisses, and instantly the makos recoil like they’ve been struck, shaking their heads and grinding their teeth as they shrink back. After a moment’s flailing, they turn and flee, two specks retreating into the unobscured distance.

When he looks back, Sabo is just watching him with one eyebrow raised, and Luffy sticks his tongue out again.

In response, Sabo rolls his eyes and swims ahead, then turns back, circling a little as he gathers his words, maybe. After a moment, he says, “Look, I’m just saying people are concerned. The orange one? Fine. I’ve seen her out on the water and she’s never done anything terrible. But the green one? He feels wrong. You guessed right about his character and I’m not surprised—really, I’m not; I’m on your side—but you can’t get attached.”

He sighs out through his gills, bubbles bursting up in a crest that ruffles his blond hair as Luffy passes with the whale—ignoring him. Not listening (or pretending not to listen) because he already disagrees.

Again, Sabo swims up beside him as he continues, tone sobering just a fraction. “You know the plan. You know what’s happening. You don’t get to pick and choose.”

And that has Luffy turning to face his brother, his own kind of serious—likely Sabo’s intention in the first place.

“Yes, I do,” Luffy says, matter-of-fact. “I can do whatever I want.”

And there’s a pause, then, as Sabo watches him—and Luffy just swims ahead, unfazed. Then Sabo shakes his head and sighs a second time. “You’re so fucking stubborn,” he says. “They’re just humans. This is what they do—they want something, so they’re bribing you.”

“Who cares?” Luffy replies, frowning. “That’s not any different from what anyone else does.”

“Yes, it is—”

“No, it’s not.”

Frowning, Sabo just shrugs, palms out, and turns to swim on his back facing Luffy. “Fine, then. I’m not going to stop you,” he says, as though he ever would. And like he ever could, since Luffy would find a way around him anyway. “I’m not going to stop Dragon, though, either. He’s going to keep going after the boats and it’s going to hurt when they die. When he dies.”

In response, Luffy tilts his head. “He won’t,” he replies, wondering for a moment if Sabo is a moron—but no, he’s one of the smartest people Luffy knows. He’s just stubborn too, maybe. “He’s mine.”

That makes Sabo pause, then, and Luffy watches the words turn in his head until he gets it. And his brother blinks—then snorts. “Okay,” Sabo concedes, rolling his eyes. “Okay, sure. Pick a human. God—brothers and bad taste, but at least Deuce was one of us.”

“Mean,” Luffy pouts in response, vaguely offended because Sabo had been there on the docks. He can’t fathom how anyone could see him without thinking—

Well, Koala is Koala, Luffy supposes, so maybe Sabo doesn’t get it.

Sabo just laughs, then he swims right up next to Luffy and grabs the other side of the whale’s tail fin, a peace offering. The easy quiet doesn’t last long, though—because they are brothers—and after a beat (carefully calculated for maximum impact, probably, if the mischievous glint in his eye is any indication) he says, “But have you even spoken to him?”

And Luffy stops—drawing them both up to a halt, whale and all—and blinks.

“Oh.”

---

Part III

By June, his shoulder has mostly healed—and their lives have settled into a new kind of normal. Zoro resumes a full regimen of training as soon as (before, really) Chopper gives him the all-clear, and at the cusp of summer he’s back in the ring on a sporadic rotation.

If anything, his absence only drives demand higher, compensating (almost) for his time away. It’s not long, but it’s enough to stir up an unsettling frenzy at the club when he does return—everyone clamoring to bet twice, thrice their usual—an inordinate amount of money falling to the underdog from anyone unfamiliar enough to think he’d actually lose even with a gunshot wound. For weeks, they walk away from the club with plenty of cash in-hand.

Still, though, Zoro doesn’t forget. He can’t.

So the cycle continues—fishing in the day, fighting and smuggling at night.

And then one evening, while he’s sprawled out in the fading sun thinking, Nami steps on deck with a paper bag in one hand and a wooden caddy of six smudged beer bottles in the other—and says, without preamble, “We don’t need the money, you know.”

He’s half-dangled over the side of the boat, legs under the rail and ankle-deep in the ocean, enjoying the contrast of cold-warm against his skin—and the feel of the water, too.

(He can’t stand it, now—being away from the sea. Knowing it’s there, somewhere out in the depths or the shallows or anywhere. In some small part of his mind he refuses to acknowledge, he feels like touching the ocean is akin touching it, too, a tenuous connection across leagues even if only to himself.)

At her statement, he blinks against the sunset and props himself up on his elbows.

“What?”

Nami sighs, crosses the deck, and sets the caddy of beer on his chest—then sits cross-legged next to him and sighs again.

“You don’t have to drive yourself crazy trying to catch it,” she says, and while she pulls out paper-wrapped folds of their dinner (she’s been to that restaurant again, he sees—the fancy one, with the guy who keeps sending her off with real food) he sits straighter, setting aside the caddy and already halfway to opening their drinks on the edge of the railing.

She continues, “We don’t need the reward money. We’re doing fine on our own.”

He frowns, and isn’t entirely sure how to respond, because this is Nami. He’s struck, then, by the weight of what she’s saying. Nami, turning down the possibility of enough money to buy her family out of Arlong’s control.

She wants to let them go.

Eventually, he settles for a grunted, “I know,” as noncommittal as possible as he shrugs, takes a swig of his beer. She eyes him skeptically, but doesn’t press. He hands her an opened bottle, trading for a wrapped sandwich, he sighs, too—and wonders if she’s right.

- - -

It’s hours later, long after dark, when Zoro breaks the glass.

They’re anchored out at the mouth of the cove, returned from a run into open water, and he’s just climbing up from the galley with their dented flask and another wrapped sandwich (soggy, now) in hand when it happens. Out of habit, maybe, they have continued to toast each successful exchange they survive unscathed and he’s not quite sober yet. But he’s approaching it against his will, perhaps.

As a result, he doesn’t see the empty bottle until it’s too late and he’s already kicked it halfway across the deck, where it skitters too-loud in the silent cove before cracking into half a dozen pieces against the side of the wheelhouse. Zoro winces, freezes—but he doesn’t hear any sign of Nami waking. She’s still tucked down below, half-drunk herself and dead asleep, oblivious to the world.

With a sigh, he crosses the deck—stumbling a little as he picks his way through the dark—but when he bends down to retrieve the glass he hisses as a razor-sharp shard slices deep into his palm. The pain has him reeling back, and without thinking he drops the bag of food—and the sandwich explodes across the deck in a shower of bread and meat and vegetables.

For a moment, Zoro just stares bleary-eyed down at the mess, vaguely unreal in the hazy half-moon glow, hand bleeding onto it all, and then he curses—and punts a glob of lovingly-shredded roast chicken the rest of the way into the sea.

The anemic splash! it makes as it hits the water feels unsatisfying.

Loathe as he is to admit it (because he’s met the guy who cooks it a few times now and god—what a piece of work), the food is good. It deserved better, he thinks—then wonders if he’s more intoxicated than he realizes, giving a sandwich thoughts and feelings.

He takes a swig from his flask and then, with a sigh, crouches down to start cleaning up the mess. He separates out the glass from the food, but the leftovers themselves are a lost cause. Which sucks, because he’ll have to sleep on a churning stomach or risk waking Nami in the search for more—both of which would (will, guaranteed) actively worsen the hangover he can already feel creeping up the back of his skull.

Without thinking—almost a habit, at this point, after so many weeks of baiting the ocean—he dumps the whole mess of food into the sea.

He watches it float there, and within seconds, the surface of the water is frenzied—just like every other time he’s tried.

He wonders if it’s pointless. He’s baiting fish and getting them, and he knows (rationally) he’s not going to make any more progress trying to catch a fucking mermaid than a hundred years’ worth of dedicated fishermen. Fuck, since the last month’s worth of dedicated fishermen.

And he wonders, too, if he should start taking Nami’s words to heart. If he should stop. If he’s well on his way to contracting the same disease that has Akainu in its grips—the obsession.

With another sigh, he drinks again and turns back to deal with the glass—and freezes.

Because suddenly, suddenly the fish are gone.

The food is still floating there, half-eaten, but the frenzy has almost completely scattered. Zoro feels his whole body go cold—and, with a start, he registers how quiet everything has gotten (the creatures on land silent, the splashing fish gone) even for midnight in the isolated cove—

—just as two bright eyes blink back at him from the darkness.

He nearly drops his flask, only remembering the broken glass in time to avoid it as he scrambles backwards—and watches in disbelief as a hand reaches up to grab the chicken bones, then disappears again, slipping below the surface with a soft ripple.

Zoro crouches, frozen, watching the rings fade away—and only realizes he’s holding his breath when he starts to feel lightheaded—

Then, just as he’s starting to believe he’s imagined the whole thing, spindly fingers reach up to grab the edge of the deck from the ocean—and a mop of black hair pops up to stare at him from over the side of the hull.

Zoro blinks.

The creature (is it the creature? Because it’s different, more human) blinks back.

Then it opens its mouth, teeth sharp but not nearly lethal enough to rip a man’s leg clean off anymore, and says, “You get hurt a lot. Did you know that?” as it tilts its head to the side—

And Zoro wonders just how safe the moonshine they’ve been drinking is if he’s fucking. Hallucinating.

But—he can feel the hard press of the deck beneath his bare feet, the salty sting of the fresh slice across his hand, the night breeze across his face. He stares at the creature—the sea god—watching him wide-eyed and innocent over the edge of the boat like it’s not in the open water.

On the docks, it had been monstrous, with razor fangs and claws—black scales along its face and arms. Now, though, it just looks… normal—or something close to it, anyway. Zoro knows, though, that this is the same creature. Because its—his gaze is the same. Exactly the same.

After a beat of silence, Zoro, utterly dumbfounded, replies, “I hadn’t noticed.”

The creature snorts, “You’re a little stupid, aren’t you?” and Zoro marvels at the way it’s nothing like the voice that’s been replaying in Zoro’s head for weeks—the rough, rumbling growls. Instead, he sounds as though he can’t be much older than Zoro himself. Younger, even.

And then Zoro blinks again, brain catching up—because what the fuck? Unbelievable. Rude, even.

“No,” Zoro replies, scowling. “I’m drunk.” The creature makes a face at that, almost amused—and before Zoro can process the words coming out of his own mouth he adds, “You’re just—you’re just a guy.”

And he wants to bash his head against the wall—even as he can feel a flare of heat burst across his face. Because sure, absolutely—he’s come face to face with a god of the sea and the first thing he does is call the man boring.

He’d consider throwing himself in the ocean for good measure, but that might actually make things worse.

And yet, the sea monster just throws his head back and laughs, showing all of his sharp teeth, and the sound is like a jolt of lightning right to Zoro’s chest.

Without thinking, Zoro sits down smack in the middle of the deck, exactly where he’s standing—because if he doesn’t get off his feet he thinks he might just collapse in a heap then and there—and in doing so, he presses his hand right on the pile of broken glass.

“Fuck!” he curses, startling himself more than anything—but the pain clears his head a little. When he lifts his hand for a better look, he sees that he’s opened the cut on his palm even wider and it’s bleeding freely, rivulets of red that muddle in the darkness.

There’s a splash, and Zoro looks up to see that the sea monster has disappeared—and he curses a second (third? fourth?) time, because if he’s blown his one chance—

Then the creature’s head pops over the edge of the hull again—and this time the rest of his body comes, too, as he hauls himself up over the side and then shimmies onto the deck. He’s carrying something in his mouth like a dog—maybe because both of his hands are occupied getting his own bulk up out of the water.

For the second time, Zoro is struck by just how huge he is—bigger than any fish he’s ever encountered, not that he is a fish, really. He’s human to the waist, with the torso of a fully-grown man who would be smaller than Zoro, maybe, if not for the tail extending beyond the length of proportional legs. It’s beautifully iridescent, with thick, wet scales a shade of red that looks like blood in the swirling moonlight—tipped at the end with spiny fins at once delicate and lethal. The same semi-translucent fins extend down each arm, and at his neck Zoro sees the slits of what might be gills, too.

But the rest of him—the rest of him looks human, with only a smattering of scales catching the light where his tail tapers into a muscular waist, then to a bare, scarred chest—rough and bubbled and gouged, like he’s been burned. His face, too, is round and wide-eyed, with a scar under one eye and a mop of black hair plastered to his forehead with seawater.

Zoro sits, frozen, bleeding hand still held aloft as the man-fish-god hauls himself forward then flops his tail to the side, dragging it across the deck until he’s practically sitting up with both arms free. Then, he spits the green thing out into his own left hand and grabs Zoro’s injured palm with the other.

And he fucking. Licks it.

Immediately, Zoro recoils, jerking his hand back as he lets out a strangled kind of yelp that he’s not entirely sure he’s ever made before, but the creature doesn’t let go—just frowns at him, pulls his hand with enough force to move Zoro’s entire body, and drags the flat of his tongue across Zoro’s palm. Again.

It feels like wet sandpaper.

“Fuck! Fucking—fuck!” Zoro shouts, garbled on his own surprise, and the creature freezes mid-lick as he blinks up at Zoro with a look of genuine confusion on his face.

“Wha—?” he asks, the word cut off as he speaks around his own tongue.

Zoro stares at him, flabbergasted. “What are you doing?”

The creature snorts, lifts his head, and responds, “Helping, dumbass,” so matter-of-factly Zoro wonders if he is hallucinating.

Then, before Zoro can respond, he takes the wad of green something in his other hand and presses it directly into the cut on Zoro’s palm. It stings, but this time Zoro doesn’t wince—doesn’t do anything, really, because he’s far more familiar with pain than whatever that was.

The licking.

The creature frowns at him, but Zoro just parrots, “Helping?” as he stares down at his own palm held in the monster’s soft, almost-human hands.

The creature rolls his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, “I brought it to thank you for all the food and everything else, because Sabo says that’s what you do, and it reminded me of your hair, and also I know you were hurt, and you were healing so slow, but now you’re bleeding again—” he raises his eyebrows at Zoro, then, “—so I guess you are just stupid.”

A beat of silence passes as Zoro’s brain struggles to catch up, still muddled with alcohol and awe, but all he can think to say is—

“What.”

The creature leans forward, studying him. “Thank you,” he says, slow and deliberate—almost polite, but teasing, too. “Especially for the food.”

“But I was trying to catch you,” Zoro replies, then he swallows. “At least at first.”

The creature giggles again.

“That’s what Sabo said,” he says, amused, as he presses the pads of his thumbs gentle-but-firm into the wet moss (because it is moss) in Zoro’s hand and doesn’t let go. “But I’m still counting it.” With one last shrug, he shoves Zoro’s hand back and adds, “That’s supposed to stop the bleeding,” without any further explanation. “So thanks!”

Then he turns back to the rail, smiling but already moving on, and Zoro is suddenly hit with the strangest kind of certainty that this is it—if the creature leaves now, he’ll probably never see him again.

Zoro thinks of the look they’d exchanged on the docks, that one moment suspended in time between them, and can’t fathom watching him go. So he does the first thing that comes to mind and reaches out, almost grasping at his wrist, and says, “Wait—wait—” and the man-fish-god stops—turns and looks at him with an indecipherable expression when Zoro doesn’t continue.

“Yeah?”

Zoro clears his throat. “Is Sabo the—” he swallows, “—the little one?”

And the creature relaxes, then grins at him again, and Zoro feels like he’s just stepped out of the ring a victor.

“No—that’s Tama,” he practically chirps, lighting up. “Sabo’s my brother! You met him, too.”

Zoro nods, absently pressing the glob of moss into his wound, just to have something to do with his hands. (And to mimic the feel, maybe, of the creature’s fingers on his—only seconds gone but missing all the same.)

He doesn’t feel drunk anymore, not really—just kind of unmoored.

“The blue one,” he says, half a question. The creature nods, and Zoro continues, “How’s Tama, then?” before he can jam his foot in his mouth again.

The creature leans forward, back in his space. “She says thanks!” he beams, “And thanks for the food, too—it’s hard to find safe stuff for her ‘cause of the water—” then he gestures down at Zoro’s hands, the moss, expression slipping to something half-amused, half-something else, “—but that’s from me. Just me.”

“Ah,” Zoro blinks at him again. “Well. Thanks—” then he frowns. “The water?”

The creature’s face really does falter, then, and Zoro swears he sees a crack of anger—before it’s gone in a flash. “The water’s messed up. It’s from the people on the docks,” he says, glancing back out to sea. “They’re poisoning the fish. And the offerings, too.”

Something starts to dawn on Zoro, then—slowly. “That’s how they got her.”

The sea god nods, expression still unreadable. Zoro thinks back to Robin’s warning in the cove so many weeks ago—thinks of why he’s walking around now, untouched.

“You killed them,” Zoro grunts. It’s not a question.

The creature cuts his sharp gaze back to Zoro and he blinks, a fraction of a second, before he nods again. “They were gonna come for you, too, ‘cause you helped us,” he says, blunt and unremorseful. “I know you weren’t friends or anything.”

Zoro snorts. “Yeah, not friends.” Understatement of the century, perhaps.

But he’s still watching Zoro. Assessing. “That doesn’t bother you,” he says, and it’s matter of fact, too—also not a question. “Us killing them.”

And Zoro hears the bark of laughter bubble out of his throat before he can help it.

“Nah—” he shakes his head, feeling just to the left of hysterical. “I’d be a hypocrite if it did.”

The creature tilts his head to the side, and then—suddenly—he’s grinning, too. And none of it makes sense, none of it at all, and that makes Zoro chuckle again.

Then, without warning, the sea god leans even further into Zoro’s space, pressing his face right up to Zoro’s own. He smells like the sea incarnate—fish and rot and sour and salt, a thousand dead things and a thousand live things, too. The beating heart of the world. Home.

And under the stars he beams and says, “Be mine, Zoro!”

His friend?

And Zoro blinks at him, dumbfounded, and says, “Ah, okay,” without a beat of hesitation (because what else can he say?) and the creature throws his head back and laughs.

It feels like something clicking into place.

Strangely, unconsciously, Zoro wants to reach out and touch him, to feel his soft skin on his own again—but he doesn’t—he can’t, because the creature is already turning back to the water. Seconds later, there’s a splash! as something (someone) else pokes his head over the side of the boat.

It’s the blond one, and now that he’s closer Zoro can see that one of his eyes is a milky, clouded white—and there’s another massive, rippling burn scar down the side of his face. Zoro doesn’t jump at his appearance, because he’s long past the point of surprise—but a small part of his brain gawks all the same.

The second creature eyes Zoro with an outwardly skeptical expression before turning to the other and raising his eyebrows.

“You found him?” he asks, tilting his head to one side a little—and Zoro feels vaguely unsettled. Somehow, despite his ostensibly softer appearance, he seems far more predatory than the one still pressed nearby. The way he looks now, at least.

The red one just grins. “Hi, Sabo!” he says, either not noticing or entirely ignoring the threatening lilt to his gaze. “This is Zoro!”

“Sure is,” the blond one (Sabo) nods, then—almost amused—says, “Good, because Koala is—”

Suddenly, a third monster appears—a redhead that seems horrifyingly familiar as she surfaces, already midway to glaring, taking stock of the entire situation in seconds.

“What the hell are you doing?” she hisses, “Both of you! And you—” then turns her scowl on Zoro, too, (and Zoro nearly does flinch this time, by muscle memory alone, because even though he has no idea what’s happening his brain still produces the image of an angry Nami). “I should kill you,” she says, and Zoro believes she’d at least try.

Neither the sea god nor Sabo look particularly concerned for his safety, though, as the sea god pouts, “But, Koala, he’s—!”

Just as the redhead (Koala?) reaches up to yank at Sabo’s hair and he yelps, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say.

“You,” Koala snaps, “were supposed to keep him in line!”

“I was unsupervised!” Sabo whines back, sounding nearly identical to his brother—and Zoro wonders if this is what having a stroke feels like. Gone is the glare, the unspoken threat of violence, and in its place is a whiny indignation that might set Zoro laughing again if the situation weren’t so… so bizarre.

“Well I’m supervising now.” Koala yanks Sabo’s hair again, and the red creature snickers—even as she snaps, “Get back here,” in his direction, too.

Unfazed, he turns to Zoro and waves a little, still grinning. “Bye, Zoro!” He practically chirps—and then he’s pivoting again, hauling himself across the deck with more power than grace.

Satisfied, Koala releases Sabo, and the two of them disappear back into the water.

Zoro blinks—

And then suddenly he’s scrambling to his feet, nearly forgetting about the broken glass in his haste to stand.

Just as the creature tips over the edge of the boat, he calls, half-frantic, “Wait—” and he thinks he’s missed his chance—but the sea god grips the side and hangs there, looking at him, head tilted to the side. Waiting. And Zoro wracks his brain, thinking back to the loading docks and everything he’d seen and heard, because Sabo, Koala, and—

“You’re Luffy,” he says.

The creature (Luffy?) lights up like the fucking sun, grinning wide and happy and wonderful, and he laughs, “Monkey D. Luffy!”

Then, before Zoro can respond, can even wonder how the hell he’d known Zoro’s name, too, Luffy lets go—and Zoro hears the splash! as his body hits the sea.

By the time his brain catches up, all three of them have vanished.

- - -

Surprisingly—or unsurprisingly, really, because she’d been there and she’s Nami—Nami accepts the truth of it when she finds him still sitting on deck, bleeding hand long-clotted, head reeling against the morning sun.

(Mostly, anyway.)

“Monkey, though? You’re sure that’s what he said?” she laughs, and Zoro can only shrug, dazed even through his hangover. She’s had the benefit of sleep—and a lack of mermaids—so she’s faring better than he is. For now, at least.

“It’s just a word,” he grumbles back, and Nami just snorts again, unfazed.

They’re side-by-side, wedged up against the wheelhouse and gazing out into the mouth of the cove, toward the open ocean. Zoro’s hand has been bandaged, and for once they’re nursing shitty coffee instead of shitty booze, greeting the day with the sun as it rises over the horizon and bathes the sky a deep, bloody red. Nami watches the thick blanket of clouds roll overhead with rapt attention, a furrow between her brows, even as she bumps her shoulder against his.

“Maybe,” she says. “But still. I’m inclined to believe you for that alone. You’re not that creative even when you’re wasted.” Zoro flips her his middle finger and she just shakes her head, deeply amused. “Luffy, then—that’s his name.”

“Luffy.” Zoro rolls the word around in his mouth, savoring the feel of it like fine rum. In the past however-long he’s been staring out at the sea, he still hasn’t entirely decided whether or not he should take up prayer—and how much of that thought is really a joke.

There must be something in his tone, though, because Nami eyes him, suddenly quieting. “He said Kaido’s men were poisoning the water,” she says, and Zoro blinks—then scowls.

(He thinks of the little girl, Tama—red-faced and bleeding, caught in a net simply because she’d wanted something to eat. A child poisoned for money. Now that he knows the whole truth of it, it seems even worse, somehow. Nami’s knuckles are white as she grips her own upper arms, and he wonders if she’s thinking of her, too.)

After a moment, he nods and says, “I don’t know if it’s intentional or just the run-off from whatever they’re doing over there, though—but at some point they started fucking with the shrines, too.”

“So they are sea gods, then? If they take the offerings,” Nami hums, frowning. “Do you think that means all of it’s real? Like the one Akainu’s trying to catch—”

“Who knows,” Zoro grouses. He sips his lukewarm coffee and makes a face—then sips again anyway.

“Very helpful—thanks,” Nami replies, rolling her eyes. Then she sighs. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. They’re real, which has to count for something.”

Zoro looks down at the cotton gauze wrapped around his hand and stays quiet. The moss is long gone—shriveled up and lost when they’d finally rallied enough to clean the mess of broken glass. His only proof, now, is the cut itself (which will heal) and the phantom ache from an old bullet wound (which will heal, too).

When he doesn’t say anything, Nami leans her head on his shoulder and groans, “You have got to lighten up. Eventually you’re going to have to accept the existential crisis for what it is and move on.”

Zoro snorts, then, and tilts his head back against the wheelhouse, staring up at the sky. “It’s not a crisis.”

“It’s absolutely a crisis.”

“I don’t have those.”

Nami barks out a laugh—unexpectedly loud in his ear—and Zoro almost winces as Nami startles herself with the sound of her own voice. (Maybe she is hungover, and he tries not to take satisfaction in it. Misery and company and all of that.)

“Eugh,” she moans, then drinks from her own tin mug. “You do, but it’s about saturation. Your whole life is one big crisis—mine too—so we don’t notice when it’s happening. Trust me. It’s like the eye of a hurricane.”

Zoro eyes her in the corner of his vision, but doesn’t move—can’t, because she’s still squished up against his side. “The what?”

“You know—the calm in the middle of a giant storm. It’s the most dangerous place to be because the weather tricks you into thinking everything’s fine.”

He blinks at her stupidly—then, after another beat of silence, he asks (strangled, because they’re skirting dangerously close to a heart-to-heart), “Are you in a crisis?”

“Nope,” she replies, light and amused and something else, too. “I don’t have those, either.”

- - -

The next day, it’s barely noon when one of the maintenance boys—Vegetable Two—sprints full-tilt down the marina docks (sweaty and gasping, halfway to throwing up) with a message from Nami demanding Zoro pick her up in town.

When Zoro pulls up outside the restaurant (he finds it largely without incident—they’ve been so many times now), she’s standing outside with two bags of paper-wrapped bundles too cumbersome to carry back on her own. Not that it’s much easier on Zoro’s motorcycle, really—which he reminds her—but she just tells him to figure it out.

The bags are filled to the brim with marrow bones, salted meat, and sausage of all things. Nami offers no explanation. Zoro does not need one. They fill the ice box to the edge and raise anchor.

It goes into the ocean, not in the nets but dumped along the way, and this becomes a part of their routine, too.

(And, sometimes, they will find strange things on deck at the break of dawn. Massive deep-sea shells the size of a grown man’s hand. Oxidized trinkets from lands far away, green and crusted with exposure to the ocean. Strips of kelp woven into patterns with glass and shells, dried stiff. And rocks covered in moss, too—so, so much bright green moss.)

(They don’t mention it, because really. Genuinely. They are not having a crisis.)

- - -

He’s halfway through hauling in the net when Nami screams, short and quick, and he nearly lets go of the winch in surprise. Zoro’s first instinct is to reach for his swords, but they’re halfway across the deck—back in the wheelhouse with the rest of their weapons—and when he turns, the spool of rope spins out just a fraction before he catches it again. He barely notices, though, because Nami has both hands pressed against her own mouth in surprise as she stares wide-eyed at the ropes suspended in the air—

“Zoro! Don’t drop me!”

—and the half-man currently lounging inside, surrounded by the fat silver amberjack of their catch. Or what’s left of it, anyway—because he’s yelling around the half-eaten something in his mouth and his arms are full of fish. Their fish.

“Luffy!” Zoro shouts back, a crack of surprised joy in his voice that sends an embarrassed heat rushing up the back of his neck.

Luffy grins back, wide and toothy, around a fish tail—and Zoro fumbles the winch a second time as the net drops another inch. (Luffy lets out a squawk of indignation.)

Oblivious, Nami gasps, “Luffy?” then whips her head between them as Zoro ties off the rope. “Luffy? But he’s—” then she frowns, eyes narrowing, “Are you eating—what the fuck!”

Luffy blinks at her, utterly flummoxed, and Zoro can’t help it—he lets out an involuntary bark of laughter, rough and loud and surprised. He hears Luffy giggle, too, but by the time Zoro turns Luffy’s already smothered it into some semblance of (unconvincing) remorse.

“Sorry, Nami—” Luffy whines, almost casual, and a breeze hits the boat just enough to rock the net in a lazy swing. Zoro is struck, suddenly, by the thought that he’s made an accidental mermaid hammock—and he laughs again.

Barely glancing his way, Nami throws her hands up in disbelief. “How do you even know my—my fish! That’s money! We gave you food!” And Zoro wonders if she’s really processing the monster in their—

“I know,” Luffy pouts, melodramatic more than anything, “but there was more in here and it looked—”

“Those were my fish! My fish!”

“But I was hungry!”

Nami legitimately stomps her foot, then, and shouts, “Well maybe I’ll sell you instead!”

And when Luffy wails mournfully in response, it’s almost impossible to believe that he’s the same wrathful creature from Kaido’s docks.

“You can’t do that,” he says, flailing his arms through the holes in the net and pressing his face against it. He looks genuinely, utterly ridiculous. “I’m a sea god.”

The declaration comes in the tone of a get out of jail free card—unserious and silly—and Zoro wonders if it would feel more weighty to his own ears if he weren’t watching his best friend argue (futilely) with a fish suspended mid-air.

Nami crosses her arms, utterly unmoved. “Oh, sure,” she shoots back. “A great and powerful sea god, definitely not trapped in my net.”

“Hey!” Luffy pouts—and he has the audacity to shove another amberjack in his mouth even as he’s talking. “I want to be here. This was a choice!” he turns his sharp eyes across the deck, then. “Right, Zoro?”

They’re both looking at him, now—and he resists the urge to clear his throat like a moron to stall for time. He’s particularly proud of the eloquent, “Uh,” that comes out of his mouth anyway.

Nami snorts, already turning away. “Frankly, it’s only fair,” she says. “I caught you, so I can do whatever I want.”

Luffy flails again and the net swings a second time, dislodging some of the fish trapped with him. They splash into the ocean just as he shouts, “First of all, my name is Luffy not Franky! And second of all—you wouldn’t, because that would be mean!”

As Luffy says it, one of the sharp fins down his forearm catches on the side of the rope, and Zoro watches the ensuing catastrophe in what feels like slow motion.

Within seconds, a massive tear opens up as the netting gives way—the frayed rope splitting further and further under the combined weight of both Luffy and what’s left of their haul. Nami yelps, rushing forward at the same time Zoro lunges for the rail—and Luffy lets out the most ridiculous noise they’ve ever heard as he careens through the air in a shower of fish and stupidity.

When he hits the water, he resurfaces almost immediately—only to be hit in the face once, twice—three times by fish still half-caught and falling from the shredded net above.

For a moment, the three of them just stare at one another—then Nami erupts, “You ruined it!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose this time!” Luffy calls back, the lower half of his face sinking just below the surface—and he really does look almost apologetic.

Nami makes an incoherent noise—then blinks—and as though realizing what he’s said, Luffy’s eyes go wide.

“This time?” she shrieks, leaning bodily over the railing, “What does tha—” then she herself cuts off with another strangled sound, “My fucking—my crab pots!” and a hysterical kind of laughter bubbles up from the water—just as Luffy ducks under the surface.

Zoro grabs the back of her shirt before she can throw herself overboard to kill him with her own two hands.

- - -

Half an hour later, Zoro is setting up the spare net while Nami directs—when Luffy pokes his head up to peer over the edge of the deck and giggles, “You had a second one! You can’t be mad at me!” like he has a death wish—

And at any other time, Zoro thinks, he would be more impressed at the speed (and violence) with which Nami manages to coerce Luffy into helping them recover what they’ve lost. Instead, though, he’s glued to the stern—ostensibly stowing the ruined supplies, but with eyes only for scales on the water as they putter out into the open ocean.

It seems absurd to assume that a sea monster would willingly subject himself to human fishing—and yet, if anyone could make that happen, it would be Nami. Even so, every time Luffy’s tail flashes in the sunlight, otherworldly red reflecting back through the surface, Zoro feels something loosen in his chest.

(Waiting, watching, hoping.)

Eventually, they furl the sail and set to work hauling in a new and semi-miraculous catch. And then another. And then another, until their stores are packed tighter than they’ve ever been. They spend the day busy, watching Luffy crest through the waves until the ship creaks with the weight of more fish than it’s ever had to handle. Enough to make a significant dent in Nami’s ever-growing debt to Arlong all at once, maybe, if they can sell it all.

By the time the sun starts to set and they’re done for the day, though, fish begin flopping on deck of their own (maybe) accord—then launching through the air in great arcs to smack against the wheelhouse windows. The first time is a surprise—the seventh time is funny—the sixteenth time, Nami sticks her head through the doorway and shouts, “Cut that shit out!” into the open ocean, only for one last fish to whizz past her head and splat! against the cockpit wall. “What the fuck—!”

Zoro hears a giggle over the side of the boat and mumbles, “She really might kill you, y’know,” without giving him away. Luffy doesn’t immediately respond, and when Zoro looks down, he sees Luffy’s dark eyes watching him over a smirk that promises trouble—and he barely has time to react before Luffy snags his ankle and tips him forward into the sea.

He’s not proud of the sound he makes as he hits the water—which is fine, really, because it’s drowned out by the sound of Luffy’s own laughter. When Zoro surfaces, swiping salt water from his stinging eyes, Luffy is circling him like prey—or like a dog with a new toy.

As he zips past again, Zoro smacks the surface of the sea with the flat of his palm, sputtering, “What the fuck!”

Something brushes against his leg and he physically resists the instinct to recoil as some weird, animal part of his brain screams Predator! Danger! Predator!—

Then Luffy surfaces inches from his face, grinning wide.

They’re so close Zoro feels the water displace around him, the massive bulk of Luffy’s tail swiping through the sea with enough force to disrupt the rhythm of his treading. He nearly goes under, buoyancy fucked, but in one swift motion Luffy hoists him up above the surface again—and Zoro spits a stream of saltwater directly into his face for the trouble. Luffy’s strong hands grip the sides of his chest and hold him upright without effort—and he doesn’t let go even as they float there, half-pressed together in the waves.

“Stupid Zoro,” Luffy laughs, “I thought you knew how to swim!”

“You’re trying to drown me!” he sputters back, and Nami snorts out a giggle from above.

Something swings in his peripheral vision, and he looks up to see her settling at the side of the boat, legs dangling over the side while braces her palms back on the deck in a lounge.

He reaches one arm out to splash her and misses by a mile, and she just raises an eyebrow—but there’s a flush to her cheeks, a brightness to her eyes that he hasn’t seen for a while. Years, maybe. It’s something like genuine happiness, and he wonders—vaguely—if this is what joy feels like, even as his clothes weigh him down and a thousand tiny injuries burn in the water.

Without warning, Luffy spins him in a whirring circle and Zoro yelps—utterly deep and manly—as instinct has him grabbing onto Luffy’s shoulders for stability. Luffy laughs again and his stomach flips, something just to the left of nausea—and he tells himself it’s the motion as he clings to Luffy. Then he shoves Luffy’s head underwater, bringing them both to a halt. Zoro only has a moment to feel triumphant—before realizing he’s accomplished exactly nothing.

Again, Nami snickers. “Genius,” she says as Luffy shoves back through the surface. “Try to drown the mermaid.”

“Fuck off.”

Zoro splashes her legs a second time and she swings her foot out in retaliation—nowhere close—but it’s the thought that counts and Zoro scowls back through the salt stinging his eyes. When Luffy giggles in his ear, Zoro realizes they’re just floating again. Luffy still has his hands on his waist like he really believes Zoro can’t swim, but it’s gentle, casual—like they belong there.

He can feel the scrape of Luffy’s spiny fins through the fabric of his shirt, the press of his warm palms on his chest—and he’s struck, then, that Luffy is warm. Warmer than the sea around them, at least. A wave bobs past and he’s so distracted he gets a mouth full of seawater for his trouble.

Coughing, he tries to shove away, but Luffy just holds him tighter, ignoring his struggle—then calls over his shoulder, “Nami! Nami, come in and play!”

Nami makes no move to get up. “No way,” she snorts, rolling her eyes. “Someone has to watch the boat.”

In response, Luffy pouts, melodramatically sinking below the waves until just his eyes are visible above the surface—and the motion drags Zoro down in the process.

Zoro manages one garbled, “Oi!” as Luffy accidentally (or intentionally, maybe, if the mischief in his expression means anything) dunks him—then he kicks Luffy’s tail as hard as he can. Luffy’s snickers bubble up around them and he lets go enough for Zoro to tread water on his own, but before he can swim too far Luffy reaches out and grabs the hem of his shirt like a tether, holding him in place.

Zoro scowls. Luffy ignores him.

Instead, he floats them both over to the side of the ship, and Zoro can practically see the thought forming in his head realtime—just as Luffy’s hand shoots out of the water to grab Nami’s ankle—

“Don’t you dare—” she hisses, but it’s already too late.

Luffy’s giggles rise to a fever-pitch as she splashes into the ocean alongside them, and Zoro chooses to be the bigger man by not pointing out that her first instinct is to lunge for Luffy and shove his head underwater, too. She clings to his back, hands on his shoulders as she holds him down, and he finally lets go of Zoro.

It’s just for a moment, but within an instant, Luffy’s head shoots up and he reaches out for Zoro’s shirt, this time yanking him closer deliberately even as Nami hangs on his neck from behind.

“You asshole!” she cries right in Luffy’s ear, waterlogged and doing her level-best to sound pissed. It’s not entirely convincing, as her mouth twitches up in a poorly-suppressed smile. “Put me back on the boat—”

“No!”

“Luffy!”

“Nami!” he whines back, mocking her, and Zoro can’t help it—he laughs—and gets a mouth full of saltwater for his trouble. As he sputters again, Nami snickers along with Luffy—and Zoro splashes them both in retaliation, which makes Luffy laugh harder while Nami swears—then swears even louder when Luffy spins, dragging them both in a whirl through the waves.

- - -

Eventually, the sun dips below the horizon and Nami sneezes. She’s on Zoro’s back now, and he can feel her shivering in the water. No matter how much they’ve kicked and splashed, Luffy hasn’t let either of them go, not entirely—and only when Nami demands (sniffles), “Take me back for real, Zoro,” does he realize why. She’s fucking freezing.

As he swims back, he realizes, too, that they’ve been in the water long enough to have floated away from Nami’s boat, but the three of them are still within easy swimming distance—something only possible if they’d kept an eye on it and worked to stay nearby as they drifted through the waves. And yet, Zoro knows he hasn’t been paying attention to it, and suspects that Nami hasn’t, either—or not making any effort to stay close, at least, as she’s been clinging on to either of them instead of treading water herself.

“Yeah, yeah,” Zoro gripes even as he blinks at Luffy, who just pouts over Zoro’s shoulder at Nami—who sneezes again.

Then a thought seems to occur to Luffy and he lights up.

“Nami, food!”

Nami snorts in Zoro’s ear, “You’ve been eating all day! Literally all day, because there’s no way every single—”

“But I’m hungry!” Luffy wails—and he flops over, floating onto his back as he twists to fix Zoro with the most pathetic look Zoro’s ever seen on a fish. “I’m starving!”

Without missing a beat, Zoro says, “You’re killing him,” and starts to shake his head.

Nami shoves him under.

By the time she hauls herself back over the railing, color has started to leech from the sky—turning the world a dark, murky gray. Trembling and soaked to the bone, she leans over the side to peer down at the two of them. Zoro makes no move to get out of the water.

“You coming?” she calls and Zoro hesitates—because it is fucking cold—but Luffy hasn’t let go of his shirt. Whether she can see Luffy’s grip or not, she seems to understand—and after a moment, she shrugs back, arms crossed over her chest—shivering again. “Suit yourself.” Then she turns to Luffy, who still looks utterly dejected, and snorts. “Fine! Fine, I’ll see what I have,”

And Luffy cheers as she disappears across the deck with a roll of her eyes.

As Luffy’s laughter dies down, Zoro begins to shiver himself—then, without warning, Luffy yanks him closer, grabbing onto his waist.

“Fuck!”

Giggling anew, Luffy doesn’t let go, and Zoro is struck again by just how warm he is. With the sun gone and the sea cooling in the night air, he seems to radiate heat. Instinctively, Zoro stops treading water, floating closer to Luffy like a beacon, and Luffy doesn’t seem to mind—just swims them around in lazy circles as stars wink into existence overhead.

It’s clear weather, unusually so for the season (according to Nami, at least), and the dark sky stretches out above them in parallel to an empty ocean. And he realizes, then, that they’re floating in the open sea at night—but Luffy doesn’t seem worried. And he wouldn’t, Zoro supposes.

Zoro thinks of the black-swirled, snarling creature on the docks and can’t imagine Luffy ever losing ground to some nocturnal predator.

Instead, Luffy just hums a song Zoro’s never heard before and stares up, eyes bright—as Zoro stares at him, watching, (marveling). Then Luffy flicks his eyes down and catches Zoro watching and grins—all teeth and joy.

Zoro feels it in his chest—

—and blurts, “Our names—how’d you know our names?”

“Ah!” Luffy snickers again as they spin through another slow rotation. “I was watching you,” he says, matter-of-fact.

“Creepy,” he grunts, but it seems more like something he should say and his heart isn’t in it. Mostly, he’s just curious, because he can’t think—

Then he blinks.

“That was you,” he half-gasps, and he wants to laugh. The basket of leftovers, yanked overboard in the middle of the night.

“You look really stupid when you sleep,” Luffy replies, snickering, and Zoro rolls his eyes—then his brain catches up with the implications of what Luffy’s just admitted.

“That was—” he frowns. “Shit, that was weeks ago.” Before Jack—before Zoro even knew if he believed in the sea gods, let alone if they were worth hunting for the bounty.

Luffy just shrugs. “You’re not part of those dock-guys’ gang, so it all worked out fine,” he says, and Zoro blinks, feeling like he’s missed part of the conversation—but before he can ask, Luffy lights up and grips him tighter—eyes full of glee. “Hey! We made it!”

Before Zoro can ask what the fuck he’s talking about, something shimmers under the dark surface of the water—then another, then another, then another—until the sea itself is indistinguishable from the expanse of stars overhead. Not a mirror—like its own night sky.

Luffy laughs—then he dunks them both and Zoro almost gasps, nearly inhaling twin lungfuls of water—but Luffy clamps one hand over his mouth and the feeling of suffocation instantly sets his head spinning.

That, or the sight.

As they float there, submerged, the black ocean lights up with a hundred-thousand blinks of blue and white and suddenly, inexplicably, the sea swarms with a galaxy of bioluminescent somethings.

For a dizzying moment, Zoro feels like he’s completely untethered from anything, suspended in another world. He can’t tell where the sea begins and the night sky ends—or vice versa. As the dots whirl around them, Zoro isn’t sure if Luffy is still swirling them or if the currents have taken over. They brush against his skin, lighting up their faces and the fathomless depths above, below, around them.

A burst of bubbles explodes from Luffy and Zoro can’t hear him below the surface, but he knows with some bone-deep certainty that he’s laughing again. And he wonders, then, if Luffy is always laughing. He always seems to be, at least.

His grip shifts, and Zoro’s whole world narrows down to the warmth of Luffy’s body—barely visible in the bioluminescent darkness, but a heavy presence Zoro can feel in the water. Like the ocean is moving around him, making room for Luffy and his joy. The frigid water has reduced his own limbs to tingling and for a strange moment, Luffy’s body feels more real than his own.

Then—Zoro chokes and realizes he needs to fucking breathe.

Startled bubbles burst from his own mouth as he pushes for the surface, but he can’t tell which way is up and just kicks—until Luffy grips him again and hauls him forward until he breaks through and gasps, coughing.

As he wheezes, spitting out ocean water, Luffy holds him upright—shifting Zoro onto his back like he’d been supporting Nami. “Stupid Zoro,” he hums, not particularly apologetic. “You should work on holding your breath.”

Zoro sputters. “That was minutes,” he says directly into Luffy’s ear, trying to shove off—but Luffy just grasps him in place. Despite his protests, though, Zoro stares around them at the glittering ocean and wonders how hard it would be to train his lung capacity. Genuinely.

As soon as he catches his breath, Luffy sinks them again without warning, this time pulling him deeper—deep enough to sweep their hands through the swarm. Zoro’s eyes burn in the salt water and struggle to focus on the expanse of a billion lights in the blackness, but he doesn’t blink. To miss even a second, he thinks, would be to lose something precious—even if he’s not quite sure what. Or why.

Luffy chatters away, words vibrating nonsensical against his cheek, but Zoro can’t make out anything he’s saying—so he just watches the world around them until he needs more air and Luffy pulls them back up again. He gulps down oxygen faster this time, already wanting to go back, and Luffy laughs—then dives.

By their third or fourth descent, they’re both covered—glowing streaks matted in their hair and smeared on their bodies, bright enough that they’re both nearly visible underwater themselves. When Luffy grins at him, he can see it—and the rest of him, too. An apex predator submerged in his natural environment. Smiling and happy and carefree, surrounded by the shining stars of the sea.

- - -

Nami helps Zoro haul himself up, bracing her weight against the deck and pulling him with both arms, and soon they’re side-by-side, legs dangling over the edge of the boat while Luffy floats on his back below. Zoro’s bare feet skim the surface of the ocean, his soaked boots (and half of his clothes, too) discarded and replaced with a blanket from below deck.

As the cool night air raises goosebumps on his damp skin, he takes a swig from their shared flask for warmth.

Nami has changed entirely, wide pants rolled up mid-calf as she swings her legs above the water next to him. She’s not so much eating her (second? third?) sandwich as deconstructing it, and when she tosses another chunk of cold chicken overboard Luffy catches it in his sharp mouth like it’s a game.

She laughs—takes another bite, then drops the rest to Luffy below, who eats it whole.

The basket between them (new—a replacement) is nearly empty, the long afternoon having worn them down enough to tear through a day’s worth of food in just a few minutes. Not the smartest move out at sea, maybe, but Zoro isn’t about to scoff at the generosity—and neither is Luffy, apparently, if he even realizes what Nami has done.

(Zoro wonders if the feast is half in thanks for helping them fish or if there’s something else to it, too. If it’s an offering in its own right.)

Nami nudges Zoro with her foot and Zoro hands her the flask without a word, but as she sips Luffy splashes their legs—gently, playfully—with his tail. The motion sets another swirl of soft blue somethings glowing around him as he giggles and starts to drift away, entertaining himself with the lights.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Zoro is struck by the weight of what he’s seeing.

Luffy has stuck by them for hours when by all rights he’s been a myth for hundreds of years—his kind, anyway. And yet, here he is—here they are. At any moment, he could have disappeared into the depths, but he hasn’t.

Zoro marvels at the glowing ocean spread out before them, framing the floating silhouette below.

He has a thousand questions on the tip of his tongue. He asks none of them.

Instead, Nami speaks up—after another swig from their flask and a long exhale into the night. “We’re even with the fish,” she calls as she passes the flask to Zoro and he drinks, too. Happy to be included, maybe, Luffy swims closer until he’s directly under them again. “But you still owe me for my traps, so don’t even think about—I dunno—vanishing or something.”

Luffy frowns up at her, expression vaguely condescending. “I can’t do that,” he says, and Nami blinks back.

“What?”

“Turn invisible,” he says, and there’s so much indignation in his tone Zoro can’t help it—he snorts, and Nami turns her bewildered expression on him.

“Maybe you’re stupid,” Zoro says, grinning down toward the water, and Luffy flicks his tail—splashing enough water to soak both he and Nami, and their things, too. Nami immediately lashes out to smack Zoro hard against his arm, nearly shoving him into the sea because she can’t reach Luffy and it’s half his fault, anyway—cursing violently all the while. Then (while the two of them laugh), she stands and storms off, dripping across the deck.

Already half-undressed, Zoro just sheds the ruined blanket and stretches, then, midway through, stops—and sees Luffy eyeing the soggy basket. He doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed, just smiles widely up at Zoro when he catches him watching—and Zoro, buzzed and a little stupid himself, just rolls his eyes and tips the whole thing into the ocean.

Utterly delighted, Luffy crows, and whatever’s left of their provisions disappears in a splash.

By the time Nami returns, semi-dry and changed into an ancient sweater, it’s back on deck—empty.

As she sits down, scowling at them both, Zoro offers her the flask by way of apology, and she accepts without comment—but her face softens and she sighs. Drinks. Tucks her knees up under her sweater so they’re not exposed to the cold night air and peers down at Luffy, now lazing on his back and humming once again.

For a moment, she just watches him, and Zoro can’t blame her. Then—almost thoughtful—she asks, “Why are you even here?”

It’s an obvious question, one Zoro has been avoiding simply because he doesn’t want to draw attention to it, to do anything that might put the idea of leaving in Luffy’s head. And it contains multitudes, too—why are you here (so close to the surface, so close to the shore compared to the vastness of the ocean), why are you here with us, why are you still here?

And yet, utterly unbothered, Luffy only laughs, “I want to be here!” in reply. “I like you.”

He declares it so matter-of-fact, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like anyone would want to be around the two of them, a couple of fuck-up kids with bloodstained hands just trying to survive—and doing a frankly terrible job of it.

And then Luffy looks at Zoro, that strange unreadable expression back on his face, and says, “And you’re mine.”

Like before, too, the statement does strange things to Zoro’s chest.

He glances over to Nami and sees her watching him, utterly bewildered—and Zoro just blinks back. Because yes, fair—he did say that, didn’t he?

Then, giving up, Nami sighs. “Fine,” she says in reply. As if stalling for time, she untucks her knees and swings her legs back over the side of the boat again. “But why?”

Back in range, Luffy splashes their feet. “I dunno,” he says—then he grabs onto their ankles, one in each hand, like a tether holding him in place. They both start to gripe, but Luffy doesn’t try to pull them in—instead, he just floats. Nami wiggles her toes in his face and he giggles.

Finally, Zoro speaks up. “You had to have been following us for a reason,” he grunts, and Nami turns to him in surprise.

“Following us?”

Luffy hums. “I dunno,” he repeats, and Zoro can hear the frown in his voice. Like he’s thinking and hates it, tired of the same question over and over again. Or like there’s something he’s not telling them. “I was supposed to sink you, but you smelled like blood—like home—and I liked your hair—”

“I smelled like what—”

“—and you were lonely.”

The statement draws him up short, and he hears Nami suck in a breath, too. Luffy pats her ankle when he says it, and it feels like a blow to them both—because this moment, the two of them side-by-side on an empty boat in an empty sea, is the whole of their world and has been for years.

Except—now there’s a fish in the water holding onto their legs, warm and grounding when there’s no ground for miles.

“Rude—” Nami bites out, but there’s a strain in her voice and Zoro hands her the flask.

Luffy just tilts his head to the side, watching, frowning. “You’re upset I didn’t kill you?”

“What? No—” Nami says, shaking her head—then she stops herself. “Hang on, you’re sinking—what?”

Luffy hums an almost conversational, “Yeah?” like they’re discussing the weather.

Suddenly, fragments of the summer start falling into place, and a half-heard argument pings in the back of Zoro’s mind—along with everything he’s learned piecemeal from Luffy himself, who seems utterly disinclined to explain anything in full.

“You’ve been going after Kaido’s boats,” Zoro says, slow and deliberate as the bigger picture comes together. “Because of the poison. And you came after us—Nami—because we work with them.”

Nami makes the connection at the same time he does and blurts, “Ah!” just as Luffy splashes his tail against the surface of the water—an idle gesture. It sends another wave of bioluminescence over his scales and they glitter in the moonlight.

“But I didn’t sink you,” he practically insists, like the distinction is important. Which. Fair.

Instead of responding directly, Nami throws her hands in the air—and Zoro grabs for the flask before she can fling it in frustration. “That’s why Jack was—he thought we were doing it!”

It’s the final piece of the puzzle—the meeting he’d interrupted at Mihawk’s mansion, Jack’s threat in the club, why Jack himself hadn’t been particularly surprised they’d shown up to steal Tama even with the broadcast. And there’s something else, too—the larger implication of Robin’s threat to reveal their involvement in Jack’s death.

If Kaido already believes they’re responsible for sabotaging his supply lines, there’s no way he wouldn’t declare an all-out war if he thought they’d killed one of his top officers, too.

Still thinking, still talking, Nami pinches the bridge of her nose. “I feel like I age ten years every time you open your mouth. God. Their ships have been sinking since—” she stops again, blinks. “They’ve been poisoning the fish for months?” she asks, a kind of sick dread creeping into her tone. “With what?”

“I dunno,” Luffy replies, frowning. “They’re making something new and it’s weird.”

She turns to stare at the empty deck behind them, and Zoro follows the line of her gaze—to the hatch dead-center where they dump every catch into their hold. He catches on almost immediately.

“We’ve been eating it,” Zoro says, and he thinks of the sickly little girl in the net—and the sickly pallor of the maintenance boys at the harbor, too. “Everyone.”

Luffy makes the universal noise for I-don’t-know as the sea laps gently against his outstretched arms. He’s still holding onto them both, gazing up toward their pensive faces.

“You’ve been eating the fish just fine,” Zoro says, but when he glances at Nami he sees that she’s frowning, silent. Thinking.

“Tama’s not big enough to handle poison—she’s just a baby,” Luffy huffs back, like that explains everything. And maybe it does—Zoro certainly doesn’t know enough about sea monster anatomy to dispute the claim.

Suddenly, Nami stands, yanking her foot out of Luffy’s loose grip in the process—then she grabs for the drink in Zoro’s hands and chugs while Zoro blinks up at her.

She looks—conflicted. And pissed.

When she tosses it back to him, the flask is empty, but he doesn’t have time to complain before she curses, long and loud into the night, then throws open the hatch. And then Zoro understands.

Even if no one has realized they’re being poisoned—or even if it’s just affecting the weakest among them—or even if it’s worth hundreds of dollars—they can’t sell any of it.

They spend the next two hours shoveling everything they’ve caught back into the sea. Luffy cheers, circling the ship and eating as much as he can shove in his mouth, but the evening’s mood never lifts entirely.

By the time they finish, it’s well after midnight. They anchor in the cove instead of returning to the marina and still, Luffy stays. Half-delirious with exhaustion, Nami drags a pile of beach towels from below deck, she and Zoro too sticky with sweat and salt and exhaustion to ruin their cots, and—within moments, still mid-conversation—they collapse in a heap under the stars, feet and arms dangling over the edge to touch the sea below.

---

Interlude II: Midnight; 1000-4000

The moment he parts the cavemouth’s kelp curtain, Tama comes racing toward him, shouting, “Luffy!” as she rams headfirst into his chest. Despite the gray tinge to her scales and the almost translucent pallor to her skin—the dark circles under her eyes and the stick-thinness of her arms—her hug has enough force to send the spiny, many-legged yeti crabs in his hands tumbling through the water, down to the sandy ground. She wraps her little arms around his waist and holds him there, burying her face in his chest as she giggles.

“You’re so clingy,” Luffy whines back, half-shoving her off as the crabs scramble away and he scrambles after them. Tama laughs and doesn’t let go, just grips him and stays there, absolutely unhelpful while he gathers the creatures up—so he sets a few in her hair in retaliation.

It doesn’t have the intended effect (a healthy dose of teasing), but he doesn’t mind—because Tama’s delight is even better.

Small and ticklish, they tangle there—and she shrieks, “What are those?” as she paws at the little crabs.

“Dinner,” Luffy laughs right along with her, watching them skitter across his hands, fumbling to keep them all from escaping again and doing a frankly terrible job of it.

Perhaps roused by the commotion, Deuce swims around the inner cavern’s corner, unhurried but with one eyebrow raised as he casts a wary look over the scene. He nods a careful greeting, eyeing Luffy—and eyeing what he’s brought, too.

The moment she sees him, though, Tama turns, an elated grin on her face as she holds a handful of fuzzy crustaceans out to her caretaker. “Look,” she says. “Look what Luffy brought!” Deuce cringes as the grotesque little thing wiggles in his face, and Luffy can’t help but laugh again.

Teeth gritted, Deuce takes one of the crabs from her and holds it out, inspecting it in the shallow light still filtering through the seaweed. It flails, pinching at his fingers, but he just turns it over—looking at it—before he tilts his head at Luffy and tosses it back. Or tries to, really, because he misses by a decent length, and it skitters out of sight—lost.

Deuce winces again. Then, as if to cover, he says, “You’ve been to the Trench again,” almost skeptically—like it’s a question. Luffy feels Tama turn her head up to look at him, frowning, but he just shrugs in return.

“Food is food,” he says, and, to emphasize his own point, he shoves one of the squirming crabs into his mouth and bites. Its shell crunches into shards against the strength of his teeth, flaking off from the soft meat inside with ease.

Deuce blanches, but he doesn’t say anything again. He can’t argue with that, because food is food.

They both know in their own roundabout ways that Luffy hunting frees him up to help Marco take care of the others—the others like Tama, sick and sickly from the strange, rainbow slick creeping into their prey.

Curious, Tama reaches up to grasp at the cracked crab, picking at its insides until she pops some in her mouth, and as she chews on its strange white flesh her expression shifts into one of—confusion, more than anything. “It tastes different!” she says, then takes another bite.

“It’s a different species,” Deuce replies, taking the shell from her and poking out his own shred of meat. When he licks it, disgust ripples across his features and he looks like he might gag—but he doesn’t and swallows it anyway. Luffy approves. Even so, Deuce says (voice strained, whether from the taste or the statement itself, even though he’s clearly trying), “Don’t—don’t give that to your human. Trust me.”

Tama, ever-observant, sticks her tongue out at him. “It’s not that bad,” she sniffs, haughty in that way only six-year-olds can be, puffing out her little chest to show that she’s brave and strong and so much better than Deuce (and Zoro and Nami and all of her imagined competition for Luffy’s affection, because she knows what it’s like to be left behind and it’s terrifying). “I’d eat a million of them!”

Deuce has the decency to look genuinely scolded, and Luffy snickers. He wonders (not for the first time) how Deuce had ever been able to survive his brother—something he’d never had the chance to see, Ace long gone and fulfilling his own dreams when—well.

As though reading Luffy's thoughts, Deuce scowls. “You need to be careful,” he says. “You have no idea what’s down there. It’s dangerous.”

Luffy just grins back at him, all teeth, while Tama watches them both. “I’ll be fine,” he replies with a roll of his eyes.

It’s empty, anyway.

---

Part IV

Something else shifts, then, as Luffy becomes a permanent fixture in his life and it all becomes real.

Nami laughs at him, long and loud to tears, when they both realize that from Luffy’s perspective this has been the case for weeks. An endless stream of exchanges, food for treasure.

(“What are you, a bird? Only you,” she says, hands on her knees, wheezing with laughter, “would be dumb enough to befriend a sea monster without realizing it.”)

(He chooses not to dignify this with a response.)

Now unable (or unwilling) to fish, Nami doubles his fight card—and Zoro’s regular appearance in the tournament brackets takes up half the nights they aren’t already on the water.

The result is a lopsided, sleep-deprived sort of existence, however temporary. Days spent napping in the sun on deck with his legs dangling in the water, an invitation that gets him yanked overboard on more than one occasion, (Luffy bored and demanding his attention; Zoro always, always obliging, because how could he not?) And nights spent in the ring—not without injury, but always victorious.

Still, Zoro avoids the mansion (and his uncle and Crocodile) like the plague, especially with the knowledge of how much weight Robin’s threat truly carries. But the isolation doesn’t—can’t—last forever.

The first week of July, Mihawk finally emerges from the woodwork. Zoro knows he’s there the minute they walk through the Shikkearu’s doors, a physical pressure in the air that seems to have every single staff member on-edge—and a significant number of patrons, too.

It’s been weeks since they’ve last seen each other, but his uncle doesn’t seek him out. Mihawk just sits, watching the main floor from a table in the hayloft balcony above, surveying everything like a king as he sips a glass of imported red wine.

Zoro curses. Ignores him. Follows Nami to the bar and crosses his arms and waits as the night picks up speed. By the time the fights begin, though, Mihawk still hasn’t deigned to descend from his throne—so Zoro channels his frustration into crushing his opponents. The final round ends with a particularly-malicious shipwright—some idiot claiming martial arts bullshit counts toward some kind of four-sword style with the dumbest epithet Zoro’s ever heard—bleeding into the dirt, and only then does Nami finally force him up the stairs for both of their sakes.

In what minor rebellion he still has left, Zoro barely towels off before he sprawls himself in the chair across from his uncle, shirtless with his bandana still wrapped around his head, kicking his feet up on the empty table between them and grabbing the expensive wine bottle by the neck.

He drinks.

His uncle scowls.

“Your form has suffered. It is embarrassingly evident that you did not properly train whilst recovering from your mistake,” Mihawk drawls without preamble. As usual, he cuts to the bone.

“And what mistake would that be?” Zoro bites, rocking his chair back on two legs and ignoring Mihawk’s glare of disapproval. He asks half to gauge what he knows and half because he’s genuinely curious—because his uncle has been known to find fault with anything even on the best of days.

Mihawk doesn’t even blink.

“Distraction,” he says. The word has a physical weight as it thuds on the empty table between them, and instantly—Zoro is on edge. Because there’s something in Mihawk’s placid, icy tone that reads deeper than a single word. Not a warning, per se, but a message all the same.

Unwilling to give himself away (because he doesn’t know what his uncle is planning, not really), Zoro eyes him and drinks again. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“This,” Mihawk replies crisply, “is your secondary priority, as you’re well aware.” He sets his wine glass on the table and folds his hands between them, staring—his disapproval palpable. “You are free to do as you please as long as you fulfill certain obligations to the company.”

Zoro glares and almost sits up, but he stops himself because he knows the disrespect of nonchalance irritates his uncle more than a challenge. Instead, he spits, “I didn’t know you were Croc’s messenger—or maybe I’m his lackey now, instead of yours.”

Mihawk’s mouth is a thin line, and as he reaches for his wine glass again—sipping, drawing out the moment while Zoro seethes, waiting for his uncle to rise to the bait even while knowing that he won’t—his eyes narrow. By the time he speaks, Zoro feels ready to explode.

“I am not your enemy,” his voice is calm as ever. “Remember that. Listen when I am speaking and for once at least attempt to absorb what I say.”

Suddenly, someone shouts—nondescript in the roar of the crowd still twisting to the music below, but it sets off an alarm bell in the back of Zoro’s brain. Instinctually, he turns toward the noise, peering over the balcony—only to see Nami pushing through dancing bodies, rushing for the door with nothing but her case shoved closed. The look on her face is indescribable—worry and fear and horror smashed into one.

He’s on his feet in an instant.

“Roronoa—” his uncle barks, stern and disappointed, but Zoro doesn’t care because something is wrong. Within moments, he’s shoving down the stairs and out the door after her.

- - -

They see the smoke and the light itself before they see the flames. In the pitch, moonless night it’s like a beacon, illuminating the haze like a scene from hell.

By the time Zoro’s bike skids outside the entrance to Arlong Park, police and firefighters have already blocked off the harbor itself—but the blockade doesn’t last long as people shove past, rushing with buckets and hoses to help the fishermen save their homes—their livelihood. Their marina.

Nami lets out a kind of pained moan and clamors off the motorcycle before Zoro even has the chance to fully stop. He doesn’t hesitate, just cuts the engine and drops the bike, rushing after her as she slips across the gravel. An officer reaches out to grab her arm, yanking her to a halt—and Zoro lands a fist to his jaw at the same time Nami slams her knee directly into his balls. Before the cop’s body hits the ground, they’re already jumping the barrier, sprinting toward the water.

The marina itself is in chaos, some docks completely engulfed while other fires stay isolated to the boats themselves. The smoke is thick and heavy, hanging in the air like a wool coat—with no breeze, it hits them full-force as they rush toward the flames. Within moments, it’s nearly impossible to breathe—and even harder to gauge how far the damage has spread.

Next to him, Nami coughs, ragged and dry, as she presses forward, and Zoro reaches for the first thing he can think of—the sweaty bandana still tied around his own head, leftover from the fight. Without thinking, he shoves it in her face, covering her nose and mouth—and she yanks him down to a rough crouch, closer to her height and below the thickest smokeline.

All around, fishermen and dockworkers shove past one another, some racing for their own boats to try salvage what they can while others frantically clamor on the blazing docks. Through the haze, Zoro sees more than one person throw themselves into the water, frantically swimming toward one collapsing vessel or another. Just as often, he hears screams he can’t pinpoint.

By the time they reach Nami’s shitty, floating slip, Zoro’s teeth are gritted so hard his jaw hurts, and Nami’s pained mantra of, “Please, please, please—” is louder than anything else in the blaze. The minute it comes into focus he feels his stomach sink. And then she wails, half in despair and half in surprise, because it’s gone.

Zoro pulls her to a halt before she runs onto the already-burning dock, half-wrestling her away from the flames and onto the beach where—finally—they stand at the water’s edge, ankle deep in the ocean in their shoes and not even feeling it. Even from this distance they can still see the mooring ropes tied to the wood, dangling—severed—into the orange water.

And yet—

Nami falls to her knees, splashing into the shallows. The nameless boat itself isn’t far, clearly visible in the distance as a distorted blob farther into the harbor. Floating away, untethered, but safe.

And then, suddenly, something massive, round, and human flails out of the water with a panicked yell, scrambling for purchase against the burning dock—just as a disembodied hand reaches up from the depths to grip his leg and claw him back down.

Zoro hears Nami gasp at his side—and before he can think, Zoro’s already shouting, “Luffy!”

The man surfaces again, a look of absolute terror on his face—followed by an all-too-familiar head of black hair. For a moment, Luffy stares across the water in their direction, unrecognizable and furious as he scans the beach, then he locks eyes with Zoro and pure relief lights up his face.

Luffy ducks under again, dragging his prey down with him, before the flailing man erupts from the sea, bodily thrown ashore from below. He lands with a sobbing wheeze and clambers at the sand, coughing, already gathering momentum to flee—but Luffy isn’t far behind, snapping, “Zoro!” as he resurfaces.

Within his name is an entire sentence.

Zoro slams one foot down into the man’s back, shoving him into the beach. In seconds, Kitetsu is unsheathed and pointed at his trembling neck.

There’s a beat of silence as they stare each other down, and then in the corner of his vision Nami moves and he turns—just in time to see her standing, stomping further into the sea, meeting Luffy halfway as he swims toward the shore.

Luffy doesn’t have time to react before she throws her arms around his neck—“Luffy!”—and strangles him.

“Nam—”

“Do you know how expensive rope is? Good rope?” she yells, and her voice cracks—full of fear and relief and tears, maybe. “You owe me treasure! I want real, genuine, honest-to-fucking-god, bottom-of-the-sea sunken treasure, you asshole!”

Luffy just reaches up and holds her wrists, unfazed, taking it. “Sorry, Nami,” he whines, soft and gentle, and his tone sounds sincere. It contains multitudes, too. An apology for carnage that isn’t his fault.

The man under Zoro’s heel lets out a whimper, then, and Luffy’s sharp gaze cuts through the night. In the glow of flames reflected on the water’s surface, his expression is unreadable. Otherworldly. Around them, the fire rages—and there’s a massive, groaning creak across the harbor as something collapses.

The man mumbles through his angry tears.

“What was that?” Zoro spits, and the man glares—but doesn’t move. He’s big, sure—with white hair and swirling, purple tattoos down one arm—but he’s blubbering like a nasty child. Reduced low from whatever height by Luffy, apparently. In the distance, he hears Nami start to trudge back onshore.

“I said you’ll g-get what’s coming to you for fucking with us—shit’s personal—you don’t even know who’s working for who anymore—” the man stutters, bleeding and miserable but almost proud of the damage—and then Zoro finally places him, hardly recognizable without his other half.

“Sheepshead,” he scowls. The man doesn’t deny it—but something about the situation feels off. He’s one of Jack’s men, and they were supposed to have been killed. “Where’s—what’s her name—Old Maid.” Usually where there’s one, there’s the other.

“Ginrummy,” Sheepshead spits, eyes ablaze. “She’s dead, you bastard—”

Before he can say anything else, Nami tromps right up to them both—wiping saltwater from her eyes and sniffling (from the smoke, probably) as she yells, “He did this?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer before kicking Sheepshead in the head so hard he slumps to the ground, unconscious.

- - -

By the time the sun rises, the fire has been doused and some semblance of order restored—but not without cost.

More than half of the docks have been reduced to ash, and half of what’s left standing is still too damaged for use. The ships themselves aren’t much better off. Nami’s boat isn’t the only to survive, not by far, but the comfort of those whose livelihoods have made it out relatively unscathed is stained by the disaster’s casualties.

Because in the morning, there are bodies, too—washing up on shore—burned, suffocated by smoke, drowned in the chaos. And still more unaccounted for.

(Miraculously, Mariejois’s own expensive yachts have been entirely unaffected by the flames—not a single fire started beyond the boardwalk divide.)

Now, Luffy has long-since disappeared, urged back into the sea by them both, but even through the blur of his own exhaustion Zoro can feel—with a prickle of certainty—that Luffy hasn’t gone far. He just knows.

As he drags yet another chunk of charred, crumbling wood out of the water, Zoro grunts. For most of the early hours, he’s been hauling debris toward the ever-growing piles in the lot alongside half-a-dozen other men. Around them, dockworkers and fishermen alike shout and the sound of hammering, sawing, prying echoes across the water—but still, a somber hush lays over the entire harbor. The world is wet and muted.

For all of their anger, their stirred-up fervor, these were the bystanders, caught up in a fight so much bigger than any of them.

In the distance, Nami is deep in conversation with Koby and two of the maintenance boys—and someone else, too, in grease-stained overalls with a nose unlike anything he’s ever seen. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can read the argument in their waving hands well enough.

Zoro drops the water-logged piling with the rest and wipes sooty, salty-sticky hands on his ruined pants, then stretches as he starts to make his way across the gravel. Koby looks on the verge of tears.

“—an’t let them dredge the harbor. There’s too much evidence that’s been—”

“Why the fuck has he been dumping crates in the—seriously? Here? That doesn’t make any sense—” Nami hisses, and the man in overalls whimpers.

“Please, I don’t want to know about any of this,” he says, inching away from the group. “You’re going to get me thrown in jail—” he looks up and locks eyes with Zoro, freezing in place, “—or killed—”

Then, suddenly, the door to the boathouse slams open with a BANG! and everything grinds to a halt as Arlong emerges, fuming.

He’s not a big man but his temper has a reputation even among locals who aren’t aware he’s anything more than the harbormaster. A hush seems to fall over the marina as workers stop to watch-but-not-watch him stalk toward Nami, whose face leeches of color even as she stands her ground.

Zoro reaches the group at the same time Arlong does, just in time to watch Arlong spit in her face, “Don’t think I’m stupid, Nami—” his voice rising until it carries across the lot. “I know you weren’t here last night because I know about your little side job. I’ve let it slide, but if you’re going to miss shit like this I want my own cut of the profits.”

Heads turn and there’s a malicious gleam in his eye—and Nami flinches. It’s a calculated move, especially for Arlong—who often yells first, plans later. People will draw their own conclusions from the declaration and act accordingly, even if they’re wrong and even if it’s not Nami’s job to run the marina in the first place. It’s Arlong’s.

Nami grits her teeth and snaps, “That wasn’t the deal—” but Arlong’s hand shoots out to grip her upper arm, nails digging into her skin.

“This cost me,” he hisses, voice low and dangerous in the air between them. “Don’t forget that I own you.”

Nami says nothing but there’s murder in her eyes—just as Zoro grabs Arlong’s wrist and squeezes hard enough to feel the bones grind together under his fingers. Arlong shrugs him off, posturing like he isn’t hurt even as he flexes his hand, and he glares at Zoro. Arlong doesn’t snap at him, though—he can’t. But at the same time, Zoro can’t reply either.

Arlong has Nami over his head, but Zoro has his own position in the organization over Arlong’s. The three of them are at an impasse yet again. Still, there’s a look in Arlong’s eyes that Zoro doesn’t like—something worse. Something new.

After a beat of tense silence, Arlong scoffs—then turns on his heel and stalks off, just as two of his men drag a bleeding Sheepshead out of the boathouse, arms slung over their shoulders like a drunkard. Right in broad daylight.

Followed by Robin.

As half the marina watches, they flank Sheepshead to a group of waiting vehicles. Robin acknowledges neither of them as she slides into the back of a sleek, black thing more at home up the harbor, while Arlong and his men shove Sheepshead in the trunk of a second. Arlong himself is the last to climb into his own car, hauling himself into the back as Robin’s driver speeds away. As he reaches to shut the door, he makes eye contact with Nami. Her fists clench at her sides.

Then, in a skid of tires and ash, they’re gone.

The crowd disperses quickly after that, attention only distracted for so long before they return to the disaster at hand.

The damage has been done, though. With both the parade across the lot and Arlong’s declaration, everyone now knows this wasn’t a freak accident but violence. Beyond the loss of infrastructure, despair turns slowly to rage.

The nail in the coffin comes in the form of Akainu himself. He shows up later in the afternoon, massive newspaper van in tow, ready to make a spectacle of the tragedy. To a seething crowd and with a security detail at his side, he rails about the need for tighter harbor patrols, campaigning for Naval law enforcement while the photographer snaps pictures of the exhausted, frenzied fishermen hard at work cleaning up the ashes of their lives.

By the time they give up, Zoro and Nami have both been awake for over thirty-six hours. They use the last of their collective energy to row out toward the relative quiet of Nami’s boat, now anchored offshore in the harbor itself with the rest of the (somewhat) intact vessels to avoid any sunken debris closer to the ruined docks. It’s charred, missing large swathes of rope, and the bulk of its fishing mechanism is destroyed—but it’s still seaworthy.

As soon as they tie the dinghy to Nami’s stern, they’re crawling belowdeck to hide from the noise and the midday sun. Zoro’s last thought before falling asleep is to wonder just how much Sheepshead might have said about what—and who—he’d seen. He doesn’t last long enough to bring it up with Nami, though—and within minutes, they’re passed out in a heap on one shitty, smoke-reeking cot, utterly exhausted.

- - -

When Zoro wakes, the world is dark and Nami has rolled off him, now wedged against the wall and snoring. He blinks like that might clear his vision, but night is night is night and there’s a blanket of clouds overhead thick enough to block out all the lights in the sky.

In the darkness, he finally has time to consider the weight of what’s happened—the damage. They’d been so worried about their own skin they’d failed to account for Kaido’s crazy—again. The same kind of crazy that would poison a child and stuff her in a box for money. It’s like Kaido wants a fight, poking his claws and his men in the worst possible places, roping Cross Guild and Akainu and all of them together into his bullshit. And still, Zoro can’t figure out the bigger picture—like there’s a piece missing that he just can’t grasp.

Carefully, he picks his way back on deck, feeling along the wall and moving as quietly as he can so as not to disturb Nami. He makes it up without incident—only smashing his shin once against the bottom rung of the ladder.

The harbor itself is eerily quiet, only the metallic CLANGS! of lines against metal masts, the creak of wooden hulls, and the gentle lap of waves around him. It’s a far cry from the chaos of the day—and of the night before, too.

The ocean absorbs even the smallest lights from the shore, eating them until there are only strange, muddy streaks amid the pitch blackness of the world around him.

Zoro picks a direction and walks until he feels the boat’s railing—then follows the line until he reaches the stern. In the dark, he folds himself down into the dinghy, pressing his head against the wooden hull at the waterline. It’s the closest he can be to curling up underwater, the little rowboat a cocoon in the ocean.

With a strange, half-asleep detachment, he wishes that the sea were a box he could fold himself inside, a thousand leagues of silent pressure for comfort. But it’s not—it’s water—so he settles for the rowboat and closes his eyes.

You smelled like blood—

The ship is Nami’s and Nami needs him to be strong, too—strong in ways that don’t involve killing. Which is the only thing he knows how to do, he thinks. Or the only thing he knows how to do well.

—like home—

The rowboat rocks and a wet hand reaches down over the edge of the hull to drip seawater on his head—and then onto the rest of him, too.

—and I liked your hair—

Zoro reaches up and grasps it.

—and you were lonely—

They sit in silence.

- - -

The next morning, Luffy is gone and in the dinghy is a pile of tarnished, salt-crusted gold jewelry with engravings neither of them can read. Nami bursts into tears when she sees it—then locks it in the bilge with the rest of her stash, well hidden (but compromised, now—now that they know Kaido is willing to go after their boats). Then she spikes their coffee with the best spiced rum they have left and they set about maneuvering the rowboat back to shore to join in with the repairs.

- - -

The next three days are a blur of work and sweat and exhaustion, until on the fourth, something changes.

When they reach shore, the man from the day after the fire is waiting on the intact docks with a massive canvas toolbag, wearing the exact same work overalls and looking like he’s barely slept, either.

Waving from the dinghy, Nami calls, “Thanks for doing this. Usopp, right?” and Zoro reaches out to steady the boat enough for the man—Usopp, presumably—to step in. He settles his tools in the bottom of the hull and eyes Zoro warily, but offers a shaky smile to Nami in return, anyway.

“Yeah—and you’re Nami?” She nods. “Better you than those assholes up at the yacht yard,” he grouses back. “I’d rather look at an old-school hauling mechanism than another state of the art engine that’s going to break in two years.”

Nami snorts. “You’d think with all that money they’d be able to buy quality,” she says, scooting over to make room as Usopp settles on the wooden seat. Then she gestures vaguely at Zoro, who starts rowing them back to her boat—still studying the newcomer.

He looks familiar even beyond their encounter a day before—but Zoro doesn’t make the connection until Vegetable Three comes racing down the shore with something in his hand.

He waves, and Usopp waves back, calling, “Just toss it!” across the water—and the kid does. Incredibly, Usopp catches it without batting an eye, and as he tosses it into his toolbag Zoro blinks.

“You’re the maintenance guy,” he grunts, blunt as can be, and Nami snickers.

Usopp forgets to be afraid of Zoro long enough to scowl. “Reductive—I prefer mechanical engineer, because half the time I’m engineering machines more than I’m maintaining anything, and I’m way too talented to be—”then he suddenly pales, cutting himself off mid-sentence as he realizes who he’s talking to, maybe.

Zoro just rolls his eyes.

“Genius maintenance guy, then,” Zoro drawls, and Nami kicks him. He just sticks his tongue out at her in return.

Still, Usopp clams up for the rest of the journey, and by the time they’re unloading onto Nami’s boat he’s back to avoiding eye contact with him altogether. Not that Zoro cares, really—Nami has always socialized more than he’s ever wanted to, largely because of her job. At the same time, though, he knows that she rarely lets anyone in. Not Wanda, not even Nojiko. He’s only managed it by virtue of knowing her from the beginning of the end of her life, being there all through the worst of Arlong in a way even her sister has not. The right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time.

When they finally disembark, Zoro just ties off the rowboat and wanders toward the bow, away from where they’ll be working if Usopp is supposed to be doing something about their—her—wrecked fishing gear.

(He’s not even sure why it matters in the first place, not if they’ve given up fishing for now—but it might be more to keep up appearances than for any practical reason. Unless Nami really is passionate about fishing. The thought makes him snicker and Nami eyes him suspiciously.)

It doesn’t take long for Usopp to forget Zoro is there—or to decide he doesn’t bite, at the very least—and soon he’s chattering away as he pokes at the burned, bent system of pulleys and ropes that make Nami’s fishing boat a fishing boat.

Out of habit, Zoro settles with his back on the deck, arms behind his head—boots off as he dangles his bare feet over the edge of the railing. It’s still cloudy, with very little sun to warm either him or the ocean and unusually cool for early July, but he doesn’t mind. He’s used to the cool water by now. Not intending to nap but not resisting, either, he just closes his eyes to wait. If he were more of a hypocrite (or more willing to lie to himself about this, at least) he might wonder why he’s even here, useless and unnecessary with nothing to fight—even as the sea splashes up from below with the next wave and drenches his toes.

As the sounds of background conversation and metalwork fade to a kind of lulling hum, Zoro focuses on the feel of the cool wind on his skin, through his hair. Nami laughs, sharp and surprised, at something Usopp has said, and it’s a comforting sound. Some small part of him wonders what it would be like to have all the right angles of the boat filled with people—not just the two of them. And then he thinks of Mihawk’s warning, of Arlong’s warning, of the anchors around their ankles.

A shadow falls over his face and he opens his eyes to see Usopp standing over him, frowning. His hair is tied back in a bandana, now, and he’s donned a pair of well-worn workman’s gloves, but Nami is nowhere in sight. Below, maybe.

“You shouldn’t put your legs out like that, you know,” Usopp says—then stutters, waves his hands a little like Zoro’s going to leap up and strangle him. “Well, I mean, obviously you can do whatever you want—it’s just, you know—it’s bad luck!”

Zoro squints up at him. “What?”

Usopp just lets out a nervous laugh. “Oh, it’s just—you know, the stories! About sea monsters.” He waves broadly out toward the water, then back toward shore—the blackened boats, the ruined docks. “I think the gods are probably mad at us, so they might be looking for, uh—” he breaks off, but Zoro doesn’t say anything. Just waits, watches him sweat. Gives him time. After a beat, Usopp laughs again. “Didn’t your mom ever warn you about doing literally, exactly the thing you’re doing right now? Hanging over the edge?” he swallows. “Not that I’m telling you what to do!”

Zoro raises an eyebrow at him and Usopp just wrings his hands—and Zoro wonders why he’s started the conversation at all if he’s so goddamn terrified of him.

After a beat, Zoro takes pity on him. “No,” Zoro grunts, sitting up. He doesn’t take his feet out of the water. Usopp eyes him warily, but still—he seems to relax when Zoro doesn’t immediately lash out.

“Oh,” Usopp mutters.

They lapse into silence.

Glancing around, he sees that Nami still hasn’t reappeared—and as Usopp begins to rock back and forth on his heels, Zoro wishes he knew how to talk to people. Sober, at least. Then wonders why he even cares. (Then wonders why he cares that he cares—and that feels a little bit stupid and circular, so he stops thinking about it altogether.)

“I didn’t grow up around here,” he says, and Usopp jolts a little in surprise.

“What?”

God. “I’m from a different island,” Zoro repeats through gritted teeth, then he nods back toward the harbor. “So I didn’t hear about the local boogeyman as a kid.”

“Oh,” Usopp replies, “Oh, I don’t know why I thought—because of your un—” Zoro’s eyebrows inch higher, and Usopp swallows nervously before continuing, “Anyway. Well, basically—when I was a kid, my mom used to say that when things aren’t going well, you shouldn’t stick your feet or your arms or whatever in the water without looking,” he says, nodding seriously, “because Nika’s unhappy and the sea gods might drag you in to feed him.”

Almost out of habit, Zoro feels the urge to snort—and he immediately regrets it as Usopp’s genuinely earnest expression starts to fall. He scrambles to salvage what’s left of their frankly insane conversation (that isn’t so insane after all, really, since Zoro knows at least part of it is true).

A baffled, skeptical, “Nika?” is all he can muster on short-notice. It sounds familiar, but—

Vaguely, he feels like they’re just repeating questions back and forth to each other, and wonders if he’s been overthinking basic conversation for the last twenty-five years.

“Y-yeah,” Usopp replies, and then he trails off—and Zoro thinks he’s lost the thread of things entirely until Nami’s voice carries through the hatch as she emerges from below, log book in hand.

“I’ve heard that before. Is that who the shrines are for?” she calls, and Usopp jumps a little—even as Zoro rolls his eyes.

At the question (or maybe just Nami, a reprieve from talking to Zoro—who he's still vaguely afraid of) Usopp perks up. “Kind of! I mean, yeah—the big Sun God in the Trench. But also the sea gods themselves, and the missing Moon God—it’s a whole thing,” he says, waving his hands as Nami crosses the deck, book tucked under her arm. Usopp trails off again but she gestures him onward and plops next to Zoro, dangling her feet over the open water, too.

“Go on.”

He stares at them both before letting out a strangled kind of, “Do you actually want to know?”

Zoro and Nami exchange a look.

“We have a keen interest in the local wildlife,” Zoro drawls, and Nami snorts out a laugh. The sound startles Usopp, who might be one of the most skittish people Zoro has ever met—second only to Koby, maybe.

Nami elbows Zoro in the side, trying (and failing) to hide her smile as he flips her the middle finger in return. “Local legends, then,” she amends. Then she pats the deck beside them both. “Seriously, you might as well. Do you really want to go back and deal with all that?”

Usopp glances back toward the marina and grimaces. “Fair,” he says, and after a moment’s hesitation, he does sit—with his legs crossed and away from the edge of the deck. “I guess it sort of depends,” he starts, leaning toward them both. “Some people leave offerings for Nika himself, but most try to appease the sea gods because they’re—I don’t know—more immediate. The moon god is his own problem.” He waves a hand in emphasis, building momentum as he continues—

“Apparently—way back in the beginning of time, when humans weren’t, like, big players and the gods were way more active—the sun god got himself stuck under the surface of the ocean trying to play a trick on the moon. My mom used to say that the sun we see is just his reflection from far away, and that the real sun is down at the bottom of the sea—and he’s huge. The size of a house. Or a whole town—” Usopp gestures outward, encompassing the entire harbor, “—and because of that, he’s constantly hungry. So he made a deal with the sea gods who already lived underwater, and promised them luck and prosperity and, I don’t know, light, I guess—I’ve heard something about glowing fish out in the deep sea—if they made sure he was always fed.”

Nami raises an eyebrow. “And the eating children thing?”

“That was probably creative liberty,” Usopp admits with a fond kind of laugh. “My mom always loved a good story, and it probably kept me from accidentally drowning as a kid.”

And suddenly Zoro feels like an asshole. “You were joking earlier,” he says, finally realizing—and Usopp really does laugh, then, as Zoro feels heat creep up his neck in embarrassment.

“It wasn’t a very good joke,” Usopp replies good-naturedly, “if you didn’t know the story in the first place. But—no, they probably won’t pull you under.” Still, he flushes, too—and Zoro wonders if this is what it feels like to get along with someone normal.

Nami laughs at them both. “I don’t know about that,” she says, and Zoro shoots her a look. “At the very least, if he was going to get himself eaten it probably would’ve happened by now.”

“Fuck off,” Zoro gripes back, shoving her shoulder as Nami snickers—

—and there’s a splash as a voice pipes up from below, utterly indignant and vaguely offended. “I don’t eat people! You guys are so rude,” Luffy whines, and Zoro barks out a genuine laugh, half surprise and half delight. He can’t help it. It’s Luffy.

Usopp lets out a kind of keening, terrified moan (“What the hell—”) and Nami jerks forward in surprise, nearly toppling overboard. “Luffy!” she hisses. “We’re way too close to shore—you can’t be here.”

“But Nami,” he whines—quieter, now. “I don’t eat people.”

Ignoring Nami, Zoro kicks water in Luffy’s face—and Luffy spits a stream of seawater back at him. “Oh yeah? I’ve seen you with a whole human leg in your mouth,” Zoro says, even as Luffy protests.

“It wasn’t attached.”

Usopp, utterly pale as he stares overboard with eyes the size of saucers, lets out a shaky, “It wasn’t—?”

And Luffy nods vehemently, like the distinction makes all the difference. “That doesn’t count!” he declares, yanking on Zoro’s ankle—until Zoro kicks him in the head with his other foot. Luffy doesn’t even blink. “I didn’t eat it!”

“Both of you, shut it—” Nami says, shoving Zoro to the side, and both of them stop—although Luffy has the audacity to pout at her like a dejected puppy. She frowns down at him, then glances around at the other boats anchored in the harbor—and back toward the marina, where workers and fisherman alike are well in the throes of rebuilding.

It’s quiet, but they are by no means alone. Anyone with half-decent distance vision could glance over and see a fourth person floating in the water—and if anyone decided to look too closely—

They’re already on thin ice after Arlong’s threat, anyway.

Usopp has broken out into a sweat, muttering, “Is that—are you seeing—oh my god—” but he goes largely ignored as Nami continues—

“Are you suicidal?”

“I’m hungry,” Luffy whines again, swiping for Zoro’s ankle a second time—but even as he says it, Zoro can see Luffy taking everything in. The three of them, the boat, the docks—assessing in broad daylight.

Zoro wonders if hunger is all there is to it—or if Nami hissing at him, Zoro splashing water in his face; if giving them both a heart attack in the middle of the harbor—is why he’s really here. He’d been watching, after all. Watching close enough to catch the guy, to save Nami’s boat. To stop the fire from spreading. (To know, maybe, just how alone they really are.)

In his peripheral vision, Zoro sees Usopp put his head in his hands as he continues to moan, “I’ve lived a good life. I’m too young and cute and incredible to die like this. I deserve better—please, oh great and powerful god of the sea, I’m begging—”

“I think you should eat him, personally,” Zoro scoffs, and Luffy snickers as Nami smacks Zoro again.

“I’m serious,” she says, waving her log book at Luffy for emphasis. He dips down into the water so that only his sad, innocent eyes are visible—and Zoro snickers, too. Neither of them move. (Zoro knows she’s right, knows it’s dangerous, especially because Robin knows, but in this moment he can’t bring himself to care—not entirely.) Then Nami she throws her hands up in exasperation. “Fine! Fine, if you’re going to be a pain—Usopp, get it together. We’re leaving.”

Luffy lets out a bubbly cheer, eyes bright and clear and happy, before he dives in a swirl of glistening red—his tail splashing up to the surface for just a moment. Zoro kicks his legs in the water like a child to hide the sound, misting them all—and Nami shoots to her feet with a curse.

“Asshole!” She shakes out the log book, now wet, and Zoro actually does feel a little bit bad about that. He doesn’t apologize, though—and she just slaps the back of his head with the damp paper and stalks off toward the wheelhouse.

Finally, Usopp (pale and trembling still) stands on shaky legs and turns to follow—just in time for Zoro to grab his shirt and yank him back down. He may be a nervous wreck, but Zoro barely knows him—and two hundred-thousand dollars is still fuck you money.

“If you try to cash in on the bounty,” he says, low and dangerous, “I will hunt you like an animal.”

Usopp looks ready to cry, but he shakes his head anyway—aggressively. Vehemently. “N-no way—” he sputters, “There’s a-absolutely no way I’d tell anyone.” Even through near-tears, there’s a steely certainty in his gaze.

Zoro believes him.

- - -

Over the next hour Usopp calms down, completely reorienting his worldview in less than a fraction of the time it took either Nami or Zoro. Maybe he’s more willing to believe in monsters, maybe he already believed—or maybe he’s helped along by the fact that Luffy swims beside their boat from the moment they’re out of the harbor.

Rigging still destroyed, they’re forced to motor all the way to the cove, so it’s mid-afternoon when they finally stop for the day. Still, the time passes quickly with someone else onboard—or someone and a half, with Luffy in the water. It’s almost nice to have the company—even as Usopp spends half the trip working on the hauling mechanism, mumbling to himself and glancing out at the sea.

As soon as Zoro drops the anchor, Luffy clings to the chain and grins, then disappears in a whirlwind of fins and scales before Zoro can even process the hollered goodbye. Nami pokes her head up from the hatch belowdeck, halfway up the ladder, at the noise—and Zoro shrugs in response, absolutely, definitely not disappointed.

Usopp blinks down at the water. “Wait—!”

But Nami rolls her eyes. “We haven’t fed him yet,” she says broadly, to no one in particular. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”

(Because she’s surely not disappointed, either.)

Zoro settles in to wait—sitting back on the edge of the deck while the others return to work.

Nami retreats into the little galley and reemerges a moment later, tossing two brown bottles of shitty beer (all they have left, now that the marina is crawling with cops) without comment—and with an inordinate amount of confidence in his ability to catch them.

He does, of course, and Zoro pretends he doesn’t see Usopp’s impressed gape—smothered almost instantly as he snags Zoro’s eye and turns back to the disassembled mechanical thing spread out on the deck in front of him.

Zoro rolls his eyes even as he waves one bottle toward Nami in thanks—then he smacks their edges together on deck, uncapping both at the same time.

(He doesn’t miss Usopp’s, Holy shit—cool, either.)

(Maybe he has been overthinking friendship.)

Nami calls up from the galley again, this time shouting for Usopp. Zoro turns to see her passing their giant picnic basket up the ladder—just as a wave crests over the side of the boat, completely drenching him.

“What the fuck?” Zoro yells, and Luffy just laughs—soaking him again with one massive swipe of his tail. The saltwater burns his eyes and stings along his wounds still healing from the fight and the fire, and he hisses air through his teeth as he glares—

—and Luffy twirls a little purple-haired girl in the water, grinning.

“See?” he says, laughing as Zoro (bewildered) shakes out his hair like a dog. “He’s not scary!” When Zoro opens his eyes again, Luffy is holding her suspended in the air directly in front of his face, wide-eyed and green-scaled and tiny.

Zoro blinks. Tama blinks back.

And then she scowls, red-faced, tail flailing as she squirms in Luffy’s grip. “I didn’t say he was!” she declares, utterly indignant. “I’m not scared of anything!”

Luffy chuckles and lets her drop back into the water with a splash.

Alerted by the noise, Nami scrambles toward the rail, pressing in next to Zoro as Tama swims in angry circles—until Nami gasps, “Oh—you!” and the little girl zips behind Luffy, startled.

Luffy doesn’t let her hide. Instead, he just tugs Tama onto his head like a hat and holds her in place with both hands, preventing her escape even as she tries to wiggle.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything?” Luffy teases, giggling—and she growls, reaching down to yank at his lips until he frees her again. She splashes down, pounding her little fists against his chest while Luffy looks up and locks eyes with Zoro, beaming. “These are my friends!”

Usopp is the last to arrive, exclaiming, “There’s a little one!” and again, Tama retreats behind Luffy—but this time he just waits while she peers around him, staring defiantly at the three of them lined-up and watching her in return.

She looks healthy, Zoro thinks—vibrant and alive—a far cry from the weepy, bleeding little thing they’d rescued at the docks. Her scales shine iridescent blue-green even in the overcast weather, and there’s color in her cheeks—and strength in her voice.

It’s like letting out a breath Zoro hadn’t been aware he’d been holding tight in his lungs, and next to him Nami really does sigh.

“Oh, thank god, she’s okay,” she mumbles. She’s pale, too—a little sickly, and he wants to reach out but doesn’t because she sniffs, clears her throat, and glares at him (out of habit, maybe). He blinks back—caught off guard—and he wonders, then, if they should have talked about it more. If they should talk about anything more. What else is eating her up inside that he doesn’t know because they just don’t.

From below, Luffy hums, “What’re you supposed to say?” poking at Tama in the water and sticking his tongue out at her like he’s a kid himself.

In response, Tama huffs—then she grins, a great gleaming smile to rival Luffy’s own, right up at the three of them—to Zoro. “Thank you very much,” she says, enunciating each syllable in the way children so often do to sound more grown up. Luffy giggles.

And, because she’s looking right at him, Zoro grunts, “No big deal,” with a shrug—which makes Tama frown. She forgets to be afraid, maybe, as she swims a little closer and stares up at him from below.

“No,” she says firmly. “You got hurt. That’s a big deal.”

It’s a child’s logic—simple. Irrefutable. And inexplicably, it carves an ache out of Zoro’s own chest, Tama gazing at him with a kind of absolute certainty that he’s not sure what to do with. He can’t remember the last time he’s thought of his own injuries as anything other than an inevitable fact of life.

Zoro isn’t sure how to respond.

Thankfully, Nami claps her hands in the air once—snapping them all to attention, even Usopp.

“Okay—” she starts, but before she can even get a word out, Luffy cheers, Food! Food! Food! and Nami sighs. “Alright, alright,” she gripes, turning back to the basket now abandoned in the middle of the deck. Zoro can hear the smile in her voice. “You’ll have to make due with what we have, though—” she hefts it over to the edge and sets it down, then sits cross-legged as she pulls it open. “I haven’t exactly had the time to go back into town.”

(And they can’t exactly haul a shitload of raw meat with bait as an excuse—not with their fishing gear broken and half the marina keeping a wary eye on them anyway.)

Luffy nods like he’s listening, but out of the corner of his eye, Zoro sees his tail flick up and splash Usopp—still frozen and staring—directly in the face. He sputters and Zoro snorts just as Luffy and Tama both break out into giggles, completely distracted.

“I don’t think they care,” Zoro says, and he finally, finally takes a sip from his beer. Arguably, it’s even worse than before now that there’s seawater mixed in, but he drinks it with as much of a straight face as he can muster and nudges Usopp—drenched, dazed.

Usopp takes the other bottle with a look of shaky thanks and swigs, long and hefty—then gags, choking it out over the side of the boat. That sets Luffy and Tama giggling again, and Nami wheezes.

Surrounded by so much joy, Zoro can’t help but laugh, too.

- - -

Already soaked, it doesn’t take long for both Zoro and Usopp to tumble into the ocean—and for once, Zoro jumps in of his own accord before he’s dragged.

Tama’s laughter echoes off the trees in the cove as she plays an entirely one-sided game of Marco Polo with Usopp—zipping under the water and popping up impossibly fast in impossible locations while he swims around, blindfolded. Any hint of apprehension between both of them is long gone, cured by food and fun, and as he watches them play Zoro has the strangest feeling—that he’s going to know Usopp for the rest of his life.

Suddenly, Luffy surfaces next to him, so close Zoro can feel the heat of his body through the water and with enough force to send a wave of water up his nose. He snorts, scowling, and nearly loses the rhythm of his treading as Luffy steadies him with his tail.

“I told you to stop doing that,” he gripes, but Luffy just grins at him.

“Sorry, Zoro—” he says, and there’s not an ounce of sincerity in his voice. “But look at this!” He thrusts his hands up through the surface, a puddle of water collecting in his cupped palms like a little tidepool—and floating inside are half a dozen round, green balls of moss. “It’s you!”

From the side of the deck, Nami barks out a peal of laughter, and Luffy giggles—dumping the whole thing on his head without warning. Zoro sputters, shaking the water out of his eyes, but can feel the moss sticking in his hair and scowls.

Luffy just laughs even harder.

“It’s a good look for you,” Nami hollers. “Very natural.”

And Luffy adds, “I think they’re happy there,” with a decisive nod.

Zoro flips them both the middle finger with a splash, scowling—then takes a deep breath and dunks his head underwater, muffling their giggles as he scrubs the moss out of his hair.

When he resurfaces, it’s just in time to hear Usopp declare that even though he is the best Marco Polo player to ever exist, he’s going to let Tama win just this once out of the goodness of his heart—and Tama’s excited shrieks in response.

By the time Zoro rubs the saltwater out of his eyes, they’re already swimming back toward the boat, and he barely has a moment’s reprieve before Tama latches onto his back as they pass. She squishes her wet, baby cheek into his neck in a half-hug, and whispers something in that way children do, more a shout than anything. “You’re fine,” she says, voice muffled and bubbly. “I’ve decided I don’t mind,” then zips off before he can blink.

It doesn’t make sense, but before he can ask—he turns back to see Luffy watching him, a wide grin on his face, and Zoro blames the day’s exercise for the tightness in his chest, the heat on his face.

He dunks himself again.

Eventually, he and Usopp end up back on deck when Tama starts to wilt, tired from the excitement and still recovering from her own ordeal in the early summer. Usopp sidles right up next to Zoro and Nami, fully acclimated and dangling his feet over the edge while Luffy and Tama swim below. Tama, eyes dropping, lounges on Luffy’s chest as he floats on his back—but there’s a sleepy, joyful smile on her face that never leaves, even as she dozes.

Through an effort of what must be herculean willpower, Luffy hasn’t eaten them out of house and home—so while they drink another equally-terrible beer, Usopp tears into an apple, ravenous and long-recovered from any of the morning’s stress.

“So,” Usopp says around a mouthful of fruit. “I feel like I’ve been very cool about all of this so far—” Nami snorts and Usopp rolls his eyes in return, swallowing, “—but I really do have to ask. How the hell did you,” he gestures in Zoro’s general direction, “end up friends with one of the sea gods. You—Nami—I understand. Even I know how well you know the ocean.” (Nami shrugs, sipping from her own beer.) “But you—” Zoro raises an eyebrow, and Usopp cuts himself off with an almost sheepish grin. “Well, you know.” He doesn’t elaborate.

Before either Zoro or Nami can answer, though, Luffy pipes up from below. “Zoro gave me food!” he says proudly. Tama flops her little tail on Luffy’s stomach, mumbling in her sleep, and Luffy pats her back—and Zoro grunts, exchanging a look with Nami.

They’re not talking about it, then—the cargo district.

Usopp, oblivious, laughs and leans forward over the railing. “You’re easy to please, huh?” he asks, half-joking. “So I guess all the stories are true—”

“No,” Luffy scowls, splashing Usopp’s legs with his tail—but it’s a lazy motion, one that doesn’t disturb the little girl. “It was good food!”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Usopp snickers back.

“Meat.”

He turns to Zoro—caught up in the moment, maybe—and snorts, “What, did you feed him one of your victims?” Then, as if realizing what he’s said, he pales as Zoro scowls. Nami scoffs and smacks Usopp on the side of the head hard. At the very least, the look on his face is genuine when he apologizes. “Sorry—too far, too far.”

Below, Luffy watches the exchange with an unreadable expression on his face, and Zoro swigs from his drink—long and deep, avoiding eye contact. He’s not sure what to do with the strange twist in his gut. It’s not embarrassment and it’s certainly not shame. And, fuck—he’s seen Luffy kill someone, and he knows there have been more. Why should it matter if Luffy’s seen him kill at least six someones?

Then in the blink of an eye it’s gone, and Luffy huffs as he splashes Usopp again.

“What difference does the kind of meat make? Meat is meat. It was tasty!” Luffy scowls, comically offended—and it’s almost endearing, right up until he says, “If Zoro fed me a person, I’d still eat it.”

Nami spits her beer into the ocean as she throws her head back and howls, laughter bouncing through the cove. Usopp backtracks immediately, all mirth gone from his expression as he frantically waves his hands, “Wait, wait—didn’t you say earlier that you don’t eat—oh my god.”

“I’d make an exception,” Luffy replies solemnly, “because it would probably be important.”

Nami covers her face with her hands, shoulders shaking as she laughs even harder.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Zoro grunts, rolling his eyes at the three of them. There’s a mischievous kind of glint in Luffy’s eyes that tells him he’s joking, but he wonders, too, if that’s all there is to it.

(He decides he’s overthinking it. Luffy is a monster, after all.)

With a roll of his eyes, he drains the last of his beer and stands, ignoring Nami’s giggles and Usopp’s sputtering—and heads back for the galley in search of something better to drink, a lazy wave that goes largely ignored thrown back over his shoulder.

He hears Usopp scramble to salvage the conversation, chattering, “Okay, okay—moving on. What about, uh—what about… have you ever had a candy bar?”

And Nami picks up quickly, snapping her fingers, “Oh, you’d love chocola—”

Then Zoro turns toward the stern and freezes in place, muscles tense as he instinctively reaches for the swords that aren’t at his hip—instead, they’re stashed below, tucked away while they’ve been enjoying the afternoon.

The man peering over the opposite side of the boat’s railing just blinks back at him, unfazed—and then Zoro’s brain catches up with his eyes. Blond hair, a smattering of blue scales, burn scar to match—predatory gaze watching without comment, just out of sight of where they’ve been sitting on the other side of the boat.

Zoro wonders if he should be more unsettled than he is.

Instead, he grunts, “Didn’t know he had a babysitter,” then gestures vaguely below deck. “You want food, too?”

Sabo grins, wolfish and carefree, and even though they look nothing alike the sight is so Luffy that Zoro doesn’t doubt for a moment that they’re brothers. “I see why he picked you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Zoro grunts, then he glances back toward the others, still happily babbling away, and climbs down the ladder.

He rummages until he unearths Nami’s not-so-secret flask (full, despite their apparently dwindling stash), then digs into the ice box and grabs a paper-wrapped roll of cold sausage.

When he reemerges, Sabo is back in the water, waiting patiently, an easy smile on his face—and Zoro wonders if he’s passed some kind of test without realizing it. He tosses the food to Sabo without comment. He doesn’t know Sabo well enough to judge whether he’s worth trusting, but it can’t hurt to play nice, he thinks. Especially if he’s watching Luffy.

Sabo tears into the meat with his teeth, and Zoro takes a swig of liquor—and grins. He can always trust Nami to hoard the best stuff for herself.

Just as he pivots to go, Sabo speaks up again around a mouthful of food—just loud enough for Zoro to hear. “I misjudged you,” he says, swallowing. “My apologies.” His eyes are sharp, but he seems sincere.

Zoro shrugs. “Wouldn’t have known either way,” he replies, turning back to lean against the rail. Behind him, he can hear the sounds of laughter as Usopp says something and the others erupt. Even Luffy. For a moment, Zoro wonders how they all look to Sabo—why he won’t join himself. “Figure it’s fair enough for your kind to be wary with everything that’s happened.”

Sabo tilts his head to the side and nods, perfectly amendable. “True. Luffy is an exception—he always is,” he shrugs. “But thank you—properly—for helping with Tama. She’s very precious to us.”

Zoro scoffs, “It’s fine,” because he isn’t sure what else to say—and because he’s still reeling from the sincerity of Tama’s own gratitude, too. He eyes Sabo, but he can’t see any resemblance there, either—and maybe it’s tactless, maybe it’s none of his business, but he can’t help but ask, “She your kid?”

Sabo shakes his head. Even so, there’s a sad kind of smile on his face—half-healed. “Yes and no,” he says. “Our brother took care of her, mostly, and now that he’s gone we all do what we can. Luffy especially. He feels responsible, maybe.”

“Ah,” Zoro replies, and he resists the urge to glance back toward the other side of the boat—toward Luffy. He hadn’t known. He’s coming to realize, slowly, that there is so much he doesn’t know—simply because he doesn’t know how to ask. (But then again, he’s never mentioned Kuina, either.) “Well, she’s a good kid,” he finishes lamely, scratching the back of his head.

Even so, Sabo chuckles. “Yeah, she is,” he says, and there’s a knowing, almost mischievous look in his eye as he continues, “Seems like she’s forgiven you. She loves him a lot, you know? Doesn’t like sharing.”

Zoro’s brow furrows, but before he can ask Sabo chucks the wad of wax paper back on deck and salutes—then he’s gone. Baffled, Zoro blinks at the ripples he’s left behind, and then another burst of giggles erupts from behind as Usopp squawks and Nami yells something in response.

He sips from the flask and turns back toward the others—and decides that he’ll figure it out eventually if it’s important enough.

- - -

“That’s mine,” Nami gripes, elbowing him in the ribs as he settles on the edge of the deck next to her.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” he drawls back—then takes another swig.

The minute his feet touch the water, Luffy crows, “Zoro!” and Zoro gets the strange, tight, sickly feeling in his chest again. Drinks. Raises his eyebrow at Luffy down below, who’s still lounging with Tama, a smile on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Start bringing me weird human food!” Luffy demands. To Zoro’s right, Nami and Usopp snicker—and he wonders how much he’s missed in the last few minutes. “Usopp said there’s all kinds of stuff. Burgers and fries and popcorn—”

“And hot dogs—” Usopp interjects, just as Nami adds, —and tangerine cake!

“—and more candy—”

“Oi, oi—” Zoro snorts, “I already gave you candy.”

Luffy pouts in return. “Stingy Zoro, that was forever ago,” he grumbles. “And it doesn’t count if you used it as bait.”

At the commotion, Tama rouses just a little—enough to raise her head and blink at Zoro, still half asleep. As if on cue, she mumbles, “I wanna try human candy—” already setting her head back down before she’s even finished her sentence.

Nami and Usopp laugh anew, and Zoro scrubs a hand through his hair, scowling. “Fine! Fine, whatever,” he says. “Don’t know where the hell I’m supposed to find any of that, though.”

Nami tilts her drink toward him in thought. “You could ask Sanji—”

“Who?”

“Baratie guy—”

“Hell no.”

Nami shrugs, rolling her eyes. “Suit yourself,” she says, just as Usopp hums, long and exaggerated, buzzed himself. (Zoro wonders, vaguely amused, how often he drinks—removed as he is from the more criminal elements in the harbor.)

“What about the supermoon festival? No one will think it’s weird if you’re carrying food.” Usopp shrugs, sipping his beer. Vaguely, Zoro feels sorry for him—and Usopp grimaces at the taste right on cue. But he doesn’t comment, just continues, “And it’ll keep me employed.”

Nami raises her eyebrows at Usopp. “You’re working the festival?”

He nods, listing to the side a little. “Yeah, yeah—they’re making it a whole thing this year to raise money for the—you know, for the damages,” he gestures out with both arms, almost dropping his beer. “Everyone’s gotta be involved, because we’re one big happy family, blah, blah, blah.”

She snorts. “What a load of bullshit,” she says. “I’m shocked they got everyone to cooperate. Last I heard, Arlong was bitching about charity and appearances.”

“Yeah, well,” Usopp replies, waving a hand. “At the end of the day, the fishermen are going to do what they want and he’s not going to turn down the publicity, because they’re the ones who—”

“Zoro! Bring me food from that!” Luffy laughs, and Usopp breaks off with a chuckle as Zoro rolls his eyes.

“You might as well,” Nami giggles. “I won’t be here, anyway—I’ll be home.”

Zoro blinks at that, brain finally catching up to the topic of conversation as he mentally counts the days—and yes, it’s almost the end of summer. In all the chaos, he’d nearly forgotten. Without a word, he bumps his shoulder against hers, and she snorts again, brushing it off.

(He knows, though, that it’s a strange, bittersweet time of year for her. The joy of returning to her island—to her sister— is tainted with the fact that each visit is conditional, the carrot of Arlong’s carrot-and-stick control; it’s the only time she’s allowed off this island.)

Luffy makes a whining kind of noise, then, and Zoro rolls his eyes. “Sure—fine, why not. That too,” he grumbles, and Luffy practically cheers. “You’re like a stray cat—I fed you once, and now you won’t leave me alone.”

“No,” Usopp interjects, shaking his head seriously—there’s a flush to his cheeks, and Nami laughs again.

Zoro realizes, perhaps belatedly, that they’re all starting to feel the afternoon—the heat and the exercise combining to strengthen the alcohol in their systems. Zoro takes another drink anyway, leaning further over the side. “No?” he asks, amused.

“He’s a sea god,” Usopp continues. “Food in exchange for luck, I already explained that. Not a cat.”

“I thought feeding cats gave you good luck, too?” Nami muses, peering down at Luffy. “Maybe you are, then.”

“All hail the mighty catfish,” Zoro deadpans, and Luffy flicks his tail up to smack against Zoro’s legs as Usopp laughs. Nami snickers, too, and leans against his shoulder as Zoro huffs—hiding his own smile—then looks into the basket still tucked behind them. It’s mostly empty now except for a few stray pieces of fruit.

He grabs an apple (tosses one to Usopp, too, who catches it even as he takes another swig from his own beer) and takes a massive bite. Below, Luffy hums a lazy, nonsensical song, smiling up at Zoro through dark bangs while Zoro maybe, finally grins a little stupidly right back, mouth full of food.

Fine, then—he thinks drunkenly—Fine, he’ll bring the festival to the fish.

What could possibly go wrong?

---

Interlude III: Abyssal; 4000-6000

The strange ache he hasn’t quite figured out yet—the one he gets when he thinks of Zoro—hasn’t gone away. No matter how much he tries to fill the emptiness with food, with treasure, with violence, with time, it stays. No matter how much he gives and takes, he never feels satisfied. It’s a pull somewhere deep inside, like the ocean itself tugging him forward—the tides fighting him, dragging him toward land when all he wants (all he’s ever wanted) is to go out to sea.

He wonders if this is how it was for Ace and Deuce, how it is for Sabo and Koala—wonders if that’s why the three of them (left) don’t care, not really—why they’re more concerned than anything, having written him off as another quirk of the strange things that make up Luffy (who is already so different from the rest of them) without ever asking why.

It’s a terrible thing—not terrible in a bad way so much as terrible in a big way. A massive, suffocating, pressing kind of feeling that he can’t entirely explain. Like he’s down at the bottom of the Trench (or like the bottom of the Trench itself is inside his chest) and he can’t get out.

He is hungry. And restless.

As the weather starts to cool, the humans on the concrete edge of the island begin to slither out of their holes once again—regrouping. Angry.

And then, one night, the Red Hunter appears.

Zoro is gone, off on land with the humans (which is not where he belongs, a voice in the back of his mind says), so Luffy follows his brother out to watch the waters on Dragon’s order. (Or—suggestion, really, because Luffy has never once been ordered and listened.) The poison, slowly dissipating since Tama’s rescue, has started to remmerge again—and so the cycle of sinking ships has begun anew.

Luffy sees him on the shore, standing right at the point where the water turns to warehouse, the burns on his face and neck stark, dark against the dock lights. Still and silent as a statue, watching—waiting for something, maybe. Out in the open and alive.

Luffy feels a growl rise in the back of his throat as he stares across the surface of the water—just as Akainu’s eyes snap toward him. It’s a blind stare, because he should be impossible to see at so much distance, and yet—

Sabo’s hand clamps down against Luffy’s gills and he gurgles, flailing, sinking below the waves while his brother hisses, “Don’t you dare—” and Luffy wants to lash out, because he’s right there—but when he blinks, he sees that Sabo’s own sharp teeth are gritted, his face contorted into a kind of rage he knows mirrors his own. Luffy struggles one more time (to make his point) before he relaxes, and only then does Sabo say, “It’s a trap. A trap.”

Through the night, a voice cuts like bubbling oil, slick and hot and dangerous. “I know you’re out there, little god,” it calls, taunting, “and I know you’ve been making friends. It won’t be long until I figure out who they are, so you might as well give yourself up.”

Then the Red Hunter laughs, and it is familiar. Horrific.

Luffy wants to scream.

And he realizes, with a sick, startling clarity, that he should have killed him—the human that started the fire—but Luffy had been distracted because he’d been afraid they’d been hurt, his humans. He’d been afraid he’d been hurt, Zoro, torn apart in heat and blood—but he hadn’t. They’d both been fine.

Except—he’d fucked up. He’d inadvertently let the human live, and now word has gotten back to Akainu that they’re connected. Now, the Red Hunter has begun to hunt.

Sabo drags him away, and in the flashing starlight they see it—the human weapons lined up on the shore, on the warehouse rooftops. New and lethal. Something has changed among the humans and the docks have become a fortress.

The only thing he can do is watch them. Watch out for them.Watch out for him.

Seething, angry (wanting, wanting, wanting) Luffy decimates the next ship they find marked with poison in open waters. He does not eat the humans, but their blood fills the water (and filters through his teeth) anyway.

Still, he hungers.

Notes:

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