Chapter Text
Sabo’s hands shook as he read the report one of the Whitebeards had given him. So he was right. One of his very own soldiers, under his command, was a Cipher Pol 9 agent in training. He doesn’t know how this information was gathered within a week, and frankly, he didn’t really want to know. But now he knew who was responsible for the death of his little brother.
“Ace,” he called out, knowing he’d be around. In the past week, the two never really left each other’s sides, just as things were when they were young. But they weren’t now, and they had business to attend to. “Ace, you need to listen to this.”
“What’s going on? News about Luffy?” He inquired, leaning over Sabo’s shoulder.
“Yeah. Kind of.” He said, swallowing hard when Ace took the paper.
He paled, reading further and further into the report, and exhaled shakily when he finished. “This is who did it? This is who told the Marines who he was and where he was?”
“Yeah.”
And Ace’s expression twisted into something dangerous. Something vengeful. “Then let’s go make a visit to a certain Marine base.”
⊹ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ˖
Luffy liked the people of Whiskey Peak. They gave him and his crew food, drinks, and a fun night. And then Zoro beat a bunch of them up, so he was mad now. Makino taught him about hospitality, and this very clearly wasn’t the response to it.
He also really didn’t want to listen to Zoro when he told him to stop and listen, either. But then he saw the blue-haired lady’s ship get blown up, while she fell to the ground, sobbing, while Nami held her. They fed him—regardless if they tried to kill them or not—so he was going to help her take down this Crocodile guy.
“Okay. I’ve decided,” Luffy announced, “we’re going to help her. I wanna fight a warlord.”
“Anchor, are you kidding me?!” Nami yelled. “We’re all going to die! This guy has our faces, except for yours, our names, which means he’s going to send people after us!”
Luffy just laughed, as Sanji and Zoro sighed. “It’ll be fine, Nami. If something happens to you, I don’t think Sanji would know what to do with himself. Just stick with him, and things’ll be fun!”
Sanji smiled, confident and smitten, and Nami and Usopp looked at each other with a creeping sense of doom.
On the ship, Vivi fit right in. But when a woman in tight clothing and a purple cowboy hat sat atop the railing on the top of the ship, she froze. “Miss All-Sunday,” she stated.
“Miss Wednesday, a pleasure to see you again,” Miss All-Sunday mused. Luffy didn’t really listen to their conversation all that much, just that they were heading to an island. But when she stole his hat, Luffy almost lost it. Thankfully, she gave it back without issue, along with an eternal pose. But Luffy didn’t like her, and didn’t want her help, so he crushed it. Nami got angry at him, but that didn’t matter right now. He watched and glared as she left, and they continued sailing to the island. And as they continued, Luffy ignored the persistent pain from his healing burns, and the chill running up his body.
On Little Garden, Luffy meets Dorry, and witnesses the fight he has with Brogy. It’s amazing how much honor and power the two have, and he agrees with Usopp wholeheartedly when he says that he wants to visit Elbaph someday.
And now he’s stuck, because some idiot sabotaged their duels, and he can’t stop anything because Dorry won’t let him. So now, he just has to wait.
When he finally gets out from under the giant rock, Usopp tells him what happened to Vivi, Zoro, and Nami. So of course, Luffy now has to fight the Baroque Works guys.
He didn’t think fighting those two would be so difficult to fight, but that stupid hypnosis was pissing him off, and thankfully Usopp got him out of it by burning his shirt. Now, he could properly fight the wax guy. He was pretty easy, and Usopp was smart, so he had Karoo run around the structure with their wax-covered friends with an oil-coated rope while he was getting beat up by the explosion guy, and then told Luffy to set it on fire. When he did, it set everyone free.
When Sanji arrives, already with hearts in his eyes because of Nami and Vivi, he informs them that Baroque Works now thinks that the Strawhats are dead. Nami is thrilled, as is Usopp, as that means less trouble, and even more, he brought back an eternal pose to Alabasta.
—
Luffy doesn’t know why, but his breathing keeps getting more and more labored. Like he’s an old man or some heavy smoker, like Sanji.
He met a new friend! Bon-Chan is what he introduced himself as. He wouldn’t let him touch his face when he learned what his power was, but the rest of the crew loved it.
Most of them, anyway. Vivi seemed incredibly disturbed when he left. “That was—that was Mr. Two. He’s a part of Baroque Works.”
“How do you know, Vivi? He seemed nice.” Usopp inquired.
“When he was showing us the faces he could do, I saw my father’s face. I’ve heard rumors that my father was seen overseeing illegal dance powder trade, but I know it wasn’t him. It might… it might’ve been Mr. Two.” Vivi swallowed, exhaling a shaky breath, “and now he has all of our faces.”
Under his mask, Luffy frowned. “He doesn’t have mine,” he said, but still moved to grab a permanent marker from Nami’s office. “We’ll use this, okay? And cover it with a bandage, so if we’re suspicious of someone, we can ask someone to remove it and reveal an ‘X.’ These marks will be a sign of our friendship. That way, he’ll never be able to fake it.”
Vivi smiled. “Thank you, Anchor. You’re a good captain, y’know?”
Luffy grinned back, even if she couldn’t see it. “Thanks, Vivi!”
He tied a bandage over his arm, and sighed, content. Now all they needed to do was get to Alabasta, and the fighting part should be easy.
⊹ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ˖
It was the early morning hours, which meant that Nami should be asleep. But she wasn’t, because someone was knocking on the women's quarters door.
She groaned, pushing her blankets off of her. Opening the door, she bit out, “what? You’d better have a good reason for this, or I’ll kill you right here and—”
It was Luffy, haunched over, nothing like his usual cheerful self. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell what was going on, necessarily, thanks to his mask covering it. “Nami,” he managed to rasp out, “I don’t feel great—” and then he stumbled over, collapsed on the ground with heavy breathing.
“Luffy?” She whispered, “Luffy, are you okay?” She grabbed his shoulder, shaking it gently but urgently. When he didn’t move, she hissed, “shit.”
Nami left, running to the men’s quarters. “Hey! Get up!” She yelled, and Usopp and Sanji startled awake. “Something’s wrong with Luffy! I need your help!”
At the mention of Luffy, Zoro opened his eyes, glaring at her groggily. “What the hell, witch? What’s going on, it’s like two in the morning.”
“I—I don’t know, he just knocked on my door, and then collapsed and now he isn’t moving!” Nami explained, and the three men shot up in attention.
“Luffy collapsed? Just like that?” Usopp asked incredulously.
“Yes, now come help me get him to the infirmary!” Nami shouted, and Sanji was up immediately, following closely behind her.
Zoro and Usopp arrived not long after, with Vivi just waking up and getting an explanation of the situation from the latter. Zoro lifted Luffy into his arms with ease, moving him into the infirmary swiftly.
The whole crew piled into the infirmary, Vivi included, as Nami kneeled down to look at their captain. She hesitated to take Luffy’s mask off with Vivi in the room, but for the health of her captain, it needed to go. She turned to Vivi. “Not a word that you saw his face, Vivi. Got it?” She commanded, and smiled when Vivi nodded. “Good.”
She removed his mask gently, placing it on the end table, and gasped at what she saw. The burns that she has seen bandaged from be fire were clearly infected and irritated, judging by the redness that was not there the last time she saw his face. “Shit.” She muttered, and began unbuttoning Luffy’s vest. How long has it been since he changed his bandages? Has she seen him do it before? Has she even seen him clean the wound? The sinking feeling in Nami’s stomach only got worse as she removed his vest, and held her breath, praying her expectations were incorrect. She grabbed the scissors on the desk next to her, and from Luffy’s neck to his waist, she cut the bandages. “Shit,” she hissed, looking away from the burns on his torso. His bandages, that have definitely not been changed in a while, were covering gnarled burns that reached from his stomach to the ones they connected to on his neck. He was lucky they didn’t damage his vocal cords.
Zoro’s jaw tightened, his hand squeezing the white sword. “Seas, that’s not good,” He murmured.
Sanji’s hand covered his mouth, and he looked down at the floor, and Usopp and Vivi both gasped.
Nami’s expression hardened. “Zoro, you met him first. Do you know how this happened?”
He shook his head. “No. He had the bandages when I met him, never took them off. I didn’t… I didn't know that it was…”
“It’s fine, Zoro. We need a doctor. We don’t have medicine, or the proper tools to take care of him. If we don’t, Luffy could die.” She took a trembling hand to his forehead, and her frown deepened at the heat. “He’s got a bad fever, too, but I think we can manage that. Okay, for now, I need alcohol, a clean rag, and something to manage the fever.”
“I can make some soup. Something easy to digest, and when he wakes up, I’ll tell him to eat slowly.” Sanji stated, leaving the room, a mission in his mind.
Usopp exhaled slowly, his hands grasped together to stop the shaking. “I—I can get the alcohol and the rag.”
“Good. Go. Vivi, Zoro, I need to talk to both of you.” Nami commanded.
Usopp scurried out, and Vivi and Zoro stepped forward a bit. “What do you need?” The green-haired man asked.
“To make a decision,” Nami explained, “Zoro, you’re the first mate, the captain is incapacitated, so it’s you I’m asking. What do we do about getting Vivi to Alabasta? Because if we wait to try and get a doctor in Alabasta, Luffy will be dead by then. But without Luffy, in no way will we be able to help you take Crocodile down.” Mid-sentence, Nami turned to Vivi, who was staring at Luffy.
“I need to get to Alabasta as soon as possible. I know that. You all know that. But I’m not—I won’t leave you alone with something like this. If Anchor truly believes that he will defeat Crocodile, then I believe him. But he needs to be alive to do that.” Vivi
“Alright, then,” Zoro began, “we need to stop at the next island to find a doctor for Luffy. Then, we gun it to Alabasta as fast as we can to make up for lost time.”
“Right.” Nami and Vivi said, in unison.
As they finished their conversation, Usopp hurried in with a bottle of alcohol and probably one of the cleanest towels on the ship.
Nami soaked the towel in the drink, and winced, hesitating to touch her captain’s injuries with it. “If he didn’t wake up before, this sure as hell will do the trick,” she turned to Zoro, “I need you to hold him down. Just in case.”
Zoro gently held Luffy’s shoulders, preparing to hold them down tighter if he were to wake up. Nami laid the towel down on the burn lowest on his torso, just on his waist, gently dabbing the injury and wincing as Luffy flinched and shot up, until Zoro pushed him back into the cot. Luffy hissed and through gritted teeth, hissed “what the hell, Zoro?”
“The witch is disinfecting your burns. We couldn’t warn you because you were out, because they’re infected. Don’t you know any proper wound care, moron?” Zoro winced as Luffy grabbed onto Zoro’s arms, tightly gripping onto him.
With a sharp intake of breath, Luffy shook his head. “Not really. I’ve never—I’ve never been burnt that bad before.”
Zoro rolled his eyes. “Of course you haven’t.”
When Nami was done with the alcohol, Zoro rubbed his bicep. Luffy had left nail indents in his skin. It might’ve been better to let him bite or squeeze something other than skin.
After Nami reapplied bandages, Luffy curled up underneath a blanket, pouting. “I don’t like being sick,” he complained.
Nami sighed. “Yeah. I don’t like being sick either, but it happens. All the time. In your case, it’s so bad that you need a doctor. But for now, you need to rest. Go to sleep, Luffy.”
Luffy complied, hiding further into the blanket with a muffled, “mhm.”
—
Zoro remained perched on the chair next to the bed their captain lay in, so when Nami whispered, probably as quiet as she could manage, “fuck. No, no no!”
His eyes flew open. “What’s going on? What happened?”
Guild spread across her face, “one-hundred two,” she whispered, “his fever’s getting worse.” She removed the thermometer from Luffy’s mouth, and set it on the counter by the sink.
“We need to move faster. We can’t keep wasting any more time while his health is deteriorating with untreated wounds he haphazardly wrapped a month ago.” Zoro stood, making his way to the door.
With a new towel, Nami ran cold water on it and placed it over her captain’s forehead. He shivered, which wasn’t good. If he thought he was cold while he was burning up, he might need a doctor faster than they realized.
Nami stumbled as the ship shook, and she ran outside to see what had happened. To her bewilderment, there was a fat man eating the Merry. Zoro and Sanji screamed at him, and then with an almost perfectly timed kick from Sanji and blow with the flat of his blade from Zoro, they sent him flying in the opposite direction.
“Okay, what the hell was that? Why in the world was he eating the ship?” Nami implored, and Zoro sheathed his sword, and filled her in on the details of the guy. “What a weird pirate. I mean, that tracks for the grand line, I guess.”
“How’s Luffy?” Usopp asked nervously.
Nami knew that morale on the ship couldn’t be worse, so instead of telling him of their captain’s worsening conditions, all she said was, “nothing’s changed, yet,” then she turned to look towards Sanji, “will you get him another bowl of soup? I’m sure he’s hungry by now.”
“Of course, Nami-San. Would you like something, as well?” Sanji offered.
Y'know what? Yeah. I’m tired, my sleep got cut in half, and I’ve spent almost the entire day taking care of Luffy. I deserve something nice. “Yes, please, Sanji. Something nice, if you will. Thank you.” She smiled as Sanji walked off with pride, as if her thanking him for his hard work was equal to one million berri.
As he left, Vivi approached her. “Do you want to switch out with me? You’ve been doing a lot today. You deserve a break.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just… Luffy’s fever got worse, again. If we don’t get to an island fast, I’m worried there would be permanent damage to his brain or body.” Nami lamented, shivering in the cold of the snow.
Sanji exited the kitchen, a bowl and a plate in both hands. He placed the plate in front of her, offering a compliment along with it, and they both moved into the infirmary. She frowned at his labored breathing. It didn’t look right for him. Being bedridden.
She placed her plate on the counter right next to her, and shook Luffy awake. “Luffy, Sanji made you some more soup. It should help bring the fever down.”
Luffy groaned softly, burying his head into the pillow. Nami flicked his forehead gently, and said, “Luffy. C’mon, do you want to get better or not? Wake up and eat the damn soup.”
Luffy’s eyes cracked open, and Nami’s unease heightened. They were glassy, and kind of far away, like he couldn’t really focus on anyone properly. “M’not really h’ngry,” he slurred, and Sanji almost dropped the bowl.
“He’s not hungry?” Sanji asked, disbelief dripping from his tone, “are we sure we’re taking care of Luffy here?”
Nami shrugged helplessly. Luffy had never not been hungry. She looked back to her captain, and startled a bit when she saw him staring wide-eyed at Sanji.
“Is—is something wrong, Luffy?” She asked cautiously.
They both started panicking when tears began to visibly well up in his eyes.
“Sabo?”