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Chopper was aware that every member of the crew had scars. He had memorised every single one. Either during the full medical checks he had insisted on conducting when he officially became the ship’s doctor or when they joined the crew. He had speculated to himself the damage that had been done to create every single one of them, at least those he hadn’t witnessed.
But that was what weighed on his mind all too often. He could only speculate on the stories behind them, due to the unspoken convention in the crew.
No-one talks about how someone got any of their scars, unless the person you are talking to also witnessed what happened or the subject told the story themselves.
This was something that Chopper was equally thankful for and frustrated by. It meant that none of the crew asked him to talk about the story of how he gained the metal plate on his antler, his only visible scar, but also left him unable to ask about some of the more curious scars.
The small, almost invisible scars on Luffy’s knuckles were self-explanatory given the way he fought, Chopper wasn’t even sure Luffy could tell him which of them he got when. Everyone who had read of the events of Marineford knew how he gained the one on his chest, though no-one ever brought it up. But the one that underlined his eye was a mystery, causing Chopper to often speculate at how close he had come to losing his eye.
Zoro was covered in scars, most explained as far as Chopper was concerned by his lack of he ability to dodge the blades he often found himself facing. But there were some scars that stood out more than the others. The ones across his ankles that had been still raw during his first examination, had been gruffly explained away as having been stuck, and all anyone else had said when asked was that he was an idiot. No one ever said anything about the scar that ran across his chest, though Chopper had occasionally caught Nami casting glances at it with something like disbelief in her eyes. The one that he had come back from training with had been given little notice after initial questions as to how the lack of eye affected him.
Nami had fewer scars, less a fighter than most of the crew, but there were two notable ones that Chopper had noticed the other early crew members eyes catch on. The one on her hand as if it had been stabbed through that tended to be the one that got Usopp’s attention. Then there was the one on her shoulder, as if she had both been stabbed there and had a tattoo removed, thought it was mostly covered by the abstract one she had become known for.
Usopp had smaller, less visible scars, but many of them. He had a tendency to take damage in the fights he got in, something that seemed a little odd for a sniper. He was usually happy to tell stories of his fights (often heavily embellished), though there are some that he refused to speak of. Scars from those fights were emotions still run high, even now.
Sanji had a few on his hands, slips from knives and other occupational hazards. His injuries from fights tended toward blunt force to his legs and torso, so he had less scars than other fighters in the crew. But there were some scars, dulled with age, so close to fully healed that Chopper had speculated had come from deep wounds in early childhood, but he didn’t ask as much as he cried to himself about the implications.
Robin had many small ones, consequences of twenty years alone on the seas. Survival for her had its costs.
Franky had multiple scars that covered what little of his original skin was left. Reminders of whatever had happened that had prompted him to turn himself into a cyborg, or the consequences his additions.
Brook didn’t have any skin left to show scars, but there were everlasting cracks and chips in his bones and other marks of healed fractures.
Maybe one day they will feel like telling the stories behind them. All these scars that aren’t spoken of by any of the crew, marks of healed wounds. But at least Chopper can see that these wounds had healed.
He knew there were other kinds of wounds that didn’t always heal quickly or cleanly like the physical ones do. And his instincts tell him that every single one of them had some of those tucked away inside them. Ones that are even less likely to be spoken of than their physical ones and he had no way of gauging how healed those may be.