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“Zoro?”
Zoro blinked one eye open, glanced down at Chopper. The little reindeer had been napping against his side, but was now sitting up and looking troubled, tapping his hooves together in a small, fidgety motion.
“What?” Zoro asked after a minute or so, when it was clear Chopper wasn’t going to continue on his own.
Chopper startled slightly. “Oh! Um, I was just wondering... have you ever seen a sakura tree? A real one?”
Zoro blinked. “...Yeah. Of course.” A distant memory, one he hadn’t thought of in years, surfaced at the question, and he continued absently, “The place where I was born. There were lots of ‘em there. It was a whole spectacle in spring, when they flowered. Whole island would celebrate it, there was a special name for it and everything.”
“Oh,” Chopper said, sounding hesitant. “...Was it pretty?”
“Yeah,” Zoro said, glancing up at the sky and trying to pull the memories into focus. They were old and faded, all blurry faces and lost details, but he could answer that at least with confidence. “It was really pretty.”
“Oh,” Chopper said, and went back to fiddling with his hooves again. Zoro closed his eye again, relaxing under the sunlight, but didn’t fall back asleep. He sensed the little reindeer still had more to say.
“I want to see one someday,” Chopper said eventually, sounding far away. “A real sakura tree.”
Zoro opened his eye again to look down at him, eyebrow raising slightly. “What’s stopping you?”
Chopper looked up at him, startled, then huffed and looked away. “Don’t be stupid, stupid. They're only found on a couple islands, and I don’t even know which islands those are!”
Zoro looked at him for a second, then sighed, resigning himself to losing the next half-hour of naptime, and shoved himself to his feet. “Follow me.”
He was four steps away before he heard Chopper’s hooves tapping on the deck behind him. Zoro lead them to the galley without looking back to check if the reindeer was following.
It was around mid-afternoon on a hotter day, which meant- yes, the dumbass cook had already got a pair of overly-elaborate sundaes resting on the counter, ready to be ferried out to the girls accompanied by an obnoxious amount of fawning. And, more importantly, each was topped with a single fresh red cherry, delicately scored along the side where the pit had been squeezed out.
Between Sanji’s compunctions about wasting food and Luffy’s willingness to eat anything that was even vaguely edible, the galley’s trash was always almost shockingly clean, and today was no different. The pair of cherry pits were resting neatly on top of a small pile of fish bones that had already been cleaned of every scrap of flesh available. Zoro reached down and fished them out, rolling the seeds in his palm.
“Here,” he said, passing them over to Chopper, who cupped them carefully between his hooves, his already too-big eyes going wider with surprise.
“Are these-?”
“Pits,” Zoro confirmed. “You can plant ‘em. Cherry trees are still just trees.”
Chopper was still staring at the seeds. “But I’m- I’m from a winter island? I don’t know anything about- plants, or-”
“Yeah, me neither,” Zoro said easily, stepping back out of the galley. “We’re not done yet.”
This time there wasn’t any hesitation in Chopper’s gait as he trotted along in Zoro’s footsteps- ten little scurrying steps clicking against the wood equaling every one of Zoro’s strides. The sound was almost stupidly endearing.
Nami was, predictably, reclined beneath the shade of her little grove, studying a map from behind a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses. She glanced up at their approach, a wordless question on her face.
“I need a favor,” Zoro said, and before her face could narrow into the ‘of course, but it'll cost you’ smirk, clarified, “It's not for me.”
Nami pushed her sunglasses down on her nose so he could see her raise an eyebrow. “Oh?”
Zoro sidestepped, exposing Chopper where he’d been half-hiding behind Zoro’s legs, the cherry pits still cupped carefully between his hooves. Hooked a thumb, to let the little reindeer do his own explaining.
“Ah!” Chopper yelped. Zoro nodded meaningfully at the cherry pits, and after a moment he seemed to get the hint. “Ah, um, well. You know about… gardening, right, Nami?” he asked, glancing around at the tangerine trees all around them.
Nami shrugged a little, but looked intrigued, leaning over the side of her lawn chair to peer at the seeds in his hooves. “I'm not good at flowers, that's Robin’s expertise, but I grew up on a tangerine farm. Why, what’ve you got?”
Chopper glanced up at Zoro, who gave him a thumbs up. He hesitated a moment longer, then blurted all in one breath, “I want to plant a cherry tree will you help me?”
Something in Nami’s face softened, and Zoro could guess she was remembering the same thing he was- the clouds of pink snow, soft and magical, falling over Drum as they sailed away. Maybe remembering something older than that, too. He remembered the way she’d looked at the ruins of her mother’s tangerine grove on the way out of Cocoyashi.
“Well, I don't know much about cherries specifically, but I do know fruiting trees,” she said, half to herself, looking thoughtful. “And I’m sure there has to be something in the library.”
Chopper’s eyes were bright and wide. “So you’ll help?” he asked hopefully, bouncing slightly in place.
Nami rolled her eyes, but the smile on her face was fond. “Of course I’ll help,” she said, folding up her map and swinging her legs over the side of her chair.
Well, that was that settled. Zoro nodded to himself, stuck his hands in his pockets and turned around to head back to his nap.
“Oi! Where do you think you’re going!” Nami called before he’d made it more than a half step away. “You better bet you’re helping too, mister!”
“I don’t even know anything about plants!” he protested, glancing around.
“Doesn’t matter!” she said decisively. “There’s a couple big ceramic planters down in the hold and a bag of fertilizer, hop to it, chop chop-”
He scoffed, but didn’t bother arguing further as he shifted his course to head down belowdecks. It wasn’t like he really minded, after all.
It wouldn’t bloom right away, of course, might take two years or three, but he was sure Chopper would be as diligent about watering the little plants as he was about looking after their crewmates. The little reindeer was good at that- good at looking after things, making sure they stayed healthy and strong.
Zoro was kind of looking forward to seeing cherry blossoms in bloom again.