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The dojo is empty, but Zoro’s bare feet do not echo on the cold wood. The room feels smaller, though he’s alone in it, but when was the last time he was there? He stoops to pick up the training sword on the floor; as he rises back up a cough sounds and he spins, though too slowly-to see--his eye opens, and the dojo is gone. He breathes in, not the smell of stale sweat soaked into cotton but the fresh air of this house, close enough to the ocean. All around him is quiet, and there’s no apparent reason for his dream to have been interrupted. He shifts slightly against the wall he’s leaning against, turns his neck slowly to see everything in the half-light--there’s Usopp, and Kin’emon, and Robin, Luffy’s leg sticking out from behind him, Franky at the far wall, the sound of even breathing and a sense of calm, the layers of which he could peel back like a tangerine but won’t. A half-stuttered breath sounds next to him, and Zoro immediately looks down to see Law, awake, looking straight back at him, his eyes reflecting the light like gold-plated swords. Zoro rubs his neck.
“Did I wake you up?”
“No,” says Law. “I was awake already.”
Zoro would think Law needs sleep the most of any of them--by all accounts, he’s been hurt pretty badly, not even counting the arm, and sleep (after all) is the best medicine. But, then, when Zoro needs sleep the most, it’s more likely to elude him than other times, either because he can’t give himself the time and space or because he’s too much of a mess physically, wound too tightly around himself like an amateur tourniquet. Law moves each finger on his hand, the one on the injured arm, as if to check that everything’s still working. He flexes them all, and then curls his hand into a fist, the heel of his hand tightening. A good grip for grappling, maybe, but Zoro’s never been much of a hand-to-hand fighter.
“Did you learn to fight in a dojo?” Zoro says.
“No,” says Law.
He looks as if he was about to shake his head, but he won’t, not against the ground--he probably doesn’t trust himself enough to sit up. Zoro offers out his arm; Law scowls at it.
“I’m surprised you’re not telling me to go back to sleep.”
“You’re the doctor,” says Zoro. “Though I could go for some more rest myself, actually.”
He could also go for a drink, or somewhere to lie flat so his back doesn’t complain so much when he wakes up--though, the chair that had been blocking his way earlier has been moved to the other side of the room. He’d be lying pretty close to Law, but they’re in close enough proximity already that it won’t really make a difference. Zoro slides down and stretches out, his back almost immediately relaxing against the hard floor. It feels pretty fucking good. Zoro sighs.
“I just lost until I won,” Law says. "It was--semi-formal. But not a dojo."
Zoro doesn’t reply, but Law isn’t waiting for him. He closes his eyes; his breathing evens out soon after that, and by the time Zoro slips back into sleep he’s pretty sure Law’s already there too.
Zoro dreams again of the dojo, this time with wooden swords rolling away from his grasp, multiplying, one to three to ten to forty, scattering as if he’s got the wrong magnetic pole attached to his hand. (But wood’s not magnetic, he thinks, when he wakes up, and it’s because he thinks about that, he dreams again of the dojo, of the floor creaking, of voices murmuring beyond the door and beyond the hall.) It’s pushing at Zoro’s mind like a sore jaw would, reminding him it’s there when he gets up in the middle of the night, taking the next watch (despite this ship’s crew’s assurances that he’s an honored guest and doesn’t need to do anything, they’re not very competent in this regard, and he’s a creature of habit).
The crew members on watch are all asleep at their posts, but Zoro’s not the only one awake. Law is out on deck too, staring out at the sea, not as if he’s looking for something, a distant lighthouse or their destination or the flash of a sea king’s fin. Zoro keeps his distance; there’s no need for redundant watchers, and he’s got nothing to say, really. Not about his dreams (what do they have to do with Law, anyway, besides a brief conversation?) and not about earlier, Law not shoving his arm away, his frown easing slightly, asking for another drink. The white of Law’s fresh bandages catches the light of the deck lanterns off the ripples of the water, for a second. It’s bright, Zoro doesn’t flinch. Law turns his head, meets Zoro’s eye. The light is now brighter on his earrings. For a second, they stay like that, and then Zoro walks on. There’s a whole perimeter to patrol, and more sleepers to step over.
At night, the landscape of Zou seems even stranger, even more evident that it’s a living thing and not a massive rock emerging from the ocean or a small, self-contained ship. With that at the forefront of his consciousness, and with everything that’s happened, everything that’s about to happen, Zoro doesn’t want to sleep quite yet. He needs time to sift it through so he can sleep on it better.
He’s not the only one of his temporary group to be up this late, and he’s not shocked to find Law in a clearing in the forest, sword tucked under his arm, looking at the stars. He doesn’t look displeased to see Zoro, so Zoro considers that as good of a reason to stay here as any.
“So I guess we’re headed to Wano.”
“Yeah,” says Law.
He flexes his fingers, though his arm’s got to be mostly healed by now--but it doesn’t take long to build up a habit like that, Zoro supposes. Law catches Zoro’s look, and then turns his hand over, palm side up.
“It’s fine.”
“Good,” says Zoro.
(They’ll need him at a hundred percent, especially if they have to wait for Luffy--especially if that cook’s gotten himself into deep trouble, a bottomless ocean in which he can’t tread. There are huge gaps in his defenses, huge gaps in what he will let others carry, huge gaps in his judgement.)
“Are you worried?”
“Nah,” says Zoro. “It’s just--I don’t know.”
And there’s the trouble, the unknowns, just how deep that guy’s gotten and how far down Luffy’s going to have to reach to pull him out; even he’s got a limit to how far he can stretch. He’d feel both better and worse if he was going with them, but--he is more needed here. He rests his hand on Shuusui’s hilt; perhaps there’s something in the sword returning to the place it’s already carved up so much.
“I don’t either, really,” says Law..
It’s an admission that perhaps he wouldn’t have given a week, two weeks ago, and definitely not if Zoro hadn’t given his own first. He bumps Law’s shoulder.
“We’ll figure it out.”
Law makes a noise in the back of his throat, but not an incredulous one. Again, he flexes his fingers and then relaxes them, a loose grip on the hilt of an invisible sword. They should fight, Zoro thinks, just to see who’s better--Law has the bigger bounty, more of a name for himself, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’d win, one on one. There’s a lot more to it than that, like the scars roped around his own arms, the tiny nicks on Law’s, covered up mostly by the shadows of his tattoos--but he can still see the raised skin under the moonlight, when the sky is this clear.
Maybe it’s because he keeps running into Law at night, that Zoro keeps thinking himself in circles, reminding himself of something about that night in Dressrosa--but what, exactly? Nothing important had really happened, except Law had given him an honest answer, had let him come a little closer, had fallen back asleep. Zoro doesn’t know why he should care about that. Except--thinking about Law’s eyes in the low light, how he can conjure them up out of his memory now, even though he hadn’t been looking so closely then (so it’s probably more of an amalgamation of all those other times retrofitted into the recollection)--it clicks into place, gradually, an old sword screeching out of its sheath and into the air to cut a true path.
In retrospect, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact time his feelings had changed in their trajectory, if they hadn’t been headed there already from the start. And that’s not as important as, now, knowing how he feels, is it? Tracing backward doesn’t always help going forward, and, like this, is there a reason to do so? It’s enough to know that he’d been looking so closely at Law’s arms, that he’s trying to remember Law’s eyes, because of how he feels.
There’s no dojo in his dreams this night, no dream at all, or if there is, Zoro doesn’t remember it. He’s not thinking of anything like that at all when he passes Law in the cramped corridor of the submarine, half-awake and not planning to get any further away from sleep than that.
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom.”
“That’s the opposite way.”
Law sounds slightly frustrated. Zoro squints. Surely it couldn’t be—but then Law jerks his head, and Zoro finds himself following, staring at Law’s bare back, bare neck, the curve of his spine, the scar on his upper arm not nearly as bad as Zoro thought it might be. Maybe, when you’re that kind of doctor, you can control those things.
Law lets him go first, and they don’t pass each other on the way back, even though Zoro somehow takes longer than he should to get back, ends up more awake than he wants to be, thinking that he should have reached out for Law’s wrist. That he would have liked it if Law had reached for his instead of keeping his distance. Patience is good, but patience is not an indefinite wait; it involves one’s own motion, one’s own awareness. Zoro falls asleep thinking of Sensei’s voice, saying that, of his too-soft, too-small hands not holding a hilt the way they ought to.
Zoro finds himself almost motioning, almost speaking, as if to grab Law’s attention, even though he has nothing really to say. He has never been the kind of person who needs to talk and fill the air with sound, who says things just to say them, that lead nowhere, and though he knows where he wants this to lead, he can’t just point a sword in a direction and slice.
He can look, though. He looks, and Law looks back, as if appraising, figuring it out at the same pace. Zoro doesn’t feel like an object on a shelf, an insect under a microscope, peered at and assessed in that way; it’s more like Zoro’s a crack in a plaster wall Law’s not sure was there before. It’s an answer Zoro can’t put his own finger on, slip a thumbnail between the pieces of paint, until he can, and then he’s not sure whether the crack was there before, how long and jagged it had been, what lies structurally beneath it.
It is the same way Zoro looks at him, the same kind of answer he’s been turning over in his own mind, the kind of answer that is ultimately less important than the question that comes after. Zoro’s no coward; he’s not timid; he’ll make a move whether he can or, sometimes, whether he ought to, but something, some instinct, is telling him not here, not now, to not advance too quickly on Law’s own ship. It’s like standing, a sword in each arm, raised, steady, perfect, parallel, until the sweat pours down your face, until his thoughts run clear, but what he’s thinking about is his own hands like hilts in Law’s grip, his mouth on Law’s instead of his teeth clenched around a third sword.
This is a different dojo, Zoro thinks. The wood under his feet is the same, and he is the same as he is now, his feet the same length, his body the same height, his senses the same, the feeling of the way he cracks his knuckles--the same. But Law is there, on the opposite end of the room, his face unreadable--the angles of the lights are familiar, just not on him. Maybe it is the same dojo, but there’s something about it the way it feels--not off, not out of balance, not wrong, but different.
The katana in Law’s hands is not one Zoro has seen before, long like the sword he wields but curved like a sail in wind, like a shifting reed on a riverbank, like Law’s palm at rest. There are letters on the scabbard, but Zoro cannot see them, the same shade of gold as Law’s earrings, slightly tarnished, against the brown wood. The paint is flaking, but there is no gold on the floor. The air is thin, odorless when Zoro inhales; he steps closer and Law does not move away. He raises the sword, as if offering; his eyes are fixed on some point beyond Zoro’s but Zoro knows he cannot look away. It’s like he’s signed a contract, unwritten but stuck on the underside of his tongue, boundaries he has to feel out by instinct. He reaches out; he knows it’s too soon, too far, but he has to, to push through the thin air, to arrive.
He opens his eye to darkness around him, the air settled and the thickness he expects. A dream like that means his subconscious is tying everything together, probably, but the knot is clumsy, thoughts of the dojo and thoughts of Law like sashes left crumpled and separate in a drawer knotted together when he looks again months later. Well, he can make the connection himself, obvious enough without that. Zoro sits up, yawns, rubs his eye. He should go back to sleep--he’s not used to sleeping this much, every night; he can sleep during the day; his body has decided that now, after however many hours, he should get up.
The floor is silent under his feet, and Wado swings, equally silent, alone at his waist (just in case). There should be some sake in the kitchen, though the food around here’s not that good, and he’s pretty sure the makeshift kitchen’s just down the hall. Turning the corner, he stops; on the other side of a splintered sliding door, open halfway, a bright light shines through. It doesn’t feel dangerous, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything--as much as Zoro trusts his instincts, they’re not infallible. He rests his left hand on Wado’s hilt. When Zoro reaches the battered door, he peers out and is immediately blinded by the light of the low moon, just above the treetops outside. Must be earlier than he thought, if the moon’s still out--it’s nearly full, an orange partially obscured by the fingers of the sky, and, squinting, Zoro pushes at the door, finds it stuck, and steps through the space between the door and the wall. It’s just wide enough for him to fit through. Near the end of the room--or perhaps a porch, but in this condition it’s difficult to tell--there’s some sort of figure. An animal maybe, Zoro thinks for a second, until the dark negative stamp of the moon clears from his vision and the figure turns. Law--and Zoro wonders if seeing exactly who he wants to is an illusion, before shaking it off. It feels too real.
Zoro drops down beside him, keeping his face angled away from the brightness of the moon. Law looks better-rested now than he had in Dressrosa or since then, than he had in Zoro’s dream, though it’s not saying much. But, maybe, he looks a little more relaxed, his hair tousled and his yukata open, leaning back on his hands. (His arm can stand the weight, that’s good; he’s not favoring one side over the other now.) Zoro yawns, and in doing so turns to face the moon again. It’s too fucking bright; he leans down against Law’s shoulder, too obvious of him, maybe, but all this indirection, this lack of drawing a line between his dreams and this reality, just makes him more impatient. Law’s going to shove him off, complain he’s heavy, tell him to go back to bed if he’s going to sleep, break off the chance Zoro’s offered him and unravel it; Zoro, in anticipation, leans harder, but the thing he’s waiting for never comes. Law just sighs, quiet, almost obscured by the sound of the trees in the wind.
Zoro sits up. Law is looking away, gazing out over the trees. One of his earrings is crooked, the hoop looping around the front of his earlobe, and without his hat he looks different--younger, maybe. But maybe it’s the light.
“What?” says Law, though he knows what.
But if he wants to be chased a little, at least that’s something Zoro’s good at. He leans in again, but this time not toward Law’s shoulder; Law tilts his head. His mouth is closed; his lips are dry but soft, and his shoulder pushes against Zoro’s the way he leans over. Zoro thinks he might fall forward, but Law steadies himself, pulling back after a few seconds, their upper arms still pressed together. Law’s yukata is slipping further down, exposing his shoulder. Zoro lets himself look without restraint, at the moonlight on his skin, the shadow of his collarbone. Then up at his face, the shadow of his nose, his eyes far less bleary than the minute before. Pushing his arm against Law’s, Zoro scoots himself closer. Their calves are nearly touching, and it would be so easy to rotate his toes, to push them down against Law’s foot. Again, Zoro glances toward the moon, now slightly obscured by the treetops, another set of fingers to cup it from below. When he looks back at Law, Law is looking at him, open, full, steady, holding in his gaze something of greater weight than a sword.