Chapter Text
Zoro sits at the bar. There is a beer in his hand, rich like tumbled raisins, and he feels the familiar, easy buzz of a full stomach.
There is also a horde gathered around him, the nearest few about two arm-length's distance away, whispering, and Zoro has never seen any of these people before in his life. Children, even. Some brat that wouldn't reach his knee standing up. She shuffles closer, holding out a bounty poster. She asks for Zoro's autograph.
That is Luffy's bounty poster.
"What," says Zoro, for several reasons. Because he doesn't remember sitting down and having a drink. Because he would never allow himself to be surrounded like this. And also because there isn't enough free space on that page for him to not scribble over Luffy's face, and Luffy will take it as a challenge to start doing the same shit to every available surface; and Zoro has heard enough ranting about the slights against human decency Luffy commits with a pencil alone.
But why is he here, anyway?
Zoro retraces his steps.
Nami had demanded that Zoro take Luffy out on a walk.
"What is he," said Usopp. "A dog?"
"No," she replied. She had a rolled-up map in her arms, half of it dark and gleaming wet with ink. It was big enough to sag over her shoulder. "Worse, I think. I should be able to predict these things by now, but he caught me off guard today."
"Sorry," said Luffy, chin in his hands. He sounded sorry. He did a roll in the grass and sprang up. "Alright, where to, Zoro?"
Zoro ignored him and Nami turned to Usopp.
"No, no, Zoro's doing the honors."
"Hey," said Zoro.
"No, really," said Usopp, and Usopp was a quick bastard when he wanted to be, because it took half a blink before he was stumbling off into the quarters. He crashed into the cook on the way, who must've caught on to the current responsibility turnabout, seeing as he didn't immediately bound over to sacrifice himself to Nami's every whim.
The two of them disappeared together. A ship-wide agreement about this chore in particular.
Nami clapped her hands together. "Settled!" she hummed. Luffy grinned and flung himself over Zoro's shoulders.
Zoro frowns into his beer. He frowns at the beer, then, because he'd picked it up and taken a gulp on reflex. Did that memory help dredge anything up? Not at all.
"Hello?" the kid is saying. "Can I have your autograph?"
"No."
She steps forward with this brazen set to her jaw. "That--but you signed his?" She points, and it's at some other snotty kid, buck-toothed, who darts furtive glances at the rest of the crowd and swivels his stool. He holds one of Luffy's posters too, pressed against his chest, like he can't decide if he's showing it off to the crowd or shielding it from them.
Zoro squints. He can make out a scrawl over Luffy's teeth. Roronoa Zoro.
"Didn't write that," he tells her.
She looks at him.
He jerks his thumb in the general direction of the door, to say, get out. She follows what he's trying to say and makes no move to listen.
"I watched you sign that," she murmurs, and what a goddamn pain because her voice is starting to wobble. "What's so different about me? Why only him?"
He should dump this on someone else. Chopper could shift into his massive furball form and carry this entire crowd away without suffering any scoldings.
Zoro grabs the paper out of her hand and snatches up the stick of charcoal she'd been offering with the other, and signs it. When she takes it back, she stares admiringly.
"Is this a signature?"
"Obviously," he says.
"This isn't a signature."
"The hell do you want," Zoro grits out, head close to bursting.
"It just." The kid stares at the poster in an unnerving sort of way. Yeah, Zoro's the one who wrote it on Luffy's face, but she traces his writing with her finger and now it looks like she's tracing Luffy's face. Even Luffy would be icked. "It just says 'sword'..."
"Oh, before you go!"
Usopp had shouted down at them from the deck, a bit panicked. Luffy was already running down the dock, hand pressed to his hat and wind tossing up his sleeves, but he turned back and waved, grinning.
"No, listen to me."
Luffy reluctantly trudged back to where Zoro stood with a frown.
"Usopp," he said, winding his arms up like he was preparing to grab Usopp from that distance, with or without his consent, "Are you gonna come with?"
Usopp snatched up Chopper's hand, passing by, and Chopper puffed up too large to be dragged down without possibly snapping off a good chunk of the railing.
"Tch," Luffy spit.
Zoro yawned. On entering town, he was going to swerve off and find an alleyway to crash in. Keeping Luffy here did no one any good, and keeping an eye on him was easy so long as they had their feet on the same ground; but Usopp's next words were directed at him, and he blinked the buzz from his ears to listen.
"Nami says we're short on time," he said. "So we need to be careful not to let you two get lost."
"Then why send him out at all?"
Usopp bowed his head somewhat solemnly. Luffy looked like he knew what was coming and started tugging at Zoro's arm. Zoro raised an eyebrow, and Usopp spoke. "Some urgent situations are outweighed by others."
"I'm not that fat," said Luffy.
"I'm saying you're a nuisance," said Usopp.
Sanji, having realized it was safe to be in their vicinity once more, called down, "I'll toss you a leash," and still basking in the false comfort provided by the distance between the docks and the deck, leant himself over the railing and said with a smarmy sort of grin, "--so stick to him and don't get lost."
"No!" Luffy shouted back.
Zoro wrinkled his nose. He prepared to climb back into the ship and drop to the grass right there, see if anything short of the tide itself could sweep him into waking up. Hell, they could throw him in the water and he'd finally get proper shuteye. Luffy nudged him with his elbow and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't worry, Zoro," he said.
Zoro scowled. "They meant you."
Zoro says, "I signed it," and slams the mug onto his mouth and gulps the rest down without pause. Settling this by retracing what had happened before isn't working at all. Now his head is hitting on a migraine.
The kid stands there, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. He's reminded of the rooster-head's demeanor when facing down Luffy. The uncomfortable toadying. "So, is this special or something? A special greeting?"
Zoro grunts and stands to leave.
"Is this between us only? Or can I tell my friends to address me this way?"
Zoro ignores her.
"No way. Wait."
He does not wait. He drags himself out the door, the latches swaying back to hit a few of the crowd that tries to follow him out. The sunlight pierces his skin and he closes his eyes. Last he hears before yawning so heavily his ears hurt is, "Look! He signed mine with his real name."
This is a familiar town. He walks the road, palm at his hip--only Wado is there, for some reason, but the others will return to him.
The air tickles his nose with the papery scent of nut bread, buttloads of it, and he threads through the other smells, tangling in and around the crowd--smoke, oil, peaches, then finally meat: and heads in that direction.
A marketplace. They have the most enthusiastic vendors he's ever encountered. Fierce promotion rallies at him from all ends, and he slaps away the posters being shoved into his face. They even have advertisers dressed as customers begging him to sign weird shit. He unsheathes Wado and most back off.
A town square. There's a giant poster on the main building, pinned at four ends. Zoro has to squint at it because he's fairly sure there's a face up there, but he's too close like this, standing beneath the slope of the curling end.
A bite-sized prison, structured to fit atop the largest fountain. There's a man inside, chained at the waist, leering at anyone who points at him. The water running beneath him arches thoughtfully, and the drip drip of dew beads forming on the bars stands to make him look sweaty. The sign fixed over his head reads: accomplice traitor.
He glances at Zoro as he approaches. Zoro stares back. The man's leer darkens into a frown.
This is familiar, Zoro thinks. This should be the same town. He remembers crossing by that fountain, remembers the children tossing coins into the water. Peering at it now, though, there aren't any coins: the clear depths are clean, and there's this odd new exhibition that must've been a quick install. This is a simple landmark either way, given the sheer height of it.
That dumbass captain of his, getting lost so easily.
"Hey," he says, addressing the prisoner. "Why're you in there?"
"Pirate hunter," the man responds, low.
Zoro nods. Reasonable. A lot of bounty hunters frequent towns like this. "So you're a pirate. But why the," he gestures, emphasizing the wimpiness of it, "--cage?"
A complicated expression Zoro won't bother to read crawls over the man's face. His shoulders jerk forward, like a nasty glob is about to lurch out his mouth, but instead throws himself back on his haunches, and mutters, "What are you here for."
The question reads confrontational. And Zoro has no clue why, but it stokes a quick irritation in him so he replies in kind. "None of your business."
"To gloat?"
Yeah, he's a criminal and he isn't locked up, but who the hell brags about that?
He steps closer, ignoring how a passing family bursts into sharp whispering, and offers to cut the bars of the cage. It doesn't matter whatever happens after, whether the man is re-arrested or not; but Zoro finds issue with the style of his confinement. A dirty spectacle, the sort that gets on his nerves.
"Shut the fuck up!" the man snaps.
Zoro draws his sword anyway. For a different reason.
Before he cleaves the fountain in half, Zoro eyes up the area for any sign of Luffy. Any holes in the buildings, any agonized restaurant staff...nothing. Last chance before he has to start making real effort, he thinks.
The fountain comes apart with a resounding thud, crumbling at his feet.
Off the docks, Luffy had wrestled him out of the alley and stumbled into at least five situations that would have required bloodshed to handle.
There was none--if only because Luffy's straw hat spoke louder to these bastards than his height did. Zoro crammed it under his cardigan.
"This place has a lot of people asking me for money," Luffy told him, hands in his pockets. One of them had made an actual grab for a non-existent wallet, and it looked enough to a passing lady like a scoundrel harassing some kid for her to call in the mall cops. On investigation, Luffy had sighed heavily, as though he were the perp: unearthing a lint-covered drumstick from his trousers.
They hadn't commented, and he had nodded, self-assured.
"Why don't they ask you, huh? Zoro. I don't get to use any more money than you do."
Zoro snorted. The third attempted mugger hadn't even stepped onto the same street as them before turning tail and scampering.
"Zoro? Zoro, c'mon, listen."
"Yeah. They go after you because you're walking that way."
"Walking what way."
Zoro shrugged. It was sluggish. He wanted to yawn again, the urge to do so pressing up so heavily against his throat it felt like a twisted form of pre-vomit. Maybe he had less sleep than expected. Luffy's fault, too, so he could deal with the consequences.
"Walk like you aren't about ready to get carried off by whoever approaches you with candy," he suggested, and then catching himself, rectified, "--meat."
"What? There's no one offering meat."
He turned when they reached the corner of the street, intent on marching straight into the darkness and lying down, but Luffy refused to enter, scolding him something fierce. Zoro blinked, his eyes bleary. The trash heap wasn't inviting. There was a relatively clean corner, positioned under the only patch of wall not overrun with moss. Luffy shouted something again.
It must've been important, for him to have seemed so panicked. There was a note of urgency in his voice that would have had Zoro at the ready, swords drawn, but--he didn't? No, he hadn't done anything.
All Zoro can recall is, "Hey! Hey, get up, tell me how I walk!"
That guy, Zoro thinks. The hell.
That isn't urgent at all.
"The fuck are you getting pissed for," the man on the ground snarls. "Wipe that look off your face, look at me." A piece of the fountain finds its way into his lap. His pale hair drips into his face, and he's sprawled over the sign that had hung over his head. Now snapped in half, all it reads is accomplice.
Accomplice for what. Zoro isn't curious enough to ask.
He dusts himself off, toeing aside more debris. Those mall cops should be hustling back over any moment now, and he'd rather not encounter them at all. He steps past a shrieking kid, frowning at the bounty poster that the brat drops on the ground--Luffy's face, again, smiling up at him--as if no other pirates existed, why are they all him?
If Luffy is such a prominent figure in this town, then it sure was stupid of Nami to send him out with no supervision.
The man lumbers to his feet, pushing himself up with the assistance of the fountain remains. That complicated expression of his has warped into one Zoro is more comfortable with, the familiarity of embarrassed anger, braced against animosity.
"This a game of cat and mouse to you?" he sneers. There aren't any weapons hanging off his frame, and the droop of his shoulders is the starved age of tired. He stands no chance in a genuine fight, his build being that of a brawler's--unrefined if hungry.
When he lunges closer, Zoro doesn't move back. He's trying to provoke Zoro. But that won't get anywhere, because any rage he garners along the way will be completely re-directed toward his own wayward captain once he finds him.
"No," Zoro says.
"Once wasn't enough? You had to come back, didn't you. Weren't satisfied with ruining his life already."
"Yeah," Zoro says, listlessly, already losing track of the conversation.
If this guy was a new installation, given that he hadn't seen him earlier, he must've seen Luffy running around. This position, Zoro thinks, eyeing up the space where the fountain's peak had stood tall: a prime watchtower.
He clambers up, ignoring the man's indignation and whatever garbled mess drips out his mouth, standing at the peak of the ruined fountain. The vendors are visible from here; as is the tavern he'd probably left earlier. There's a crowd dispersing right as he watches, the majority children with papers clutched in hand. Some are headed in his direction.
He frowns.
"Hey," he says to the man. He receives a bright glower in return, but facing the town square, the put-together aspect of it, a slow, dreadful possibility has crashed into him. A possibility is a possibility. Zoro doesn't waste time on worrying, and he isn't worried now, even if this is Luffy, who's always halfway to getting himself killed just by setting both feet on the ground.
But. If there really has been no damage done to the place, and if they're asking him to sign Luffy's poster instead of Luffy himself, or whatever fucked-up tradition the bounty posters have undergone--is Luffy here at all?
"Shit!" he hisses.
The man startles, then scowls, "Yeah, curse me out. See where that gets you, asshole!"
Zoro stares past him.
"Hey," Zoro says, to the brat from before. "Have you seen a man with a devil fruit around here?"
The kid nods, his eyes wide. He steps forward, mouth opening, and--finally, Zoro thinks, letting himself relax, because so long as there's ocean between islands, Luffy can usually be anchored--then the kid holds out the goddamn bounty poster, gaze shining. In his other hand is a pencil.
Zoro refuses to take it.
"Tell me where."
The kid nods, still holding Luffy's face out for Zoro to sign.
"Him," Zoro says, then. This could mean something. "You've seen him here."
The kid shakes his head. Zoro steps off the fountain in the other direction.
The kid yelps and moves like he's about to chase him, maybe, in which case Zoro would ignore him and probably drop him off to Chopper to deal with, but the former prisoner lurches to grab the kid by the arm, and Zoro's blade sweeps to rest at the bottom of his throat.
The kid shrieks and staggers to the side, bounty poster forgotten--it flutters down and splays itself over Zoro's foot. His footsteps as he darts away echo. Too late, Zoro realizes that the area has been cleared. There are marines marching in, now, from the left--a small squad of them.
"Bastard," the man spits. He leans into the blade, a vicious frustration Zoro recognizes. The collar of his shirt begins to stain, spilling downward like the scar over his eye. "Bastard, again and again. He should've never thought you were cool. Admired a damn boun--admired you. He never should've, he, I'm gonna--"
"Gonna fuck up a kid?" Zoro drawls.
"Like I give a shit," the man sneers, and leans in.
Zoro looks on, impassive. The man is a vague sort familiar, almost, now that he's up close. Pale hair, a scar over his eye, and with that height...
"What got you locked up in there?" he asks.
The man's eyes thin to slits.
"You're asking? You?"
A pain in the ass, Zoro thinks. Everyone's playing juggling with the information he needs and he's a hair from plain ripping it out of them. "Answer already."
The man's mouth closes. But he glances at the poster on the ground, a furtive feel to it that leans toward guilt, and Zoro follows his eyes and says, "What, seriously? Luffy?"
That glares snaps up to his face.
"You wouldn't be the first," Zoro says, for some reason somewhat satisfied. "What'd you try to do, huh? Oh," and angling his sword against the hailstorm of bullets sure to come, continues, "--and tell me where he went."
"Sick fuck."
Zoro raises an eyebrow. Trying to assault a sick person. But why did they string him up in a little cage instead of hauling him off to rot? Being in a public space for the shame of it?
"Then? Luffy was here to knock you one, wasn't he?"
The man lets loose a series of garbled curses. The rage on his face really is familiar. Zoro leans away from the spittle and turns his attention to the marine squad, who've parked to a halt some ways away.
"Tell me where you've seen him," Zoro says. "And I don't cut out your throat."
The man falls silent. Zoro looks at the marines again, annoyed. He's waiting for them to begin since he's getting nowhere and everyone's unanimously decided to play charades with him, but they're fidgeting. The one at the forefront nods at him, and Zoro doesn't know what that means but the intent is there, clear as day--they're waiting for something too.
The marines don't fire.
Another chunk of the fountain crumbles.
"What're you doing, you shit," the man is saying, but there's less bite to it, now. More bemused. "Trying to finish him off? Like hell you don't know where he is. You're the one who turned him in."
"Turned him in."
The man laughs like he wants to rip Zoro's face off. That's a laugh he's heard before--probably. But if it is the same, then it's been stripped down to a milder sound. Less wild.
Zoro thinks about it again. Mock Town?
After he'd taken a nap in the alley, Luffy had stood there and said something. He'd said something, tugging at Zoro's arm, and then dragged him off to raid a restaurant. Then they'd left. Luffy had said something again, about the big poster on the wall.
That poster.
Zoro blinks. The poster up there.
That's--Luffy's face.
"He got himself arrested?" he asks.
The Mock Town pirate cackles something fierce. There's no amusement to it.
"You're the one who turned him in," he says. Zoro jabs the blunt edge of his sword into his throat.