Chapter Text
Something had happened here. What, exactly, he didn’t know or really care about, but something had happened. He kicked a steaming black lump and frowned when it burst into chunks over his foot. The air tasted like ash and that didn’t soothe his stomach at all.
“Hello-o-o,” he called out, shaking his leg. “Zoro. Yoohoo. ZORO.”
“What,” Zoro said, from behind him.
“Oh, geez. Thought I lost you! I don’t think they left anything for us to eat, and I don't think they're in there either.”
Luffy jerked his head at the charred rafters. There wasn't much space to hide, not with all the black bits and crumbling pieces and steam, but Usopp's ability to make cover out of anything was inexhaustible. It would be just like him, too, to trick Luffy into storming a place that'd already been eaten empty.
But Usopp wouldn't be able to hide Franky in there, would he? There was nothing really intact for what he could see of the stretch ahead, and he was a couple tosses up from shore already. He gave it all a good last look. Something whimpered in the distance before one of the black rafters snapped in half and fell on it. It sounded a little like Sanji, he thought, disturbed, but there were no more sounds afterwards, so.
"You got us lost," Luffy sighed, turning to Zoro. That was what everyone said to Zoro and Luffy didn't really want to miss out.
"This," Zoro said. "No. This is your fault."
"You're the one that overslept." Everyone else had already gone out for dinner.
"So did you," Zoro accused. "And it's my damn luck that you woke up first."
Luffy scowled. "That's the thanks I get for getting us here so quickly!"
"I should've just picked you up and followed the rest of them. Shouldn't've let your stupid ass fling me off the ship. Now we're fuck-knows-where."
"Yeah," Luffy snapped. "Be more careful next time, Zoro."
Zoro stopped replying, which was a good sign. Luffy had learned this back when he'd been arguing his case for buying the Thousand Sunny a personal News Coo.
Shoot.
The good old days, back when he'd known where the Thousand Sunny was...back when he'd been on it...
"He makes noises like a musician," he'd insisted, holding the bird up by the neck like a sword, "and he can fly and carry meat to me. How many of you can do that? None of you. Did you know that?"
Nami had told him, "I'll wad him up into your mouth when you're sleeping and you'll eat him, you know you will," and Luffy had clapped his birdless hand to his mouth and glared at her, scandalized. Which meant that he couldn't argue anymore, which meant that Nami had made him drop the topic, which meant that he couldn't use her money to buy a personal delivery-boy-and-possible-reserve-meat/meal.
It was all sorts of unfair, now that he was thinking about it. Why didn't he just keep talking? Would Zoro figure that out earlier than he did? Well, he couldn't have that.
"Zoro," he began, earnestly, and slowed to turn once more. Zoro continued to walk and barreled through him until Luffy's sandals stopped dragging through the dirt and ash and he was dangling over Zoro's shoulder.
"I'm so hungry I'll never see Usopp again," Luffy said, scrapping his plan to extend an olive branch. "Robin and Chopper will never use me to play pingpong again. I'll never get to watch Franky's Super Pose ever again. No one does it like him, and I just got him."
"Can't you think of better things to long for?"
"Whoa, Usopp's great," Luffy protested.
Zoro snorted and jostled him. Luffy caught his hat before it slipped off his head and cuffed Zoro a good one between the shoulder blades, but Zoro didn't hit him back and that was boring.
A few hollered names later Luffy's stomach growled a heavy sound, rumbling tight up into his chest. The sun was setting, crawled a half-gold streak across the sky and winding down. Enough time had passed for two dinners. He craned his neck back--far, far, back, until his hair was itching in his eyes and Zoro's unimpressed face was upside down. He grinned, ran his tongue up through his teeth and Zoro rolled his eyes.
"Alright, alright," Zoro said. "Calm down. If they actually managed to lose us--if we actually have to starve together, then you can eat me after I kill myself."
"Thanks! What soup d'you think Sanji'd make out of you?"
"I'd kill him if he touched my corpse and then you'd be down two."
"I'm too what," asked Luffy.
Zoro headbutted him and Luffy's neck went sproing and snapped back into place, and this time his hat hung from its string; spun the same circle his eyes were spinning.
"You're so mean to me," he complained.
"I'm carrying you through this hellhole and you're whining about it?"
"Fine," Luffy said. "Let's swap."
Before Zoro could protest, he shot his feet out and firmed his heels deep into the ground. He didn't have a handhold since all the buildings were levelled so he settled for Zoro's head, and his fingers scuffed into Zoro's hair--and then Zoro was onto him, gripping into his shoulders and Luffy's head was rushing bright at the hard toss as his scalp hit the dirt, just once. His elbows still noosed a knot around Zoro's neck so he sprung right back up.
"Got you!" he said, because he liked it when Zoro was grabby and wanted him to throw a few good punches. Zoro shot him the same look he got whenever he took a tumble into the sea, and didn't throw any punches.
"This isn't a swap," he said. "Now you're just in my way."
"It's not like you were actually going anywhere."
Zoro's earrings flashed, swaying and golden since he was leaned over and the shine made Luffy blink. He squinted, thinking, but then came Zoro's other look: touch that and I touch your stomach front-to-end with my sword.
Luffy didn't know how he'd caught on so quickly but it was whatever. "Zoro," he said. "Get on my shoulders."
"I'm not going to fit."
Luffy scoffed. Zoro made a strange face, which was also good--meant that he could see he was wrong.
"I stacked Usopp and Franky on there when we were practicing docking," he bragged. "Robin helped us with Franky since he was the cherry on top. She almost broke a finger and Sanji almost broke Franky's neck."
"Cherry on--never mind. Is that what that was? I thought you were trying to kill Usopp."
Zoro tried to raise his arms but Luffy was in the way. Luffy didn't bother moving since Zoro was a problem solver, and elbows to chest Zoro pushed a palm down on the back of his other hand, mimed a brutal crushing. He caught the tip of Luffy's nose in the middle and Luffy sneezed. "Like that," Zoro said.
"Usopp is alive," Luffy told him, and his hands were busy being a knot so he rubbed his itching nose into Zoro's shirt.
Zoro was so dumb, sometimes. He only had a point since Usopp was the one who was supposed to wake him up--so maybe Usopp wouldn't be alive once they got back to the ship, but he'd definitely been alive before they'd gone to sleep. In fact, they'd almost drowned together! Usopp went into his hammock sopping wet and Luffy dripped all over Sanji since his hammock hung over his: up until Sanji wrenched him down and toweled him off, yowling about something all the while. Hopefully nothing important because Luffy didn't remember any of it.
"Do you think Sanji rubbed Usopp too," said Luffy, suddenly curious.
Zoro was making that face again. Luffy took advantage of his stillness to unknot his elbows and spin them both down. His hat hung loose against his chest so Zoro didn't squash it when he stumbled into Luffy's back, chin planting into Luffy's hair, and Luffy's eyes were darting all over, searching for anything interesting he could throw himself at.
He saw it in the distance, blue and glinting--blue foods, he combed his mind for blue foods. Grapes. Mushrooms. Almost Nami's tattoo. Nothing he'd ever eaten was this blue, but Zoro had volunteered himself already and Luffy didn't want to give into his offer just yet.
"Hold on tight," he said, gripping Zoro's wrists to his collarbones and Zoro said, "I'll actually kill you," but he didn't fight him off. Luffy shrugged off any disappointment with a grin and dug his fingers into the rubble that jutted up from the closest felled building. It had a bit of a crest to it, like Franky's hair--oh! That's what had been missing from his list.
"Readysetgo," he said.
Zoro elbowed him in the cheek when they landed.
"What the hell. You didn't do this, did you?"
Luffy staggered over someone's leg, the strap of his sandal riding up between his toes; Zoro's chin collided with his head, and he thought he heard something clatter in Zoro's jaw. But Zoro didn't grunt and they were always jabbing at each other with their bony bits--and Luffy was always complimented on his "bone head" so Luffy figured Zoro was fine.
"Do what?" he asked, scanning the area for blue. Black and red were outshining all the other colors, greedy for space and sticky. This red was the sort of red you usually saw inside of people, but luckily most of it was dry--Usopp wouldn't scold him for tracking it onto the Sunny if he didn't shake off his soles in the water. That usually ended with his being barefoot until Nami made Zoro swim out to retrieve his wayward sandals because she didn't want to buy Luffy new ones.
"The others better not be here," said Zoro, and didn't answer Luffy's question.
"Do what," Luffy complained, because he was already boiling over, hungry in a hungry way and hungry in a skin-too-tight way for a decent tussle and now Zoro was leaving him hanging with his words, too. "I'm hungry," he added.
And he could feel Zoro opening his mouth, weight shifting, but that's when he saw it. He dropped Zoro on his ass by flinging him back--and laughed at the snarled, "Luffy!" but he was already darting up over the debris, knees swinging, and there it was! Blue and polished, it stood out like a bruise against the wreckage and hot, ugly air.
And it was--a hat.
Blue goggles on a hat. A dark one; with a round and friendly brim.
"Luffy," Zoro growled. There was a palm in Luffy's hair, then, and Zoro was tugging him up like his fingers were tangled. But he let go just as quickly when Luffy patted him on the arm, peering out at the blue gleam, wondering if it would shift green or yellow if he turned away and didn't look back.
It was just a hat.
Zoro stepped out in front of him and gave their surroundings a long, hard look.
"I didn't think you'd actually sink this low," he said, gravely. "But alright. I'll help you cut them up. Should I start a fire or are you in the mood for raw."
Luffy hopped over someone's arm, a ways to the left of Zoro, and picked up the hat. He dusted it off, sneezed when the soot powdered up into his face, and blinked. "What? It looks good to me. Whatcha cutting?"
Zoro said nothing.
Luffy turned the hat over in his hands. His heart had a silly throb at the slide of fabric under his thumb, and it was a little harder to laugh at Zoro's face than expected, especially since he was making the special spooked one that Luffy and Usopp were always trying to wring out of him. So Luffy really wanted to laugh. He swallowed and did even though it made him twitch, then held the hat high up in the air and slammed it down on his head.
"You seriously need another one?" Zoro finally asked, after Luffy's third hat-slam. It might've been more than the third. Rage hit him quick after his first failed and from then on he'd been desperate.
Zoro said, "It'll fit easier if you wear one at a time."
"Zoro!" Luffy snapped. "That's my hat. This other one's not touching my head."
"Jesus Christ, why? No one's going to call you a hat hussy. Take it off. Better yet, don't wear that one at all. That belonged to some dead guy."
"What dead guy."
It was a good thing Zoro had two eyes, Luffy thought, refocusing. Zoro really needed all the help he could get. There were no dead guys and none of the people on the ground were jumping up and yelling give that back! so the hat was obviously free pickings.
A few more tries yielded him nothing. Zoro sure was being generous with his silence. Luffy pulled his own hat down; where it dangled he dropped the new one in by the crown. The goggles caught against the string and the weight swung into his ribs, brim tickling his chin.
Maybe if he ripped it open?
"At least close his eyes before you do that," Zoro said. He nudged the man on the ground with his foot. The man didn't wake, but Zoro nudged too hard and he flipped over. He wore a marine uniform, had a blue marine tie--a different shade of blue. He even had another cap, which hung off his buttons. What an awful guy this was, keeping two hats to himself and not even using them.
"Well," Luffy said. "He wasn't looking at me before but now he is. Now he's going to see. Zoro, why did you do that?"
Zoro said something nasty and changed his mind, going for Luffy's eyes instead. Luffy took the flick to the forehead with a grumble, then stooped down, knees to chest.
Oh.
"Doesn't belong to him," he said, rubbing his nose.
"What?"
"This isn't his." Luffy waggled and his hats shook with him. "I can smell it. He never wore it."
Zoro said something like why the hell did you smell him or stop smelling him or Luffy get the hell off right now but Luffy knew what he knew and felt a little better about it for some reason.
"Closing his eyes," he declared, after squirming his way out of Zoro's sleeper hold, and he reached out only to accidentally high-five the hands sprouting from the man's eyeholes. They were filled, now, so they were just eyes. The right hand even grew one on the palm.
He tried high-fiving it again but the eye blinked, dodged, and a new hand sprouted up to meet his palm indulgently.
"Robin!"
"Captain," the mouth on the left-left one greeted. "You've traveled rather far, haven't you? I wonder why?"
"We're headed back," said Zoro, after a moment.
"And our swordsman sounds tired," Robin said. Then, with curved lips and one blink, "Looks tired as well."
"What! You're sleepy?"
Zoro ignored him and spoke to Robin's hand-mouth instead.
There was talk about how to find their way to the Sunny--Luffy scoffed, because talk like that was useless for Zoro (Zoro kicked his knees in from behind) and talk about whether or not she could use her Devil Fruit passively as a method of restraint (Luffy wanted to know as well--Sanji was always guarding the freezer and it was driving him crazy) and finally, wrapping up the boring conversation, Robin said, "You even picked up a souvenir. I hope your vacation was enjoyable."
Zoro jerked his head at Luffy's new hat.
"Oh!" Luffy said. "Oh, yeah."
"I didn't know you were a collector. If that's something you'd like to take up, feel free to recruit me. I've seen many interesting ones, but I've never had the incentive."
"Good," Luffy said. "I bet Chopper could get you medicine for that if you did, though. Wouldn't want it to spread."
"She means motivation," said Zoro.
"What?"
"Or reason."
Luffy patted him on the arm then shoved him with enough force to make him stumble.
"So!" he said, "Robin! Did you save any food for me?"
"Of course. We always do, don't we?"
Luffy hummed into the crook of Zoro's arm and the sound vibrated through the both of them, his neck once again caught in a chokehold. Wow, that was some pressure on his jugular there. "It's never really enough," he explained. "You should wake me up 'cause I wanna be there."
Robin's hand swallowed her eye. Her palm was smooth and empty until it returned, and by then Luffy was scampering over Zoro's shoulders trying to dodge his hands. Zoro had a faceful of his hat and his new hat, and he lurched out to grapple Luffy down but Luffy just shuffled down to his back.
"I'll relay a message to you from Mr. Long-nose. He'd like to tell you, go to hell Luffy I tried so hard and you threw me into the wall. See if I ever do anything for you again. Guess what I can't because you broke my back."
His string was hooked under Zoro's chin. He pulled back so his nose wouldn't be itched by Zoro's hair, and frowned--Zoro made a noise and scrabbled at his throat. Aw, whoops.
"Would you like to reply?"
"Is his--Luffy, get down--is his back actually broken? I'll pop your head off your neck get down now."
Robin returned with the negative and a no but my spirit really is. My spiritual back if you'll think of it that way.
"Tell him it's his fault I almost ate Zoro."
Robin's eye was gone for longer, this time. Zoro managed to pull him up off his head like a wrap-around scarf without damaging the string and Luffy bounced off the ground with a laugh. And then Zoro had to hoist him up by the collar because he was sprawled over someone's leg again.
"An anonymous message," Robin said, kindly. "Eat the shithead and maybe you'll have yourself a meat feast for a week. We stocked up today, they even had tiger steak. You ever try that? Oh, Robin, my words sound so beautiful coming out of your mouth. Sorry. I'm sorry, actually, can you please not repea--
Luffy tuned the rest out because none of it really mattered after meat feast, and Sanji usually just gave him those if he asked nicely or didn't leave teeth marks on the locks on the freezer--so he would keep Zoro, what a stupid anonymous message--and waited for her to finish. "Which way's the Sunny?"
"I'll lead you. Do you see my hands?"
A few of them waved in the distance. A few were sticking out of other people's hands, and Luffy wasn't sure why she needed to do that.
"The sensation, Captain. I do see you two. Don't worry, I'll tell you if there's anything that might obstruct you as you go."
Luffy closed in on Zoro to throw them both into the air before Zoro could do something to mess up the journey.
"You," Zoro muttered, piledriving Luffy into the dirt. He'd spun Luffy's hats back so they wouldn't be pulverized and Luffy had a mouthful of ash. He sputtered and turned his head, Zoro stared down at him with no sympathy. "You're the obstacle. You're the only obstacle."
"Are you sure you didn't eat dinner without me? Is this your third dinner?"
"We've been over that," Usopp said. "Have we ever eaten without you? We obviously wouldn't. I'd like to wake up with both my legs in the morning, thanks."
Franky stopped shoveling food into his mouth. His sunglasses slid down his nose and Robin bloomed a finger out from his cheek to push them back up. "What's that supposed to mean."
Sanji set down two more plates in quick succession and leaned back into his own chair. "I only just finished setting up when you two returned. How would we have eaten without you?"
Luffy swallowed. "So Zoro overslept and then we couldn't see the Sunny anymore. Made me eat dirt, we were lost for the whole day--that's five meals I was late to, of course I was missing dinner."
Zoro kept his eyes closed until Nami guffawed and pinched his ear. "Zoro, that's hardcore! Luffy, how much dirt?"
"Lots," he replied, and Chopper stroked his knee with sad eyes.
"Who said you had to eat it. I didn't make you eat it, moron, you swallowed it all on your own. You launched me into a corpse. You see me gnawing on his bones, huh?"
"No," Luffy admitted. "Shut up, Zoro! You don't even like boning."
Skull to skull the "bone head" compliment usually came from Nami even though Zoro was the one Luffy bumped with on most days.
"He doesn't like what," said Franky.
"No one likes doing that with you," Zoro said. Franky said something else but Nami said, louder, "Luffy, don't make that face. Seriously, stop, it's so much worse when you're eating. All we did was go out to the market. It's not like we'd ever eat anything not made by Sanji."
Sanji made adoring noises until Nami shot him a look and asked him, "Didn't you tell him?"
"Corpse?" asked Usopp, once Chopper: with one last thump to the back, successfully stopped his gagging noises. A new lump of wet meat was on the table and Luffy eyed it, wondering if Usopp would fight him for it.
"Luffy snatched up his hat," Zoro said. "The corpse's."
"It wasn't his!" Luffy snapped. His hand was slapped away by Usopp, who garbled out something like have some dignity please oh my god. Luffy glared but slunk back. "It used to be someone else's but whoever it was wasn't there anymore."
"Because he was dead," said Zoro.
"Grave robbing," Nami said, and pulled back closer to the table, leaving behind a drooping Sanji. "Oh, Luffy. Look at you."
"What?"
"I expected this. You're mine, after all."
"What?"
Usopp groaned into the tabletop. "At least try to keep the conversation comprehensible."
He left the meat unguarded. Luffy watched for him to get up, but Chopper was on his back, patting his head and keeping him pressed down. He said something like Chopper can you get off I need to breathe and Chopper nestled his face into his hair and reassured him that it was alright to be stressed.
Luffy reached for the lump only for a hand to sprout from the ceiling and pinch it up--he watched it fly a graceful arc into the bin and then stared at Robin.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know you were looking forward to that, but I'm still a human being. I couldn't let it happen."
"So considerate," Sanji sighed.
"Guess what isn't considerate," said Zoro.
Luffy slammed back his chair to jump to his feet. Usopp and Chopper both startled themselves into sneezing. "It wasn't his hat!"
"I watched you pick it up off his body."
"It's my hat now," Luffy said. "And you're the only one who saw, Zoro."
Usopp pulled him back into his seat by the arm, Chopper aiding him from his lap. Luffy slid his knees off the tabletop and sat. On the other end, Zoro dropped back down, Nami's hand in his hair. "Yeah, don't go there, don't destroy the dinner table. Congratulations on the extra hat! It's very, well, it's, it's real suave."
"Put it on!"
"I tried. Doesn't fit yet."
"Yet? Your head's not going to get any smaller."
"I just have to rip it a little," Luffy said.
"He's, he's really going there. That's callous. Why'd you even pick that up? No offense, but it doesn't really seem your style."
It hung against his chest, goggles caught against his hatstring. Against his red vest, the sheen was almost black. "Not my style."
"He was probably planning to eat it."
Luffy shot across the table and tumbled Zoro into the wall. Nami kicked him with her heel without even turning around when he rolled too close to her and then began to push their chairs in.
"It's your fault I was so hungry!"
"How?"
"I missed dinner because of you! Zoro, you stupid, stupid--"
"You grabbed me."
Nami laughed, the last chair tucked safely under the table. "For the last time, Sanji explained yesterday, didn't he? He said he did. All we did was go to the market."
Luffy peered up at Sanji from under Zoro's elbow, hat in hand. Zoro didn't even have a good pin on his jugular this time.
Sanji was staring down at him with the intensity he usually reserved for blue hole encounters or looming typhoons.
He spoke. "Listen, all of you. It isn't my fault he considers red raw meat dinner."